Avon Products, Inc, ví dụ, là người bán trực tiếp lớn nhất của sản phẩm làm đẹp trên thế giới: 98% doanh thu của nó đến từ việc bán son môi, nước hoa, và bột nổi tiếng "phụ nữ Avon" trực tiếp cho phụ nữ. Hôm nay, tuy nhiên, mô hình kinh doanh đã thành công kể từ năm 1886 ở giữa trang điểm riêng của mình. | Understanding the New Economy 17 Avon Products Inc. for example is the largest direct seller of beauty products in the world 98 percent of its revenue comes from the sale of lipsticks perfumes and powders by the famous Avon ladies directly to women. Today however that business model which has been successful since 1886 is in the midst of its own makeover. The Avon Lady Goes Online When she was named Avon s CEO in 1999 Andrea Jung faced a classic reinvention dilemma. In the United States Avon s growth was flat and niche players were nibbling away its market share. Sephora the French-based firm whose huge stores selling an enormous array of cosmetics and fragrances had successfully imported the categorykiller concept into beauty retailing had launched an invasion of the . market. Furthermore given that three-quarters of American women now work outside the home Avon s door-to-door sales model was in danger of becoming obsolete. Jung s dilemma was How could Avon develop new sales channels without alienating its famous sales representatives the Avon ladies and undermining its existing sources of revenue But it was the advent of the Internet and the development of e-tailing that posed the most direct challenge ever to Avon s traditional direct model. After all the Internet made possible a variety of direct-to-consumer sales interactions that were even more flexible customized and immediate than those practiced by the Avon ladies. For example the Internet is available 24 hours a day and can be accessed in the evening by a busy homemaker or during a coffee break by a deskbound female executive. As other beauty-products companies established footholds on the World Wide Web it was increasingly obvious that Avon couldn t afford to ignore this new marketplace. Understandably the Avon ladies felt threatened by the Internet fearing that an Avon e-strategy could hurt their livelihoods. In 1997 the company had launched a bare-bones web site that offered only a limited number of
