Avon, the cosmetics and physique care model based in 1886, has filed for chapter 11 chapter in Delaware in an try to settle lots of of talc-related lawsuits. However do not go mourning its iconic merchandise or door-to-door gross sales method simply but; this submitting doesn’t influence the United States-based enterprise of the Avon model.
Avon Merchandise, Inc., the holding firm of Avon’s non-US operations, has had cashflow hassle for greater than a decade stemming from lawsuits alleging that its merchandise containing talc, a naturally occurring mineral usually utilized in beauty merchandise reminiscent of powders and blush, precipitated most cancers. As famous by The Wall Road Journal, Avon Merchandise, Inc. obtained its first talc-related lawsuit in 2010 and is now dealing with practically 400 comparable lawsuits. WSJ stories that the model has spent over $225 million to defend itself from stated 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 “have been awarded a complete of $24.5 million in damages.”
Nonetheless, 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 Merchandise, Inc. was acquired by the Brazil-based firm Natura&Co. Based on WSJ, Natura has “agreed to offer as much as $43 million in proposed financing through the chapter.”
The Avon Firm, because the US-based firm is understood, shared in a press launch that it’s “an impartial entity with no affiliation to Avon Merchandise Inc., and subsequently, stays unaffected by the current developments regarding API. The Avon Firm assures its Representatives and clients 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 strategy labored and the corporate grew to become massively profitable; it is without doubt 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 Gentle, and glamorous, uniquely formed fragrance bottles have been all iconic hallmarks of the Avon model, as have been the “Avon Women” themselves. (In 2020, they launched a $1,200 fragrance in a bejeweled bottle formed like a peacock.) Avon remains to be offered in the USA, each on-line and by way of its direct gross sales reps.