Avon calls back to the door of the Spanish

Yolanda Fernández hizo un pedido a Avon hace un año. Ofrecían muestras gratuitas en una página de Facebook. “Introduje mis datos y sin saberlo me había dado de alta como distribuidora. En ese momento tenía 46 años, no encontraba trabajo, pese a llevar toda la vida como dependienta. He sido comercial de tejidos, de productos de limpieza, hasta de la Thermomix”. El lote le encantó. “Era para mi consumo, me pareció superimportante que la empresa no testara en animales. Me gustó mucho la calidad”. Siguió haciendo encargos de entre 200 y 300 euros para vendérselos a personas cercanas de su pueblo, Alegría de Oria (1.700 habitantes), en Guipúzcoa. Ha extendido su labor comercial a toda la comarca: hace directos en Facebook, tiene su propio canal de Youtube y ha llegado a clientas en Asturias. “Hay meses en que me gano medio sueldo, pero ahora veo el momento de dedicar más tiempo para llegar a ingresar entre 1.000 y 1.500 euros al mes a final de año”. Como Yolanda hay 35.000 vendedoras registradas en Avon, la mítica marca de cosméticos norteamericana que desembarcó en España en 1965 con la distribución puerta a puerta y que vive horas bajas.

With decline sales, he entered 5.571 million dollars (4.927 million euros) in 2018 and has been in lustro lustro for four years.In Europe, with a production center in Poland that serves the entire continent, its sales are around 1.800 million.The Spanish subsidiary, which also exports cosmetics to Portugal or Morocco, billed 107 million euros in 2017 and lost 3.6 (it does not offer figures of 2018).

To counteract the trend, the group has launched a cost reduction plan with the aim of lowering global expenses by 400 million dollars from here to 2021 through efficiencies in manufacturing and supply.Template cuts have joined the strategy baptized as Open UP: last January 2019 announced that their workforce would reduce their workforce in the world by 18%, something that in Spain is neither confirmed or denied.“We are in a stage of adjustments, of transformation, we want to place the company in the top 10 of the group.Now we are in the Top 20, ”says Víctor Barrail, his new person in charge.“The company needs to update its products, something you are doing.We are adopting new platforms and improving support for distributors.We have to attract new generations ".

Like so many businesses, they do not want to be dragged by the digital current, but they try to adapt to the new modes of consumption.The direct sale itself is changing, and now WhatsApp replaces on home visits, and the videos on YouTube, to the makeup sessions with clients."We are seeing that slow transition that makes technology in the middle," says Barrail.

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But there are things that do not change.The brand's vendors are still autonomous who buy with discount (starts at 15% and can reach 42%) AVON products to distribute them normally among people from their city and have extra income.The most applied form to other sellers and add more commissions for it.The "Avon Academy", an interactive web platform, offers marketing and leadership training.The company does not sell directly to third parties so as not to compete with its associates (practical totality remain women) nor does it have physical stores, except one in the Canary Islands.“There are seniors who create their small office.We have cases of girls who start strong and row quickly to have 35% or 42% discount.With that, their income becomes much more interesting, ”says the director, who insists that from the matrix they work to offer“ more interesting discounts ”to their commercials.They also facilitate brochures with recommended sales prices and offer them postpone.

"We have cosmetics, fragrances, a new line of skin care, home products, bathroom", and so on a list of 4.000 references.Every day a truck from Poland supplies the Distribution Center of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid) with new merchandise.“We control the entire stock, we can quickly react to demand,” explains María Iglesias, responsible for the distribution.The ship is able to dispatch 1.5 million boxes a year (prepare about 5.000 a day) with 43 million products."We seek to be more efficient to concentrate on those products that have the most margin," explains the director.For example, the Bubble Bath, a gel, leads a lifetime in Avon, and other cosmetics, on the other hand, are conceived with short runs.They also have specific lines, according to age segments, both for men and women, and have incorporated into their textile catalog, fundamentally bags.Its latest innovation is in skin care products with large concentrations of vitamin C.

In Avon they know that new generations do not expect and have as much patience as their predecessors."Okay, you have to respect it," says Barrail.His challenge is capital: compete with the growing offer of cosmetics in the online distribution era.A good sign is that the number of vendors has grown in recent months, and markets such as Argentina, Mexico, Brazil or Turkey recover.Do not fear the economic slowdown."These are times where direct sale finds opportunities".Especially now, when they find a trend in advanced countries to the disappearance of stores.