One Woman Can™ Be

Inspiring, Uplifting,

Compassionate

Written by: Farkhanda Kiran

Submitted to : Ms Asma

Department : Computer Science

Semester: 7th

Dated: June 18,2014

A timeline of the Greatest American Woman Entrepreneur

Mary Kay Ash

Mary Kay Ash - Founder of Mary Kay

Cosmetics Inc."Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck

that says 'Make Me Feel Important.' Not only will you succeed in business, you

will succeed in life."-Mary Kay Ash

Innovative, charismatic and contagiously optimistic, perhaps no woman has

played a more important role in the advancement of women entrepreneurs

than Mary Kay Ash. After experiencing firsthand the "glass ceiling" that kept

many women from reaching top positions in the male-dominated corporate

world, Ash envisioned a dream company where working mothers could

determine their own levels of advancement and compensation, be their own

bosses, and set work schedules that would still leave time for their children.

The result of this vision was Mary Kay Cosmetics, a unique multilevel, direct-

sales cosmetic firm that would provide hundreds of thousands of women with

the opportunities Ash herself had been denied.

E arly L ife Mary Kay Wagner Ash believed that "a lady never reveals her age," and

therefore the exact year of her birth is

unknown. It is estimated to be 1916. She

was born to Edward and Lula Wagner in

Hot Wells, Texas, the youngest of four

children. Her mother, who had studied

to be a nurse, worked long hours

managing a restaurant. When Mary Kay

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Mary Kay Ash

was two or three, her father was ill

with tuberculosis (an infection of the lungs). As a

result, it was her responsibility to clean, cook, and

care for her father while her mother was at work.

She excelled in school, but her family could not

afford to send her to college. She married Ben

Rogers at age seventeen and eventually had three

children.

Working Mother

When asked to name her greatest achievement,

Mary Kay Ash proudly replies, "I think the biggest

legacy we are going to leave is a whole community

of children who believe they can do anything in this

world because they watched their mamas do it.”

Like many business pioneers, Ash stumbled upon

her entrepreneurial talents quite by accident. It

happened in the latter half of the 1930s, when a door-to-door encyclopedia

saleswoman struck a deal with Ash: If Ash could sell 10 sets of encyclopedias,

the saleswoman would give her a set free of charge. Ash agreed and sold 10

sets in just a day and a half. This was a rather remarkable feat, considering 10

sets was the three-month quota for the company's most accomplished

salespeople.

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Mary Kay Ash

Believing she'd found her forte, Ash continued peddling encyclopedias part

time and was soon earning enough money to help support her young family.

Unfortunately, she also earned the wrath of many of her friends who accused

her of selling them a product they didn't really need. Taking her customers'

disdain to heart, Ash searched for a more useful product to sell. She turned to

Stanley Home Products, a direct-sales company offering housewares and

cleaning supplies.

Shortly after joining the company, Ash attended a convention at which

Stanley's most successful saleswoman was crowned "Queen of Sales." Ever the

competitor, Ash vowed that the next

year she would be queen. To achieve

her goal, she persuaded the reigning

queen to hold a demonstration party,

during which Ash transcribed her

presentation word for word. True to

her vow, the very next year Ash did

indeed win the title.

A major turning point in Ash's life came when her husband returned home

from World War II and ran off with another woman. With three children to

support, Ash was forced to make Stanley Home Products her full-time career.

But even though she quickly became a top sales producer, she watched in

frustration as men who had less talent and knowledge were promoted ahead

of her.

Fed up with being passed over, Ash joined the direct-sales firm World Gift Co.

in 1952. Within 10 years, she had extended World Gift's distribution into 43

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Mary Kay Ash

states and earned a position on the company's board of directors. But her

suggestions were often dismissed by male members of the board with the

comment, "Oh, Mary Kay, you're thinking just like woman"-a remark that never

failed to enrage her. She finally quit in 1962, after a man she had trained was

named her supervisor and given twice her salary.

S tarts H er O wn C ompany Deciding to take an early retirement, Ash set out to write a guide to help other

women avoid the pitfalls she'd faced in the male-dominated corporate world.

