1. One Woman Can™ Be
Inspiring, Uplifting,
Compassionate
Written by: Farkhanda Kiran
Submitted to : Ms Asma
Department : Computer Science
Semester: 7th
Dated: June 18,2014
A timeline of the Greatest American
Woman Entrepreneur Mary Kay
Ash

2. Mary Kay Ash
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Mary Kay Ash - Founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics Inc.
"Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck
that says 'Make Me Feel Important.' Not only will you succeed in business, you
will succeed in life."-Mary Kay Ash
Innovative, charismatic and contagiously optimistic, perhaps no woman has
played a more important role in the advancement of women entrepreneurs
than Mary Kay Ash. After experiencing firsthand the "glass ceiling" that kept
many women from reaching top positions in the male-dominated corporate
world, Ash envisioned a dream company where working mothers could
determine their own levels of advancement and compensation, be their own
bosses, and set work schedules that would still leave time for their children.
The result of this vision was Mary Kay Cosmetics, a unique multilevel, direct-
sales cosmetic firm that would provide hundreds of thousands of women with
the opportunities Ash herself had been denied.
Early Life
Mary Kay Wagner Ash believed that "a
lady never reveals her age," and
therefore the exact year of her birth is
unknown. It is estimated to be 1916. She
was born to Edward and Lula Wagner in
Hot Wells, Texas, the youngest of four

3. Mary Kay Ash
3
children. Her mother, who had studied to be a
nurse, worked long hours managing a restaurant.
When Mary Kay was two or three, her father was
ill with tuberculosis (an infection of the lungs). As
a result, it was her responsibility to clean, cook,
and care for her father while her mother was at
work. She excelled in school, but her family could
not afford to send her to college. She married Ben Rogers at age seventeen and
eventually had three children.
Working Mother
When asked to name her greatest achievement,
Mary Kay Ash proudly replies, "I think the biggest
legacy we are going to leave is a whole community
of children who believe they can do anything in this
world because they watched their mamas do it.”
Like many business pioneers, Ash stumbled upon
her entrepreneurial talents quite by accident. It happened in the latter half of
the 1930s, when a door-to-door encyclopedia saleswoman struck a deal with
Ash: If Ash could sell 10 sets of encyclopedias, the saleswoman would give her
a set free of charge. Ash agreed and sold 10 sets in just a day and a half. This
was a rather remarkable feat, considering 10 sets was the three-month quota
for the company's most accomplished salespeople.

4. Mary Kay Ash
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Believing she'd found her forte, Ash continued peddling encyclopedias part
time and was soon earning enough money to help support her young family.
Unfortunately, she also earned the wrath of many of her friends who accused
her of selling them a product they didn't really need. Taking her customers'
disdain to heart, Ash searched for a more useful product to sell. She turned to
Stanley Home Products, a direct-sales company offering housewares and
cleaning supplies.
Shortly after joining the company, Ash attended a convention at which
Stanley's most successful saleswoman was crowned "Queen of Sales." Ever the
competitor, Ash vowed that the next
year she would be queen. To achieve
her goal, she persuaded the reigning
queen to hold a demonstration party,
during which Ash transcribed her
presentation word for word. True to
her vow, the very next year Ash did
indeed win the title.
A major turning point in Ash's life came when her husband returned home
from World War II and ran off with another woman. With three children to
support, Ash was forced to make Stanley Home Products her full-time career.
But even though she quickly became a top sales producer, she watched in
frustration as men who had less talent and knowledge were promoted ahead
of her.
Fed up with being passed over, Ash joined the direct-sales firm World Gift Co.
in 1952. Within 10 years, she had extended World Gift's distribution into 43

