In 1935, Mary Kay got married for the first time. Ben Rogers, Mary Kay’s first husband, died in World War II.

M: Good morning. Today we have invited Mrs. Dickinson, the writer of several biographies, to talk about one particular woman. Mrs. Dickinson, we’ll talk about one of the most successful American business-women, Mary Kay. First, can you briefly tell us who she is?
W: Yes, Mary Kay started a company in 1963 with a 500 dollar investment. Today, Mary Kay Cosmetics is an international company worth thousands of millions of dollars. I am sure some of your family members use her products.
M: Yes, they do. When was Mary Kay born?
W: She was born in the state of Texas in 1918, and married Ben Rogers when she was 17. They had three children before he left home to serve in World War Two. When he returned, their marriage ended. Mary Kay looked for a job so she could support her children.
M: Life was pretty tough for her, then.
W: Yes. Mary Kay began selling different kinds of products. At first, she sold books. Later, she visited peoples’ homes to show how home care products such as cleaning fluids and equipment helped ease housework. She was doing well at this job and her supervisors praised her work. But they never increased her earnings. She left the company after a man she trained was given a more important job than she had. She left the home care product company angrily.
M: I suppose that was a very important point in her career life.
W: Yes. Mary Kay said later that she learned from this experience. It taught her that men did not believe that a woman could succeed in business. She decided to prove them wrong. So she bought the rights to Mr. Heath’s skin care products and started her own company. She paid 500 dollars for the legal rights to the products. The Mary Kay Cosmetics company began operating in Dallas, Texas, in 1963. The idea was to sell skin care products through demonstrations in homes and offices. Nine sales representatives were chosen to sell the products. The sales representatives were independent workers. They bought products like soaps and skin softening liquids from the company and sold them at higher prices to friends, family members and other individuals. Mary Kay decided that each representative who brought other saleswomen into the company would receive part of the new person’s earnings. That way, experienced sales representatives would be willing to help train new ones.
M: Direct sales were pretty common in those years.
W: Yes, they were. In 1965, the company was selling almost one million dollars worth of products. Mary Kay once said that success came fast because she did not have any time to waste. She was already 45 years old when she started the company. Now Mary Kay Cosmetics is the largest direct seller of skin care products in the United States. It develops and tests many skin care and beauty products. Today, Mary Kay Cosmetics has sales of more than 1000 million dollars. It has more than 800,000 sales representatives in 37 countries around the world.
M: 800,000 sales representatives?!
W: Yes. Now you can find Mary Kay products and company sales representatives in Argentina, Brunei, the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan and Singapore. Mary Kay’s third husband, Mel Ash, died of cancer in 1980. She wanted to help find a cure for the disease. At first, she helped organizations raise money for research. Later, she started the Mary Kay Ash Chari-table Foundation, a non-profit group that provides money to support research about cancers affecting women. In 2001, the company and foundation expanded their goals in an effort to help stop violence against women. Mary Kay Ash continued her involvement in her business until she suffered a stroke in 1996. She died in November, 2001.
M: Thank you, Mrs. Dickinson.