Mary Kay Ash

Businessperson

  • Born: May 12, 1918
  • Birthplace: Hot Wells, Texas
  • Died: November 22, 2001
  • Place of death: Dallas, Texas

American businesswoman

Ash founded Mary Kay Cosmetics, a Fortune 500 company based on direct sales by women who demonstrate beauty products in homes. She is best known for not only her business acumen but also her motivational techniques, including awarding pink Cadillacs as prizes to her sales force.

Areas of achievement Business and industry, fashion

Early Life

Born Mary Kathlyn Wagner in Hot Wells, Texas, a small town twenty-five miles from Houston, Mary Kay Ash was the youngest of four children of Edward Alexander and Lula Vember (Hastings) Wagner. The family owned a hotel where Lula Wagner’s good cooking attracted customers. Edward Wagner fell ill with tuberculosis, spent three years in a sanitarium, and returned home an invalid. The Wagners sold the hotel and moved to Houston, where Lula leased and managed a café on Washington Avenue. Lula put in fourteen-hour days as cook and manager, so it became seven-year-old Mary Kay’s job to clean, cook, and care for her dad. Mary Kay also learned to take the streetcar downtown to shop for her own clothes. Her persuasive powers as a business executive grew out of her youthful experiences trying to convince salespeople that she had the money and authorization from her mother.

Lula Wagner’s loving encouragement and her exemplary work ethic inspired Ash to excel. In addition to achieving excellent grades in school, Ash sold the most tickets for her school’s May Fete. She learned to type fast enough to win a class trophy, won honors on the debate team, and gave speeches that earned recognition for her as the second best speaker in Texas. Ash applied her sales skills to her extracurricular activities as well, earning distinction as a top seller of Girl Scout cookies.

One of Ash’s closest competitors was her friend Dorothy Zapp, who was rich, smart, and capable. Ash continually aspired to outdo Zapp when it came to selling school tickets or achieving high grades. The Zapp family appreciated Ash for her persistence and intelligence and included her in their family vacations and Christmas parties. Zapp and Ash shared joys, sorrows, and secrets. Eventually, their lives began to follow separate paths when Dorothy went off to college, a luxury that Ash’s family could not afford during the Depression.

After condensing four years of studies into three, Ash was graduated from Reagan High School at the age of seventeen. After graduation, she was married to Ben Rogers. Rogers was a musician who played guitar with the Hawaiian Strummers, a band that was featured on a local radio program. With the arrival of the couple’s three children, he took a day job at a gas station and played music at night.

Pressured by the tough economic times and her compulsion to work, Ash began to sell children’s books for the Child Psychology Bookshelf. Ida Blake, a company saleswoman, encouraged Ash and taught her to drive a car, enabling her to sell books throughout Houston. When Ben lost his job at the gas station, the couple began to work together selling cookware, but were forced to abandon the venture because of poor sales during the continuing economic depression. In 1939, Ash began to work part-time for Stanley Home Products.

Like her own future company, Stanley Home Products conducted direct sales parties at people’s homes. Ash was not successful at first. Realizing she had a lot to learn, she borrowed twelve dollars to attend the company’s annual convention in Dallas. Motivated by the recognition given to the company’s leading salesperson in this case, a crown and alligator handbag awarded to a woman Ash resolved to be next year’s winner, a resolve she announced to the president of the company. Taking steps to ensure her success, Ash attended a demonstration conducted by the current winner, took nineteen pages of notes, and memorized the woman’s sales pitch. Ash’s determination and hard work put her at the top of sales the next year. Instead of winning the coveted alligator purse, however, she was given a flounder light, a light used by fishermen.

Such lack of consideration embittered Ash as she labored to succeed in the male-dominated world of sales. Nevertheless, she managed to rise above these slights to pursue her career goals while still caring for her family. During World War II, her husband joined the Army and was sent abroad. Fortunately, Ash’s sales career as a Stanley dealer was flourishing and provided the family with a steady income.

In 1942, she decided to pursue her dream to become a medical doctor. Since married women were not supposed to take places from men, Ash posed as an unmarried student and enrolled in premedical courses at the University of Houston. A woman dean called her in to discuss the results of a three-day aptitude test and informed her that she had tested higher in marketing and sales than in science. That news plus the prospect of making a ten-year commitment to become a doctor on top of her heavy workload as wife, mother, and saleswoman persuaded Ash to drop out of college and work full-time for Stanley instead. Shortly thereafter, her husband was mustered out of the Army and informed Ash that he had met another woman and wanted a divorce after eleven years of marriage.

