Avon’s New Boss: Sherilyn S. McCoy

Avon has had some strings of bad luck lately. After having a great run for a good number of years the company has experienced declining sales.  It also faces embarrassing charges of bribery allegations in China and perhaps other parts of the world.  Another company has also been trying to buy it.
Sheri McCoy has been appointed as Avon’s CEO and will definitely have a lot of things to work on. She isn’t exactly a greenhorn. Sheri was a vice chairman at Johnson & Johnson.

Johnson & Johnson is a $65 billion a year healthcare company while Avon is an $11 billion dollar a year beauty company. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind about Sheri’s ability to run this size of a company.  While at Johnson & Johnson she handled a business unit which was into beauty products. 

Sheri also knows how to work under tremendous pressure managing to turnaround the pharmaceutical business of Johnson & Johnson.  She has also done acquisition of an enterprise that would later help improve the company’s bottom line.

Despite her experience including having a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Princeton and an MBA from Rutgers, some are concerned that she has not handled a company with a direct sales force like Avon.  There are 6.4 million of them worldwide.  Others point out though that Johnson & Johnson also has a sales force but knocks on doctor’s doors and not house-to-house.  Some view this concern as overblown.

This executive who is known to be caring yet can be tough does have one advantage; she is a woman and in this business where women are the main customer it just may spell the difference.

Not Quite Her Plan

Andrea Jung decided to take a training manager job at Bloomingdale. She believed the experience would help her when she would eventually take up law. As it turned out she found her talent in marketing. After some company changes she became an executive vice president at Neiman Marcus.  Seeking new challenges she joined Avon Products, Inc. in 1993 as a consultant.

The company was not doing well at the time and Avon’s top executive liked what Jung was doing and in 1994 hired her as president of product marketing group in the U.S.   While keeping traditional brands she also introduced new ones which proved successful.  She was also instrumental in improving the marketing image of Avon. 

To make a long story short, in 1999, she became the first female CEO of Avon in its long 116 year history. She then basically turned around what seemed like an old struggling company and even gave it a more global presence. A good part of the company’s revenue now comes from abroad and it has about 6.5 million sales representatives all over the world.

Recently, it was announced that after 12 years as CEO, the company is now searching for her replacement. It’s said that this is based on her recommendation to give the company new focus. She will stay as chairman for the next two years and help with the CEO search as well as assist with the strategic vision of the company. The company’s stock had dropped 45% and there have been charges that Avon was involved in bribing foreign officials.

Her leaving is also not quite as she planned. Nevertheless she has made her mark at Avon, and in the corporate world.