Andrea Jung Quotes

When a woman earns a dollar, the payback is higher. She’ll invest in her children, in their education, health care, and basic needs. The impact of a woman’s role in the economy benefits society at large.

Since I’m a mother and a wife, I have to have passion or the frustration would win out. But I love managing people. The product is second to managing the people. And marketing to consumers is so challenging because it is evolving constantly.

No one in my family had a retail or marketing background. They were professionals. They didn’t understand just what I was doing by going into retailing. After I started, though, it got into my blood. I knew this was what I wanted.

Women like myself, CEOs, can pave the way for more women to get to the top.

I think it’s critical that you feel you’re working for a person who is committed to advancing your career.

Avon invented the concept of direct marketing and direct selling beauty. And that’s still very valid to us. We’ll have a firm that will be around for another 114 years as strongly as it was the first 114.

Women like to use products that other women say work. The Internet will be a big opportunity, but you cant smell a fragrance there yet.

I think the economic empowerment of women that has been growing over the past decade is at the ‘inflection point’ with this global recession. Women are, we believe, the solution for their families in their ability to go out and increase household income.

The company was actually founded on creating earnings opportunities for women, even before it went into skincare, lipstick, and fragrance. The founding Avon principle, before women could vote and when basically only men were working, was to allow women to get out of their homes and to create an entrepreneurship opportunity for them.

China is going to be one of Avon’s largest market opportunities. It has a large geographic expanse, with hundreds of thousands of women in small villages really striving to make an earnings opportunity for themselves.

There are pros and cons of experience. A con is that you can’t look at the business with a fresh pair of eyes and as objectively as if you were a new CEO. Fire yourself on a Friday night and come in on Monday morning as if a search firm put you there as a turn-around leader. Can you be objective and make the bold change?

I became CEO at the beginning of the hit on old economy stocks. When something like that occurs in your first six months as a CEO of a more traditional branded firm, it makes for a fast learning curve.