Direct Sales

Female Authority and Woman-to-Woman

One of the first direct sales companies created was the California Perfume Company, today known as Avon. David Hall McConnell started the California Perfume Company in 1886, when he discovered women were buying books from him to get free perfume samples. Once women began to ask about these perfume samples, McConnell realized that he held something powerful. Mrs. P. F. Albee became McConnell's first seller/agent when McConnell hired her with the assumption that women would be more likely to buy from a woman they knew and trusted. It was 1928 before the company would begin selling products under the Avon name; the company name officially changed in 1939. The company became known as “The Company for Women,” and by 1954 more than two-thirds of Avon's employees were indeed women. Today, Avon Products, Inc., is an international, multibillion-dollar company.

The door-to-door demonstration model, turned party plan, was a modern-day replica of the sewing circle and the quilting bee, used by women in earlier days to create a product and to maintain social relationships. The party plan also used the method of information sharing so popular among women in the advertising industry. In this way, the party plan turned what was commonly viewed as gossip into a lucrative form of commerce.

It was not until 1902, when Annie Turnbo Malone used the demonstration style of door-to-door sales to sell haircare products, that women not only sold the products but also fashioned the product for sale. Malone trademarked her haircare products for African American women as Poro, which is a West African word indicating spiritual and physical growth. Later, Madam C. J. Walker, a student of Malone, also began a haircare product company for African American women and sold her products in a similar fashion.

Tupperware, Mary Kay, and Passion Parties

The party plan demonstration form of direct sales boomed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Women had been in the workplace in large numbers during World War II but were pushed out once men came home from the war. Earl Tupper's conception was one of the first in which large numbers of women would be able to work for themselves without the hassle of creating their own business identity.

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