Mary Kay Ash, in Toronto for the opening of the firm's new Canadian headquarters in Mississauga, stands in front of one of the major rewards offered top salespersons for her organization. (Photo by Graham Bezant)
Gallery of Mary Ash
1978
Mary Kay Ash (Photo by Graham Bezant)
Gallery of Mary Ash
1978
301 Park Ave, New York, NY 10022, United States
Mary Kay Ash (left), chairman of the board of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc., and Mary C. Crowley, founder, and president of Home Interiors and Gifts, Inc., both recipients of Horatio Alger Awards, hold one of the statuettes at a news conference prior to the actual presentation at the Waldorf Astoria.
Gallery of Mary Ash
1980
Mary Kay Ash (Photo by Dick Loek)
Gallery of Mary Ash
1981
Mary Kay Ash (Photo by Colin McConnell)
Gallery of Mary Ash
1982
Mary Kay Ash in affable portrait at home. (Photo by Shelly Katz)
Gallery of Mary Ash
1983
Mary Kay Ash, accompanied by one of her corporate directors puts on a show for her faithful followers. (Photo by Jack Cusano)
Mary Kay Ash, in Toronto for the opening of the firm's new Canadian headquarters in Mississauga, stands in front of one of the major rewards offered top salespersons for her organization. (Photo by Graham Bezant)
Mary Kay Ash (left), chairman of the board of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc., and Mary C. Crowley, founder, and president of Home Interiors and Gifts, Inc., both recipients of Horatio Alger Awards, hold one of the statuettes at a news conference prior to the actual presentation at the Waldorf Astoria.
(The founder of the three hundred million-dollar-a-year co...)
The founder of the three hundred million-dollar-a-year cosmetics company explains the management principles - based simply on the Golden Rule - that have propelled her company to astonishing success
(Mary Kay may be the most successful woman entrepreneur in...)
Mary Kay may be the most successful woman entrepreneur in the world today, but she started her company as a single mother supporting three children - using her total life savings of $5,000.
Mary Kay Ash was an American businesswoman, entrepreneur, make-up tycoon, and creator of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc. Having encountered discrimination in her career on account of being a woman, on her retirement she established her "dream company." Mary Kay Ash used her training in direct sales to create her own multimillion-dollar cosmetics firm and provide women with the opportunity for advancement.
Background
Mary Kay Ash was born on May 12 in Hot Wells, Texas, the United States. The exact year of her birth is unknown. It is estimated to be 1916. Her parents were Edward and Lula Wagner, and she was the youngest of four children. Her mother, who had studied to be a nurse, worked long hours managing a restaurant. When Mary Kay was around three years old, her father was sent away to a tuberculosis sanatorium, where he lived for four years. However, in spite of the treatment, he remained invalid throughout his life, so her mother worked to support the family.
Her two sisters, Dealia Koch and Daisy Wagner, and brother, Cecil Dewitt Wagner, left home by the time their father returned from the sanatorium. Therefore, it fell upon seven-year-old Mary Kay to take care of him. Mary Kay became responsible to take care of household responsibilities such as cooking dinner. She would telephone her mother at work and ask for directions on how to cook various dishes for her father. She also went shopping alone. Her mother encouraged her in these responsibilities, telling her, "You can do it," words that stayed with her all her life
Education
Ash proved to be an eager and dependable student throughout her school years. Mary Kay began her education at Dow Elementary School, later moving to Reagan High School, graduating from there in 1934. She was a good student and won many prizes as an orator. Although she longed for university education due to her family's limited resources Ash was unable to go to college.
Later in her life, Mary Kay spent a year studying at the University of Houston, to follow her dream of becoming a doctor, but she dropped out within a year to pursue selling full-time.
During an era when it was uncommon for married women with a family to work outside the home, Ash became an employee of Stanley Home Products, often conducting several demonstration "parties" each day at which she sold company products, mostly to homemakers much like herself.
As did many parents, Ash sought to provide the best for her children, and she believed that the quickest way to do so was for her to excel at a job. Energetic and a quick learner, Ash found that direct sales suited her well. She rose at Stanley to unit manager, a post that she held from 1938 to 1952. Although she spent a year studying at the University of Houston, she gave up on academics to return to the stimulation of sales challenges.
Ash moved in 1952 from her job at Stanley Home Products to a similar sales slot at World Gift Company, where she remained for another 11 years. Throughout this time she was refining her theory of marketing and sales: provide a quality product, a target that product at a specified market, and offer sales incentives not only to the sales force but to the customer as well. During her years at Stanley, Ash had developed effective techniques and strategies, and it was her belief that other women were able to do the same in selling.
The company story didn’t begin until Mary Kay Ash faced a situation all too familiar to women in the early '60s. After 25 years in the direct-selling business, Mary Kay Ash resigned a position as a national training director when yet another man she had trained was promoted above her - at twice her salary. Her response was visionary. At first, she started writing a book that would help women gain the opportunities she had been denied.
Instead, in 1963 she founded her own company, originally named "Beauty by Mary Kay," a venture based primarily on a special skincare cream to which she had purchased the manufacturing rights. Ash set out to create her own business at the age of 45. She started with an initial investment of $5,000 in 1963. She purchased the formulas for skin lotions from the family of a tanner who created the products while he worked on hides. With her son, Richard Rogers, she opened a small store in Dallas and had nine salespeople working for her. Within a few months, the company clocked profit and by the end of the financial year, it had sold $198,000 worth of cosmetics. In 1964, Mary Kay held her first sales convention, which she called "seminar."
