Avon, the cosmetics and physique care model based in 1886, has filed for chapter 11 chapter in Delaware in an try to settle a whole lot of talc-related lawsuits. However do not go mourning its iconic merchandise or door-to-door gross sales strategy simply but; this submitting doesn’t impression the United States-based enterprise of the Avon model.
Avon Merchandise, Inc., the holding firm of Avon’s non-US operations, has had cashflow bother for greater than a decade stemming from lawsuits alleging that its merchandise containing talc, a naturally occurring mineral typically utilized in beauty merchandise corresponding to powders and blush, triggered most cancers. As noted by The Wall Street Journal, Avon Merchandise, Inc. acquired its first talc-related lawsuit in 2010 and is now dealing with almost 400 comparable lawsuits. WSJ stories that the model has spent over $225 million to defend itself from mentioned lawsuits; its total money owed tally as much as $1.29 billion. In a single 2022 lawsuit trial, a jury “discovered Avon accountable for $36 million in compensatory damages and roughly $10 million in punitive damages,” the publication stories. In one other verdict from July 2024, plaintiffs “had been awarded a complete of $24.5 million in damages.”
Nevertheless, the Avon model in the USA is separate from these filings; the US-based model is owned by LG Family & Well being Care Ltd. and isn’t a part of the chapter 11 chapter submitting, regardless of the submitting being made within the US. In 2020, Avon Products, Inc. was acquired by the Brazil-based firm Natura&Co. In line with WSJ, Natura has “agreed to supply as much as $43 million in proposed financing in the course of the chapter.”
The Avon Firm, because the US-based firm is understood, shared in a press release that it’s “an unbiased entity with no affiliation to Avon Merchandise Inc., and subsequently, stays unaffected by the latest developments regarding API. The Avon Firm assures its Representatives and prospects that its operations, product choices, and enterprise methods stay in place.”
Avon was based in 1886 by David H. McConnell, who started promoting fragrances door to door. The tactic labored and the corporate turned massively profitable; it is likely one of the best-known direct gross sales firms alongside Tupperware and Mary Kay. Its “Ding dong! Avon calling!” commercials, beloved merchandise like Pores and skin So Mushy, and glamorous, uniquely formed fragrance bottles had been all iconic hallmarks of the Avon model, as had been the “Avon Women” themselves. (In 2020, they launched a $1,200 perfume in a bejeweled bottle formed like a peacock.) Avon continues to be bought in the USA, each on-line and through its direct gross sales reps.
