Book Review: ‘Selling Opportunity,’ by Mary Lisa Gavenas

SELLING OPPORTUNITY: The Story of Mary Kay, by Mary Lisa Gavenas

Mary Kay, the cosmetics company whose multilevel marketing included sales parties and whose biggest earners were awarded pink Cadillacs, was really in the business of selling second chances. Or, at least, that’s what Mary Lisa Gavenas argues in “Selling Opportunity,” a dual biography of the brand and the woman behind it.

Mary Kathlyn Wagner, who would become Mary Kay Ash, “the most famous saleswoman in the world” and “maybe the most famous ever,” in Gavenas’s extravagant words, was born in 1918 to a poor family and raised mostly in Houston. Although a good student, she eloped at 16 with a slightly older boy. The young couple had two babies in quick succession.

Mary Kay’s creation was a combination of timing and good luck. Door-to-door sales was a thriving industry — but, traditionally, a man’s world: Lugging heavy samples was not considered feminine, and entering the homes of strangers, unsafe. But things began to change during the Great Depression, Gavenas suggests, thanks to a convergence of factors — financial pressures and the rise of the aspirational prosperity gospel espoused by Dale Carnegie’s self-help manuals.

At the same time, female-run beauty lines like Annie Turnbo Malone’s Poro and Madam C.J. Walker’s were finding great success in Black communities. And, coincidentally or otherwise, the California Perfume Company changed its name to Avon Products in 1939.

Ash began by selling books door to door, moving on to Stanley Home Products in the 1940s. She was talented, but direct sales was a rough gig. Every party to show off wares was supposed to beget two more bookings; these led to sales that resulted in new recruits. But there was no real security or stability: no salary, no medical benefits, no vacations. “Stop selling and you would end up right back where you started. Or worse,” the author writes.

Gavenas, a onetime beauty editor who wrote “Color Stories,” takes her time unspooling Mary Kay’s tale, with a great deal of evident research. We learn about direct sales, women’s rights and Texas history.

But, be warned: Readers must really enjoy both this woman and this world to take pleasure in “Selling Opportunity.” Mary Kay the person keeps marrying, getting divorced or widowed and working her way through various sales jobs (it’s hard to keep track of the myriad companies and last names). Gavenas seems to leave no detail out. Thus, the 1963 founding of the eponymous beauty company doesn’t come until almost 200 pages in.

Beauty by Mary Kay included a Cleansing Cream, a Magic Masque and a Nite Cream (which containined ammoniated mercury, later banned by the F.D.A.). The full line of products — which was how Mary Kay strongly encouraged customers to buy them — ran to a steep $175 in today’s money. (To fail to acquire the whole set, Ash said, was “like giving you my recipe for chocolate cake but leaving out an important ingredient.”)

Potential clients attended gatherings at acquaintances’ homes — no undignified doorbell-ringing here — where they received a mini facial, then an application of cosmetics like foundation, lip color and cream rouge — and a wig. The company made $198,514 in sales its first year.

Although Ash may have seemed a pioneer, in many ways Mary Kay was a traditionalist company, whose philosophy was “God first, family second, career third.” Saleswomen, official literature dictated, were working to provide themselves with treats rather than necessities so as not to threaten their breadwinner husbands.

And yet, they were also encouraged to sell sell sell. Golden Goblet pendants were awarded for major orders. After the company started using custom pink Peterbilt trucks for shipping, it began commissioning those Cadillacs for top consultants. (Mary Kay preferred gifts to cash bonuses, lest women save the money to spend on practical things rather than the licensed frivolities.) The Cadillacs, always driven on company leases, would become industry legend and part of American pop culture lore. “Never to be run-down, repainted or resold, the cars would double as shining pink advertisements for her selling opportunity,” Gavenas writes.

The woman herself was iconic, too. While Ash was a product of the Depression, she was also undeniably over-the-top. She wore white suits with leopard trim, lived in a custom Frank L. Meier house and brought her poodle to the office.

Mary Kay went public in 1968, making her the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange. By the 1990s, the Mary Kay headquarters near Dallas was almost 600,000 square feet. They commissioned a hagiographic company biopic; there was a Mary Kay consultant Barbie; they were making $1 billion in wholesale. When she died, in 2001, Ash was worth $98 million.

And yet, Gavenas cites that at the company’s height, in 1992, sales reps made on average just $2,400 per year.

Instead of so much time in the pink fantasia of Mary Kay, it would have been nice for a few detours showing how infrequently the opportunities the company sold were truly realized.

SELLING OPPORTUNITY: The Story of Mary Kay | By Mary Lisa Gavenas | Viking | 435 pp. | $35