Life’s Work

The postwar years marked a new chapter in Ash’s life. As a young career woman and a divorced parent, she had little time to wallow in pity since her children depended on her for their emotional and financial support. She joined what her mother described as the “Five O’Clock Club,” rising at 5:00 a.m. to plan her household chores and the day’s three sales parties. Her children were also involved and learned to package her products, keep accounts, and do household chores. As her income rose, Ash hired a housekeeper. After being named a manager at Stanley and moving to Dallas, Ash thought she would continue to progress within the company hierarchy. Instead, she encountered a glass ceiling a variety of gender-based barriers that hindered her advancement at Stanley.

In 1952, she transferred to World Gift Company in Houston, where she became a top saleswoman, then an area manager, and finally a training director. In this capacity, she visited forty-three states and traveled three weeks out of every month. As she rose through the ranks, she faced discrimination. A male assistant, whom she had trained, was named as her boss and given twice her salary. Another incident involved an efficiency expert who told Ash she had too much power. Eventually, the company decided to transfer her every six months. In 1963, she voluntarily retired from the company.

After leaving World Gift Company, Ash decided to write her memoirs. While reviewing her business experiences, she wrote down her ideas for a dream company. In her ideal company, the Golden Rule would be practiced. Above all, the company would be sympathetic to the concerns of working women and especially to those of working mothers. All she needed was a product, and she remembered an invention she had been introduced to by the daughter of a deceased tanner of hides homemade cosmetics. She had been using these cosmetics, in spite of their smell, since 1952, and she bought the formulas for them in 1963.

Ash began preparations to launch her new company. A month before Mary Kay Cosmetics was scheduled to open, her second husband of several years died of a heart attack. An executive in the vitamin industry, he was to be in charge of the new company’s finances and administration. The crisis caused by his death was overcome when her youngest son Richard agreed to take over the financial end of the company. Against the advice of her lawyer and accountant, Ash opened her company on September 13, 1963, backed by her life savings of $5,000.

The first year of retail sales, amounting to nearly $200,000, were encouraging to the beginning staff of nine sales representatives. Eventually, the company established certain guidelines for sales. Independent salespeople, known as beauty consultants, were encouraged to purchase a makeup case containing the company’s products, to make extensive telephone contacts among their friends and neighbors, to organize intimate home-based parties demonstrating the products, and to sell the makeup for twice what they paid for it. Each time a consultant recruited additional sales representatives, she was awarded a percentage of their sales forever. No cap was placed on the consultants’ earnings. As their sales increased, consultants advanced through the ranks to sales director and eventually to national sales director. The company placed particular emphasis on individual recognition, providing bonuses and prizes in the form of jewelry, fur coats, and complimentary Cadillacs and sponsoring annual sales conventions to highlight the success of each sales representative.

The business skyrocketed and the company went public in 1968. From 1973 to 1983, the company’s stock price rose by 670 percent. Between 1984 and 1985, however, the company’s growth slowed, and Mary Kay and Richard decided to buy back publicly held stock and become a family-owned business again. Initially, all three of Ash’s children worked for her company, although her oldest daughter Marilyn left after four years because of an injured back.

Ash married businessman Melville Jerome Ash in 1966. Their marriage was happy, and they built a large $4 million circular house in Dallas. Mel was popular with the staff at Mary Kay Cosmetics, even though he tried to get Mary to spend less time at the office. He died of cancer in 1980.

By the early 1990’s, Mary Kay Cosmetics was operating in nineteen countries and was included on the Fortune 500 list of the largest industrial companies in America. Of its estimated 350,000 beauty consultants, some 15 percent work abroad. Four subsidiaries were established in Australia, Canada, Argentina, and Germany, and the company’s worldwide wholesale sales were estimated at $609 million in 1992.