She composed two lists. The first outlined her negative experiences. The

second detailed the qualities she thought would constitute an ideal business-a

"dream company" for working women with families that would 1) treat

everyone equally, 2) base promotions on merit and 3) choose products based

on their sales performance and marketability, rather than profitability.

Looking over the second list, Ash realized she'd created a workable direct-

sales company and thought, "Why am I theorizing about a dream company?

Why don't I just start one?" And that's exactly what she did.

First she needed to find a product. It had to be something women could

believe in, that they could recommend with all their hearts, and, most

important, a product that could be used up and re-ordered over and over. But

where would she find such a product? Ironically, it was already sitting atop

her bedroom dresser.

For nearly 10 years, Ash had been buying a skin softener from the daughter of

a local hide tanner who had concocted the cream from tanning solutions. With

her $5,000 life savings, Ash bought the recipe for the skin softener, furnished a

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Mary Kay Ash

small storefront in Dallas, and hired a local manufacturer to create a line of

skin-care products based on the hide tanner's formula.

While her second husband dealt with the legal and financial matters, Ash

recruited a sales force of nine of her friends. But one month before the

company was scheduled to open, disaster struck. Ash's husband died of a

heart attack. Convinced that she could not succeed without her husband's

help, Ash's lawyer and accountant urged her to abandon her plans. But like

most great entrepreneurs, Ash, who was then in her mid-40s, ignored the

advice of "the experts," and Mary Kay Cosmetics opened its doors September

13, 1963.

From its inception, it was unique among direct-sales businesses. Instead of

using high-pressure sales pitches, Ash instructed her salespeople (whom she

christened "consultants") to show women how they could use Mary Kay

products to improve their appearance. Once women saw the results, the

products would sell themselves. It

was a technique Ash claims no

company had ever tried before.

Within three and a half months, sales

of Mary Kay products totaled

$34,000, and by the end of the first

year, that figure had risen to an

amazing $198,000. A year later, sales

had quadrupled to $800,000.

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Mary Kay Ash

Mary Kay once said that success came fast because she did not have any time

to waste.  She was already forty-five years old when she started the company. 

She said a woman needs money fast as she gets older.

Now Mary Kay Cosmetics is one of the largest direct sellers of skin care

products in the world.  It develops and tests skin care and beauty products for

the face, body, hair and nails -- many more than it started selling in nineteen

sixty-three.  Today, Mary Kay Cosmetics has sales of more than two billion

dollars a year.  It has more than one million sales representatives in more than

thirty countries around the world.  You can find Mary Kay products and sales

representatives in Argentina, India, the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, and

China, to name a few.

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Mary Kay Ash

M otivating E mployees Every year since nineteen sixty-five, Mary Kay Cosmetics has held a yearly

conference in Dallas for its sales representatives.  The first one took place in

one large room.  Mary Kay cooked food for two hundred people and served it

on paper plates.

As the company grew, so did the conference.  Now, more than thirty-five

thousand sales representatives and company officials pay to attend education

meetings at the yearly conference.  A special event at the three-day conference

is Awards Night.  That is when

prizes are given to those

representatives with the most sales

for the year.  Awards Night also

includes a show in which famous

singers and dancers perform.

The Awards Night winners receive

special paid holidays, jewels, furs, and pink Cadillac automobiles.  In Germany,

winners receive a pink Mercedes Benz, and in

Taiwan they are given a pink Toyota.  By

nineteen ninety-four, seven thousand cars had

been given to sales representatives.  The cars

are pink because Mary Kay products come in

pink containers.  Mary Kay liked that color.

Mary Kay believed that recognizing good work is

the best way to increase a company's sales.  She

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Mary Kay Ash

said her company tried to have competitions in which everyone has a chance

to win.  She did not want to organize the kind of competition where someone

has to hurt another person in order to win.

So the Mary Kay competitions are designed around the idea that it is best to

compete with yourself.  That means every individual is trying to do better

then she did last week or last year.

Competition winners are rewarded well.  For example, winners of one of the

competitions get a gold pin called the Ladder of Success.  Sales representatives

earn a pin by selling a large number of products.  Then they earn jewels for

the pin as they increase their sales.  Each jewel is

placed higher on the ladder than the others.  The

pin of a top sales representative is covered with

diamonds.

