Avon lady still calling, but through e-mail

The Avon lady is still calling, but she's not going door to door. She's e-mailing.

Peddling beauty products for the famous brand has moved to the Internet, where technology is helping enhance personal relationships with women.

"It's (Avon) really changed dramatically," Len Edwards, president and general manager of Avon.com, said Saturday at the Avon National Representatives Convention here. "We're moving into the next generation."

Avon has been around 114 years and has evolved with the times. In the 1950s, when many women didn't work outside the home, the catchphrase "Avon calling" became synonymous with the women who went door to door offering skin care solutions from a suitcase.

These days business - $5.2 billion in sales last year - is done at the workplace, by phone, even in shopping mall kiosks. The website Avon.com was launched in 1997, offering select beauty products, but the company didn't publicize it much since it didn't want to take business away from its Avon ladies.

Now the Avon lady is going e-mail box to e-mail box.

The company says many of the 2.8 million Avon sales representatives worldwide don't have time to knock on doors, and many women aren't home during the day anyway. So, why not head into cyberspace?

"We're able to hit an untapped market," said Jennifer Iino, Avon spokeswoman.

Some 14,000 sales representatives attending the annual conference got a crash course Saturday in e-commerce and how to create personalized websites.

"I think it's terrific," said Brenda Fletcher, an Avon saleswoman from Baltimore who was signing up for the new service at the convention. "There's never enough time. I can get customers better this way."

Customers will soon be able to go to www.Avon.com on the Internet and be directed to a sales representative in their area. They can place orders anytime and have the products shipped directly to them.

The sales representatives can send personal greetings to each customer and e-mail any information about special discounts or status of an order.

The new service will be online by September, but customers will need a catalog to look up item numbers. Avon hopes that by the end of the year, the catalogs will be online.

But what about that one-on-one attention women have depended on from their Avon ladies for years?

Vicki Banchak-Crowell, who is heading the e-representative program for Avon, said the Internet won't replace that relationship, just enhance it.

"It allows the representatives to be more accessible to her customer," she said. "For Avon representatives, life just got a whole lot easier."

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