Avon Catalog, Company for Women Catalog

Born to in 1858 to Irish immigrants who settled in Oswego, New York, David Hall McConnell made his way into the business world and at the ripe old age of 25 was appointed to oversee the southern territory for the Union Publishing Co. which, at the time, sold their published books door-to-door.  Out of his newly established home in Atlanta, Georgia, David Hall McConnell watched book sales continually increase and decided that if books could be sold door-to-door, so can perfumes.  With this decision, the first seeds for his California Perfume Company (CPC) were planted and the company began its operation in 1886.

David Hall McConnell initially produced the perfume out of his own home and during his routes to sell books he also sold perfumes.  When sales of the books and the perfumes increased enough to make selling them simultaneously impossible, he dropped the books, set up a perfume laboratory in Suffern, New York and soon added other cosmetic products to be marketed and sold under the CPC name.  When CPC expanded its operations to include food flavoring extracts and other domestic items, those were sold under a different name brand — Perfection.

Through the years the California Perfume Company (CPC) added new products and went through a series of structural transformations such as incorporation in 1916 and several name changes from the original California Perfume Company to Allied Products, Inc. and then to Avon Allied Products, Inc. whose subsidiaries included:

• Avon Product Inc. which became the official distributer of the cosmetic and toiletry products that took Avon as their trade name in 1929.  The name “Avon” was adopted in commemoration of Avon, England because of its similarity to Suffern, New York or vice-versa.
• Perfection Household Products.
• Avon Products of Canada, Ltd. was incorporated in 1924 and was the natural outgrowth of the California Perfume Company of Canada, Ltd. that was established in 1906 in the city of Montreal which is in the province of Quebec in Canada.
• Hinze Ambrosia, Inc.
• Technical Laboratories, Inc.

From the very beginning, all of the CPC products were sold almost exclusively by housewives and women and by 1937 the dedicated sales force was more than 30,000 strong.  Most of the sales were via door-to-door and with the aid of colorful Avon catalogs which made their first appearance in 1906.  By 1946 Avon Products, Inc. was listed on the New York Stock Exchange as the company continued to thrive and expanded throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Central and South America, the Far East, the Middle East and elsewhere around the globe.

Today, Avon Products, Inc. is the world’s leading direct seller of beauty products (skin care, fragrance, cosmetics, toiletries, jewelry and much more) and their brand names are probably just as well known as Avon itself; Anew, Avon Color, Skin-So-Soft, Advance Techniques Hair Care, Mark, Avon Wellness and Avon Naturals.  The company’s more than five million worldwide sales representatives drive a staggering one billion sales transactions per year through door-to-door distribution, through elegantly designed multi-colored catalogs, from kiosks in shopping mulls, from retail beauty centers and through their online catalog with its crew of e-representatives.