A H umanitarian Mary Kay's third husband, Mel Ash, died of cancer in nineteen eighty.  She

wanted to help find a cure for the disease.  At first, she helped organizations

raise money for research.  Later, she started the Mary Kay Ash Charitable

Foundation, a non-profit group that provides money to support research

about cancers affecting women.  In two thousand one, the company and

foundation expanded their goals in an effort to help stop violence against

women.

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Mary Kay Ash

M ary K ay A sh’s H onors Countless business leaders, authors, politicians and members of academia

have recognized the pure brilliance and

determination of Mary Kay Ash.  She received

numerous prestigious awards during her

lifetime and many more following her death

on Nov. 22, 2001.

Some of her honors include:

“100 Greatest Women of 100 Years” by

the YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas

(2008)

A&E Television produced “Mary Kay” which aired on the Biography

Channel (2006)

PBS and the Wharton School of Business’s “25 Most Influential Business

Leaders of the Last 25 Years” (2004)

Baylor University’s “Greatest Female Entrepreneur in American

History” (2003)

“Most Outstanding Woman in Business in the 20th Century.”  Lifetime

Television (1999)

National Business Hall of Fame, Fortune (1996)

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Mary Kay Ash

Pathfinder Award,  National Association of Women Business Owners

(1995)

One of “America’s 25 Most Influential Women,” The World Almanac and

Book of Facts (1985)

Horatio Alger Distinguished American Citizen Award (1978)

Through the years, Mary Kay Ash received many business awards.  She was

named one of America's twenty-five most influential women in nineteen

eighty-five.  She became a member of the National Business Hall of Fame in

nineteen ninety-six.

L ater Y ears Mary Kay Ash wrote three books.  The first book, "Mary Kay," told the story of

her life.  More than one million copies in several languages have been sold. 

She described her business ideas in the book "Mary Kay on People

Management."  Her third book was released in nineteen ninety-five.  It is

called "Mary Kay--You Can Have It All."  The money earned from its sales

went to help fight cancer.

F inal D ays Mary Kay Ash's health declined after she suffered a stroke in 1996. She died at

her Dallas home on November 22, 2001. She was a tough businessperson with

a thorough knowledge of marketing and sales. Through her belief in women's

abilities and her willingness to give them a chance, she made the dream of a

successful career a reality for hundreds of thousands of women worldwide.

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Mary Kay Ash

A n I nspiration Mary Kay told the women who worked for her that “To be successful in life a

person should put God first, family second and work third”.  She said women

must discover how to be good wives and mothers while at the same time

learning how to succeed in work.

Business experts say she was an important business leader who cared about

people.  Mary Kay sales representatives say she developed a way for women

to earn money and still spend time with

their families.

One example is Valerie Yokie.  She started

selling Mary Kay products twenty years ago. 

She was an official at Georgetown University

in Washington, D.C., but left her job to stay

home with her two small children.  She

became interested in the Mary Kay

Cosmetics company because it was a way to

get started in a business for a small amount

of money.  She paid less than one hundred

dollars for her supplies.

After one year and one half, Mrs. Yokie became a director of the company and

started helping other women become successful Mary Kay representatives. 

Soon after this, her husband lost his job.  Then he developed cancer.  Valerie

Yokie has supported her family for twenty years through Mary Kay

Cosmetics.  She is an extremely successful businesswoman.  She has won

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Mary Kay Ash The Woman

Mary Kay Ash

many prizes in Mary Kay competitions,

and receives a new pink Cadillac every

two years.

Valerie Yokie's story is similar to those of

other Mary Kay representatives.  They

agree that Mary Kay Ash changed the

business world.  They say she opened a

door for women by providing them with a way to earn money that balances

work and family.

Just three simple words – One Woman Can™ – capture the enormous impact

Mary Kay has had on the lives of women worldwide. And those same three

words also represent the encouragement and empowerment that every

woman can experience through Mary Kay. One Woman Can™ really do

anything she dreams possible. 

"We must have a theme, a goal, a purpose in our lives. If you don't know where you're aiming, you don't have a goal. My goal is to live my life in such a way that when I

die, someone can say, she cared." Mary Kay Ash

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Valerie Yokie