Success Quote by Andrea Jung

Avon gets cast here as both origin story and inevitability: a company that didn’t just sell lipstick, but supposedly invented the very channel through which millions of women learned to buy it. Andrea Jung’s phrasing is doing corporate mythmaking with a purpose. “Direct marketing” isn’t just a business model in this sentence; it’s a moral credential. If you invented it, you’re not merely participating in a trend you’re chasing to survive - you’re entitled to it.

The repetition of “direct” is a quiet flex, but also a defensive move. In the era when Jung was steering Avon, “direct selling” was being squeezed from both sides: prestige brands building glossy retail empires, and e-commerce promising frictionless convenience without a human intermediary. Declaring the model “still very valid to us” reads like reassurance aimed as much at investors and reps as at consumers: trust the structure, even if the culture has shifted.

The real subtext is in the time math: “another 114 years as strongly as it was the first 114.” That’s not forecast; it’s aspiration dressed as certainty. By anchoring the future to a symmetrical past, Jung borrows the authority of longevity to paper over volatility. It’s a classic CEO move: convert endurance into destiny, and recast adaptation as fidelity - not changing who you are, but returning to what you “invented.”