5. Mary Kay Ash
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states and earned a position on the company's board of directors. But her
suggestions were often dismissed by male members of the board with the
comment, "Oh, Mary Kay, you're thinking just like woman"-a remark that never
failed to enrage her. She finally quit in 1962, after a man she had trained was
named her supervisor and given twice her salary.
Starts Her Own Company
Deciding to take an early retirement, Ash set out to write a guide to help other
women avoid the pitfalls she'd faced in the male-dominated corporate world.
She composed two lists. The first outlined her negative experiences. The
second detailed the qualities she thought would constitute an ideal business-a
"dream company" for working women with families that would 1) treat
everyone equally, 2) base promotions on merit and 3) choose products based
on their sales performance and marketability, rather than profitability.
Looking over the second list, Ash realized she'd created a workable direct-
sales company and thought, "Why am I theorizing about a dream company?
Why don't I just start one?" And that's exactly what she did.
First she needed to find a product. It had to be something women could
believe in, that they could recommend with all their hearts, and, most
important, a product that could be used up and re-ordered over and over. But
where would she find such a product? Ironically, it was already sitting atop
her bedroom dresser.
For nearly 10 years, Ash had been buying a skin softener from the daughter of
a local hide tanner who had concocted the cream from tanning solutions. With

6. Mary Kay Ash
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her $5,000 life savings, Ash bought the recipe for the skin softener, furnished a
small storefront in Dallas, and hired a local manufacturer to create a line of
skin-care products based on the hide tanner's formula.
While her second husband dealt with the legal and financial matters, Ash
recruited a sales force of nine of her friends. But one month before the
company was scheduled to open, disaster struck. Ash's husband died of a
heart attack. Convinced that she could not succeed without her husband's
help, Ash's lawyer and accountant urged her to abandon her plans. But like
most great entrepreneurs, Ash, who was then in her mid-40s, ignored the
advice of "the experts," and Mary Kay Cosmetics opened its doors September
13, 1963.
From its inception, it was unique among direct-sales businesses. Instead of
using high-pressure sales pitches, Ash instructed her salespeople (whom she
christened "consultants") to show women how they could use Mary Kay
products to improve their
appearance. Once women saw the
results, the products would sell
themselves. It was a technique Ash
claims no company had ever tried
before.
Within three and a half months, sales
of Mary Kay products totaled
$34,000, and by the end of the first year, that figure had risen to an amazing
$198,000. A year later, sales had quadrupled to $800,000.

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Mary Kay once said that success came fast because she did not have any time
to waste. She was already forty-five years old when she started the company.
She said a woman needs money fast as she gets older.
Now Mary Kay Cosmetics is one of the largest direct sellers of skin care
products in the world. It develops and tests skin care and beauty products for
the face, body, hair and nails -- many more than it started selling in nineteen
sixty-three. Today, Mary Kay Cosmetics has sales of more than two billion
dollars a year. It has more than one million sales representatives in more than
thirty countries around the world. You can find Mary Kay products and sales
representatives in Argentina, India, the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, and
China, to name a few.

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Motivating Employees
Every year since nineteen sixty-five, Mary Kay Cosmetics has held a yearly
conference in Dallas for its sales representatives. The first one took place in
one large room. Mary Kay cooked food for two hundred people and served it
on paper plates.
As the company grew, so did the conference. Now, more than thirty-five
thousand sales representatives and company officials pay to attend education
meetings at the yearly conference. A special event at the three-day conference
is Awards Night. That is when
prizes are given to those
representatives with the most
sales for the year. Awards Night
also includes a show in which
famous singers and dancers
perform.
The Awards Night winners receive special paid
holidays, jewels, furs, and pink Cadillac
automobiles. In Germany, winners receive a
pink Mercedes Benz, and in Taiwan they are
given a pink Toyota. By nineteen ninety-four,
seven thousand cars had been given to sales
representatives. The cars are pink because

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Mary Kay products come in pink containers. Mary Kay liked that color.
Mary Kay believed that recognizing good work is the best way to increase a
company's sales. She said her company tried to have competitions in which
everyone has a chance to win. She did not want to organize the kind of
competition where someone has to hurt another person in order to win.
So the Mary Kay competitions are designed around the idea that it is best to
compete with yourself. That means every individual is trying to do better
then she did last week or last year.
Competition winners are rewarded well. For
example, winners of one of the competitions get a
gold pin called the Ladder of Success. Sales
representatives earn a pin by selling a large
number of products. Then they earn jewels for the
pin as they increase their sales. Each jewel is
placed higher on the ladder than the others. The
pin of a top sales representative is covered with
diamonds.
A Humanitarian
Mary Kay's third husband, Mel Ash, died of cancer in nineteen eighty. She
wanted to help find a cure for the disease. At first, she helped organizations

