Avon’s door-to-door business began with a switch from books to fragrance samples, then grew into a vast network of independent representatives selling through personal relationships and campaign brochures. That model later contracted as the company faced weaker revenue, recruitment competition and operational pressures. But “Avon went bankrupt” is not the same as “Avon disappeared”: the 2024 U.S. Chapter 11 case involved a particular holding company, not every Avon business worldwide.
How a door-to-door book seller turned to perfume
Avon traces its origins to 1886, when David H. McConnell founded the California Perfume Company. In the company’s account, McConnell was selling books door to door and offering perfume samples as a gift; customers became more interested in the samples than the books. He began mixing fragrances and recruited women to sell them. Avon identifies Mrs. P.F.E. Albee as its first representative. This origin story comes from the company’s own retrospective history, rather than independent corroboration. Avon South Africa’s history and Avon Worldwide’s timeline provide its account.
The business expanded beyond the United States: Avon’s timeline dates its first international operations, in Montreal, to 1914. The Avon name and logo appeared on a cosmetics line in 1929; the company adopted Avon as its name in 1939. In 1978, Avon reported one million representatives and sales totaling more than US$2 billion. The company’s timeline does not say whether that sales figure is adjusted for inflation, so it is best understood as a historical company-reported milestone, not a comparison with current revenue.
How Avon’s original side hustle worked
Representatives were independent contractors, not conventional store employees. They bought products at a discount from the prices printed in brochures and resold them to customers. Their earnings depended on selling products; the basic model was not simply being paid to knock on doors. A 2009 SEC filing described the representative and brochure together as the “store.” Avon’s 2009 filing explains the arrangement.
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Brochures turned a network into a storefront
Brochures gave customers a portable way to browse products and prices, while representatives supplied personal contact, product recommendations and order-taking. In the United States, campaigns generally changed every two weeks, according to the 2009 filing; many other markets used two-to-four-week cycles. That rhythm made the business more organized than informal doorstep selling: customers could look through a consistent catalogue, place an order with a representative, and receive products after fulfillment.
Orders and delivery extended beyond the doorstep
Representatives could submit orders by mail, internet, telephone or fax, and products were shipped from distribution centers. The representative remained the customer-facing connection, but ordering and fulfillment depended on a wider company operation. The combination of personal selling, recurring brochures and centralized delivery helped Avon reach customers without relying on a conventional retail storefront.
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How large the representative network became
Avon’s reported representative counts show the scale of the model, but they are dated snapshots rather than a precise, like-for-like trend series. The 2009 SEC filing reported approximately 6.2 million active independent representatives. Avon’s 2022 filing reported approximately four million average active representatives for that year; it calculated the average using representatives who ordered during campaigns, aggregated and divided by the number of campaigns. Because the disclosures use different wording and definitions, the two figures should not be used to calculate an exact percentage decline.
The later filing shows pressure within the business: Avon Products, Inc. reported adjusted revenue down 12% year over year on a constant-dollar basis in 2022, and active representatives down 23%. The company attributed the revenue decrease in part to the lower representative count, while also citing other factors, including the sale of Avon Luxembourg and the war between Ukraine and Russia. These are company-defined measures and explanations, not industry-wide statistics. Avon Products, Inc.’s 2022 Form 10-K provides the figures and definitions.
Why the classic model came under pressure
The representative-and-brochure system relied on both a large sales network and the company’s ability to supply that network. Over time, retail and digital channels changed how customers discovered and bought beauty products. The available filings document Avon’s use of internet ordering alongside traditional channels, but do not provide enough market-by-market detail to measure how each newer channel affected its business. It is safer to describe a changing sales environment than to attribute Avon’s decline to one channel shift alone.
In its 2025 bankruptcy declaration, the debtors described a combination of declining revenue and macroeconomic or operational challenges, stronger competition to recruit representatives, manufacturing and supply-chain issues, and legacy liabilities in the United States. Those are the debtors’ account of the circumstances surrounding the case; they are not a court finding that each factor independently caused Avon’s decline. The February 2025 declaration sets out that account.
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The legal filings also discuss personal-injury claims alleging disease from exposure to talc-containing cosmetic products. The fact that those claims formed part of the bankruptcy context does not establish that every allegation was proven. The distinction matters: financial and legal pressure can be described without presenting allegations as findings. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court’s August 21, 2025 confirmation opinion discusses the cases and the later sale of foreign operations to Natura.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What Avon’s 2024 Chapter 11 filing did—and did not—mean
On August 12, 2024, Avon Products, Inc. (API) announced a voluntary Chapter 11 filing to address debt and legacy talc liabilities. API described itself as a U.S.-based, non-operating holding company. It said API had not sold products in the United States since the 2016 divestiture of its North American business, and that international operating businesses were not included in the filing and continued operating at that time. Those distinctions are central: API was not the same entity as every company selling Avon products around the world. API’s August 2024 announcement states the company’s position at the time.
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The announcement also distinguished The Avon Company, the U.S. brand business then owned by LG Household & Health Care, from API, saying The Avon Company was not part of the proceedings. Later, the 2025 court opinion described the sale of foreign operations to Natura during the bankruptcy cases and addressed confirmation of a reorganization plan. So the accurate account is neither that “Avon” as a single global company went bankrupt nor that the filing had no bearing on international operations: the Chapter 11 debtors were specific entities, and foreign operations were later sold during the cases.
Is Avon still in business?
The 2024 case did not mean all Avon-branded operations worldwide ceased. The international businesses were outside API’s filing at its outset, and foreign operations were subsequently sold to Natura during the cases. However, continuation is not the same as a return to the old scale or an uncomplicated recovery. Natura’s 2024 annual report says Avon International’s relationship-selling performance fell in 2024, despite improvement in the second half. Natura &Co’s 2024 annual report describes that performance.
Avon’s story is therefore a rise and contraction of a particular selling model, not a clean global ending. Its representatives and brochures once created a remarkably broad distributed storefront; its U.S. corporate and legal structure later split across separate entities, and the representative model faced financial and operational strain. Current ownership, product availability and local selling arrangements depend on the country and should be checked with the relevant local Avon business rather than inferred from the U.S. bankruptcy headline.
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