Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay

Former Glamour editor Gavenas (Color Stories) offers a brilliant biography of Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics and “the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange.” Born to “hardworking people” in rural Texas in 1918, Ash married and became a mother at 16, and began working in direct sales not long after. Her ambition increased after she witnessed a top seller win an alligator handbag at a conference. When she founded Mary Kay Cosmetics in 1963, her own yearning for such prizes, as well as her experience selling tchotchkes door-to-door, influenced her approach, which standardized and expanded the direct sales industry’s tiered rewards structure (including the famous pink Cadillacs for the company’s top sellers). Gavenas also explores Ash’s personal life, including her multiple marriages (more than have previously been reported) and her “campy” persona, with her “big, white blond wigs,” ever-present poodle companion, and dramatic entrances (she once arrived at a seminar in “a horse-drawn carriage as thousands belted... ‘I’ve Got That Mary Kay Enthusiasm’ ”). Yet the author also takes seriously the groundbreaking nature of Ash’s endeavor. Frustrated by the lack of upward mobility for women, Ash continually added “echelon after echelon, so that there was always some higher step,” and in the process turned “shift workers and stay-at-home moms into millionaires.” Her uniquely encouraging leadership style treated women “as though they were burning with ambition,” Gavenas writes. “Many found that they were.” It’s a remarkable depiction of a transformational businesswoman. (Apr.)