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raise money for research. Later, she started the Mary Kay Ash Charitable
Foundation, a non-profit group that provides money to support research
about cancers affecting women. In two
thousand one, the company and foundation
expanded their goals in an effort to help stop
violence against women.
Mary Kay Ash’s Honors
Countless business leaders, authors,
politicians and members of academia have
recognized the pure brilliance and
determination of Mary Kay Ash. She received
numerous prestigious awards during her
lifetime and many more following her death
on Nov. 22, 2001.
Some of her honors include:
 “100 Greatest Women of 100 Years” by the YWCA of Metropolitan Dallas
(2008)
 A&E Television produced “Mary Kay” which aired on the Biography
Channel (2006)

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 PBS and the Wharton School of Business’s “25 Most Influential Business
Leaders of the Last 25 Years” (2004)
 Baylor University’s “Greatest Female Entrepreneur in American
History” (2003)
 “Most Outstanding Woman in Business in the 20th Century.” Lifetime
Television (1999)
 National Business Hall of Fame, Fortune (1996)
 Pathfinder Award, National Association of Women Business Owners
(1995)
 One of “America’s 25 Most Influential Women,” The World Almanac and
Book of Facts (1985)
 Horatio Alger Distinguished American Citizen Award (1978)
Through the years, Mary Kay Ash received many business awards. She was
named one of America's twenty-five most influential women in nineteen
eighty-five. She became a member of the National Business Hall of Fame in
nineteen ninety-six.
Later Years
Mary Kay Ash wrote three books. The first book, "Mary Kay," told the story of
her life. More than one million copies in several languages have been sold.
She described her business ideas in the book "Mary Kay on People
Management." Her third book was released in nineteen ninety-five. It is
called "Mary Kay--You Can Have It All." The money earned from its sales
went to help fight cancer.

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Final Days
Mary Kay Ash's health declined after she suffered a stroke in 1996. She died at
her Dallas home on November 22, 2001. She was a tough businessperson with
a thorough knowledge of marketing and sales. Through her belief in women's
abilities and her willingness to give them a chance, she made the dream of a
successful career a reality for hundreds of thousands of women worldwide.
An Inspiration
Mary Kay told the women who worked for
her that “To be successful in life a person
should put God first, family second and work
third”. She said women must discover how
to be good wives and mothers while at the
same time learning how to succeed in work.
Business experts say she was an important
business leader who cared about people.
Mary Kay sales representatives say she
developed a way for women to earn money and still spend time with their
families.
One example is Valerie Yokie. She started selling Mary Kay products twenty
years ago. She was an official at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.,
but left her job to stay home with her two small
Mary Kay Ash The Woman

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children. She became interested in the
Mary Kay Cosmetics company because it
was a way to get started in a business for
a small amount of money. She paid less
than one hundred dollars for her
supplies.
After one year and one half, Mrs. Yokie
became a director of the company and started helping other women become
successful Mary Kay representatives. Soon after this, her husband lost his job.
Then he developed cancer. Valerie Yokie
has supported her family for twenty
years through Mary Kay Cosmetics. She is an extremely successful
businesswoman. She has won many prizes in Mary Kay competitions, and
receives a new pink Cadillac every two years.
Valerie Yokie's story is similar to those of other Mary Kay representatives.
They agree that Mary Kay Ash changed the business world. They say she
opened a door for women by providing them with a way to earn money that
balances work and family.
Just three simple words – One Woman Can™ – capture the enormous impact
Mary Kay has had on the lives of women worldwide. And those same three
words also represent the encouragement and empowerment that every
woman can experience through Mary Kay. One Woman Can™ really do
anything she dreams possible.
Valerie Yokie

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"We must have a theme, a goal,
a purpose in our lives.
If you don't know where you're aiming,
you don't have a goal. My goal is to live my life in such a way that when I die, someone can
say, she cared." Mary Kay Ash