In 1993, Ash dedicated the Mary Kay Museum, which exhibits thirty years of the company’s history. In that year she received the Dallas Mother of the Year Award and the Outstanding Texas Citizen Award from the Exchange Clubs. In 1990 she won the Woman of Achievement Award from the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. She appeared on most of the prominent television talk shows and Sixty Minutes. In 1987, she received the Churchwoman of the Year Award from Religious Heritage of America. She was especially proud of the Horatio Alger Distinguished American Citizen Award she received from Norman Vincent Peale, and she served on the Horatio Alger Association Board of Directors. A major philanthropist, she supported many causes such as the Prestonwood Baptist Church and cancer research. She was the author of three books: her autobiography, a best-selling book containing her management philosophy, and another book about her life and business principles.

Significance

Despite criticism of her emphasis on a rather traditional image of women, Ash considered herself a feminist with a difference. She built her dream company by offering women opportunities for financial independence, career advancement, and personal fulfillment. On the way up, employees could gain recognition and were feted at an annual seminar. By the 1990’s, there were four separate seminars held consecutively to accommodate thirty-five thousand consultants over a two-week period each July in Dallas. Ash focused her efforts on motivating her salespeople, building up their self-confidence by recognizing their improved personal appearance and sales. In addition to providing financial incentives, Ash praised and applauded them and gave them personal notes and calls. Her consultants idolized her.

Ash created an egalitarian culture as she promised. In 1993, Mary Kay Cosmetics was listed for the second time among The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. It boasted more than one thousand male sales representatives and a line of men’s skin care products. The company existed without a glass ceiling. It refused to take away commissions from sales representatives who moved. There was no favoritism, ageism, racism, or sexism. Personal testimonies from those who had gained riches beyond their dreams come from all walks of life, including African Americans, farm wives, and the elderly. Most employees worked part-time, and they set their own work hours.

Bibliography

Ash, Mary Kay. Mary Kay. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. An autobiography that is the basis for secondary works on Ash and Mary Kay Cosmetics. The book reveals her analytical mind, which was able to work out principles for personal and corporate success in the middle of setbacks, frustrations, discrimination against women, divorce, child-rearing, and housework.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Mary Kay on People Management. New York: Warner Books, 1984. This New York Times best seller emphasizes recognition as the most powerful of all motivators. Ash underscores the importance of the Golden Rule and that businesses should be more like families and “praise people to success.”

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Miracles Happen: The Life and Timeless Principles of the Founder of Mary Kay, Inc. New York: Quill, 2003. Ash recounts her business philosophy and the principles on which she built her cosmetics empire.

Brands, H. W. Masters of Enterprise: Giants of American Business from John Jacob Astor and J. P. Morgan to Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey. New York: Free Press, 1999. Brands examines the lives and careers of Ash and twenty-four other entrepreneurs to discover the common elements to their success.

Cohen, Sherry Suib. Tender Power. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1989. The author believes that women can revolutionize corporate structure through “tender power” by creating a nurturing, cooperative business environment emphasizing peer recognition. As the president and chief operating officer of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Dick Bartlett championed the concept of tender power, and Ash is cited as an example of the concept in action.

Farnham, Alan. “Mary Kay’s Lessons in Leadership.” Fortune, September 20, 1993, 68-77. An article that focuses on the power of recognition and other motivational techniques as displayed at the company’s annual seminar in Dallas. Provides a snapshot overview of the corporate structure and describes the support role assigned to husbands whose wives work for the company. Illustrated.

Rosenfield, Paul. “The Beautiful Make-Up of Mary Kay.” Saturday Evening Post, October, 1981, 58-63, 106-107. A cheerful, upbeat review that provides a summary of Ash’s achievements and a snapshot overview of her company and its corporate structure.

Rozakis, Laurie. Mary Kay. Vero Beach, Fla.: Rourke Enterprises, 1993. An entry in the publisher’s Made in America series, this biography is directed at juvenile readers and provides a concise introduction to Ash’s life and career, highlighting her struggle to achieve.

1901-1940: 1920’s: Chanel Defines Modern Women’s Fashion; November, 1936: Carnegie Redefines Self-Help Literature; June 25, 1938: Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

1941-1970: Spring, 1947: Dior’s “New Look” Sweeps Europe and America; March 19, 1954: Laura Ashley Fashion Company Is Founded; October 18, 1968: Lauren Creates the Polo Clothing Line.

1971-2000: July 1, 1985: Home Shopping Service Is Offered on Cable Television; 1990: Avon Begins Operations in China.