Avon began as a door-to-door book business and was sold for one pound
In 1886 a New York book salesman called David McConnell decided perfume would sell better than books. His California Perfume Company became Avon, with millions of representatives in over 100 countries. In 2025 its owner, Natura, agreed to sell the international business, minus Latin America and Russia, for a single pound.
McConnell opened in a small office on Chambers Street in Manhattan. The California name came from his business partner, who lived there and pointed to the state's abundance of flowers. Alexander Henderson joined in 1894 and helped steer its growth, a laboratory opened in Suffern, New York, in 1897, and sales began in Montreal in 1914. Products carrying the Avon name appeared in 1928, and in 1939 the whole company adopted it.
The model depended on representatives rather than shops. Avon ladies, and Avon men, sold from brochures and received no wage, earning only from their sales or from recruiting others. By 2014 the American government counted 5 to 6 million of them. The business became steadily more international: Brazil overtook the United States as its biggest market in 2010, and by 2013 about 88 percent of revenue came from abroad. In China it had to switch to shops after direct selling was banned in 1998, getting a direct-selling licence only in 2006.
Then came a long slide. A whistleblower's bribery allegations about the China division in 2008 led to an investigation costing about 500 million dollars and a 135 million dollar settlement in 2014. That year global sales fell for the fifth year running, and in 2015 Avon left the S&P 500 after 50 years. In 2016 the North American arm was spun off and the head office moved to London, and in 2018 the last American factory was sold.
Brazil's Natura agreed to buy Avon in 2019 for more than 2 billion dollars. Lawsuits over talc-based products pushed the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2024, and the one-pound sale of Avon International to Regent completed on December 31, 2025. In August 2026 Regent announced it would buy back the North American arm, bringing the two halves under one owner for the first time since 2016.
Source: Avon Products