The company sold close to $1 million in products by the end of its second year driven by Ash's business acumen and philosophy. The basic premise was much like the products she sold earlier in her career. Her cosmetics were sold through at-home parties and other events. But Ash strove to make her business different by employing incentive programs and not having sales territories for her representatives.
Ash wanted everyone in the organization to have the opportunity to benefit from their successes. Sales representatives - Ash called them consultants - bought the products from May Kay at wholesale prices and then sold them at retail prices to their customers. They could also earn commissions from new consultants that they had recruited. All of her marketing skills and people savvy helped make Mary Kay Cosmetics a very lucrative business. The company went public in 1968, but it was bought back by Ash and her family in 1985 when the stock price took a hit.
A relentless optimist with evangelical leanings, Ash published a carefully laundered autobiography in 1981; in 1984 she wrote Mary Kay on People Management, a volume that expanded on the now-familiar God-and-family theory of business success for women; and in 1995, she released another text on working women, Mary Kay - You Can Have It All. After her "semi-retirement" she served for a time at the Hastings Center, a think tank in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Mary Kay Ash became involved in cancer research through fundraising after her husband, Mel, died of cancer in 1980. In 1996 a new foundation was started to research cancers that have historically affected women, the foundation was named the Mary Kay Ash Charitable Foundation.
(Mary Kay may be the most successful woman entrepreneur in...)
1985
Religion
Mary Kay Ash held a strong belief in God, who was her life’s priority. While Ash was Christian, her company is non-sectarian, encouraging all those involved to live according to their own chosen spirituality.
Views
Among the tenets that Mary Kay held as basic to her success was her idea that women needed to place "God first, family second, and career third." Despite her conservative views, the conventional approach to combining family and job responsibilities, and ultrafeminine appearance, Mary Kay Ash was a tough businessperson with a veteran's knowledge of marketing and sales. Though her personal views may not be typical of other women who have strived for their civil rights, Mary Kay nevertheless encouraged and empowered legions of women. Through her belief in women's abilities and her willingness to give them a chance, she made the dream of self-sufficiency a reality for hundreds of thousands of women worldwide.
Mary Kay Cosmetics made Ash and many of her beauty consultants wealthy, powerful businesswomen by the time the feminist movement gained momentum in the mid-1960s. Ash shared the feminist view that men and women should be treated equally in the workplace. However, she disagreed with how the feminist movement was trying to gain such equality. "[W]hen I was starting the company, I didn't like the way the feminist movement was taking women - women cutting their hair short and wearing men's style clothing, trying to be men. I think that's nonsense. I think women should look feminine and should try to look good," Ash noted in an interview.
Ash founded her company based on the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule is a cross-cultural ethical precept found in virtually all religions of the world. The most familiar version of the Golden Rule says, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Also, none of the Mary Kay cosmetics are tested on animals.
In 1987, Mary Kay decided to put her money where her heart was and asked employees at Mary Kay Inc. and the independent sales force to do the same. Together, they began raising funds for cancer research. She established a charitable foundation that provides funding for cancer research, particularly breast cancer. Mary Kay Ash cared about all issues affecting women, and she knew domestic violence was a problem in the community. She began to hear how prevalently this issue affected Mary Kay Inc.'s independent sales force across the nation. So in July 2000, The Foundation embraced a second mission: to prevent violence against women.
Quotations:
"I've often said that we are doing something far more important than just selling cosmetics; we are changing lives."
"Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve."
"Every failure, obstacle, or hardship is an opportunity in disguise. Success in many cases is failure turned inside out. The greatest pollution problem we face today is negativity. Eliminate the negative attitude and believe you can do anything. Replace 'if I can, I hope, maybe' with 'I can, I will, I must."
"People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps."
Personality
Ash devoted herself to building the confidence and business power of women while at the same time celebrating female beauty. Ash herself wore her dyed blonde hair styled to frame her face. She wore a variety of makeup products to highlight her facial features. She wore shapely business suits with large jeweled earrings and necklaces to work and long flowing gowns at gala events. At Mary Kay's annual conventions, beauty consultants wore different colored suits to indicate their status in the company. Pink suits, of course, were reserved for only the top sellers. Later, Ash leased out pink Cadillac, Toyotas, and Mercedes to the company’s top performers.
On top of her speeches, quotes, and business writings, Mary Kay also traveled the world to show business people a better way to connect with their employees and to run their companies. She even appeared on several national television shows as well to help those that needed to hear her words of encouragement.
Physical Characteristics:
In February 1996, Mary Kay had a stroke, which left her housebound, unable to speak. She lived like this for more than five years, before she died on November 22, 2001, from natural causes at her home in Dallas, Texas.
Connections
Mary Kay married J. Ben Rogers when she was 17 years old, and they had three children. The marriage failed after her husband, who had been drafted by the military, returned from fighting in World War II and announced he wanted a divorce.
Ash remarried in 1960, but her second husband died suddenly of a heart attack three years later, just as she was preparing to launch her new business. She relied heavily on her oldest son, Ben Rogers, to guide and advise her throughout the start-up phase of her cosmetics company; three years later she married Melville J. Ash and assumed the name that is so well-known today. Mel died of cancer in 1980.