On the mark.

Avon hopes to wooa new generationof customers.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Carleigh Krubiner is helping to usher in a new era for Avon Products Inc.
Since August, the University of Pennsylvania sophomore has become part of a new generation of "Avon ladies" peddling a new line called mark., featuring such products as blue liquid eyeliner and hot pink lip gloss in funky packaging aimed at her peers.
"I'm selling a lot of it in my dorm room," the 18-year-old Fairfield, Conn., resident said. As for the products, she said: "I truly love them. They're easy to throw in your bag ... I really like the lip glosses, and the packaging."
The 117-year-old Avon, which began by selling cosmetics door to door to the middle-American woman, is re-creating direct selling for the 16-to-24 age group. So far, the reception has been strong, company officials said, but the challenge is whether the strategy will be compelling enough to woo young women away from other brands in a very competitive business.
What experts think
Some marketing experts believe Avon's timing is right.
"You would have never thought of the Avon lady as cool. But for the teen community, the sense of gals marketing to other gals -- this whole tribal marketing -- is very timely at the moment," said Wendy Liebmann, president of WSL Strategic Retail, a consulting firm.
Avon has periodically offered beauty items for teens, but this is the first time it has developed a specific brand for this age group. The company is counting on its network of 550,000 active U.S. Avon representatives to recruit their teenage daughters and other young women expected to do most of the selling of the 300 products.
Krubiner found out about mark. through a cousin, who works at Avon's corporate headquarters in New York.
Deborah Fine, president of Avon Future, a new division that serves as the umbrella for mark., projects that the line will generate $100 million in sales in 2004, the first full year of the launch. The new products are slated to be rolled out overseas in late 2004.
Avon had overall sales of $6.23 billion last year, compared with $6 billion in the previous year.
The company aims to take teenage business away from mass merchandisers, department store chains and smaller retailers. The big chains in particular have been pursuing the teen customer with trendier beauty items -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc., for example, has brought out a Mary-Kate and Ashley cosmetics line, named after the teenage TV celebrity Olsen twins.
'Portable retail'
While Avon's representatives sell cosmetics at their home or where they work, mark. representatives are selling through more informal settings: slumber parties, sororities and campus events.
"This is a portable retail environment that fits seamlessly into the way young women live and shop today," Fine said.
However, selling is not limited to the mark. representative; current Avon representatives can also sign up to sell the new line.