beGoing: This Review Will Do Ya No Good
Avon discontinues the beComing line (virtually) in the stealth of night...
and our new Mystery Male Reviewer tries a face mask!
The day I signed up to be an Avon Lady, I wrote a check for seventy-five bucks, payable to A-V-O-N. Ten of it bought my business - a cheap mesh bag filled with twenty brochures, two boxes of samples, an order pad, and a hefty navy blue binder filled with Important Information such as How To Sell Lipstick and The Power of Three. Yeah, I was rockin'! I stayed up hours past my bedtime to read about recruitment and money collection, and I smoothed two samples of skin cream over my So Cal parched hands, ready to tell my new customers about the hydration and firming goodness they too could have! The other sixty-five paid for something I wouldn't receive for two weeks - an official Avon Beauty Advisor kit.
"Honey, being a Beauty Advisor is a smart move. You get a lot of product, more samples, and training that will help you advance your sales. But most important, hon, you get to sell the premier upscale line of Avon cosmetic and skin care items, beComing."
My district manager sat close to me. She smelled of Avon, at least six scents worth, a pumpkin and lavender and gardenia potpourri. She spread a glossy magazine on the table and flipped the pages, showing me smartly suited reps conducting makeover parties, rich-looking lipsticks and facial toners lined in an elegant row. "beComing is Avon's answer to Clinique and Estee Lauder. Our products are just as luxurious, but at a much more comfortable price."
I tried not to snicker when she spoke. Comfortable price? Why not say Cheap? I held my tongue, imagined myself sleek and professional in black linen and pumps, showing my own upscale Avon to the yuppies populating my neighborhood.
Well, it didn't work out that way. Things never do. I attended the Beauty Advisor classes and took notes about oily skin and crow's feet. I wore a goofy utility kilt filled with samples, slipped cheesy Avon flip-flops on my feet. I didn't host haute couture makeover parties at dusk. I stayed home, helped my boys with homework, walked my dog, fed my birds. I pushed beComing during my Avon door-to-door days, and managed to sell the fancy overnight creams and facial primer, some blushes, some bottles of this and that, but most of my customers wanted the Avon they knew and loved. They didn't want fancy-pants Avon. It didn't make sense, didn't feel like their grandmom's hands, the odor of their mom's inner arm.
I knew something was off when I won a gift bag filled with demo jewelry for selling more beComing than any other rep in my district. Me?! Big beComing seller?! I accepted the prize with a sheepish grin. This can't be right, I thought. I hurried home, glanced over my stack of Avon invoice sheets, calculated foundation and nail polish, decided Avon had gone plumb mad. They must not use a lot of this yuppy stuff around here, I mused.
Sure enough, something was off, something was molding, forgotten lettuce in Avon's vegetable fridge bin. Rumors hit the Avon Rep bulletin boards, and whispered gossip floated around the monthly sales meetings.
Avon's gonna discontinue beComing!
I didn't quite believe it, didn't want to believe it, but the sly remarks didn't surprise me. I continued selling beComing, picking up new customers here and there. Spring peach blush turned into summer firetruck red lips turned into last fall's mauve mania, my Beauty Advisor status was renewed to the tune of thirty bucks, and I started noticing strange and troubling things. beComing items all of a sudden were "no longer available," even products just introduced a month or two prior. Backorders grew and grew until I cancelled them and told my customers that something wacky was occurring, please choose something out of the core Avon books instead.
And yeah, Avon dropped beComing just like those rumors promised, dropping it fast and hot like a burnt baked potato, without warning, without ceremony, just a note in my email with an attached sheet of clearance prices so I could "take advantage" before the goods depleted. Many reps aren't happy. We paid good money to sell this line, they say. We want it to continue or we want a refund! I understand that grief, but Avon says the Beauty Advisor fees are really all about the information and training one receives, much more than selling the beComing line. Yeah, right. Tell that to every District Manager and Leadership upline rep who pushes newbies into Beauty Advisorhood so that they can sell the pricey goods and make more money. Yeah. Right. In all fairness, the classes are comprehensive, but you pay extra for them. How this all adds up, I don't know. I'm a Beauty Advisor without upscale product, a lone Avon gunman on some dusty clearance prairie in the middle of beComing High Noon. Three campaigns left! Buy now!
Anyway, life goes on, and I'm directing my beComing customers to the Anew skin care products and the Beyond Color makeup items. But, as a fond farewell to beComing, here's a little review of one of the products:
Review: beComing Fully Restored multi-mineral treatment
"Face, face, I have a face?"
Our Mystery Male Reviewer has trouble aligning the treatment....
Avon's beComing skin care line boasts an exclusive ingredient, "Lumin8." Avon waxes rhapsodic over this little gem in every brochure. Lumin8 is "a blend of essential skin nutrients that respond on demand to your natural bio-cycles to minimize the impact of internal and external stress factors on your skin." Whoa. That's a mouthful.
Lumin8 is stuffed into most of the beComing facial care products, including the Fully Restored multi-mineral treatment, a mask-like disposable cloth that Avon claims will revive tired lackluster skin.
Fully Restored comes (came?) in a sleek gray box, the hallmark of the beComing line. It consists of a stack of facial mask tablets and a bottle of mineral solution. You pour a capful of the solution over the mask, and it expands like an old-fashioned kitchen sponge. You unfold the mask and place it over your face, making sure to align your eyes, nose, and mouth with the cut-out sections. Relax! Five minutes later, you glow, glow, glow!
I gave this product to a man in his forties, a man with a Regular Guy beauty routine, which is to say not much of a routine at all. He applied the product as instructed, however, the photographic evidence shows that our Mystery Male Reviewer had a bit of trouble lining up the cutout sections with the appropriate body part.
I asked our reviewer if he felt revived, less lackluster after his five minutes of Lumin8. He only grunted about the alignment issue and said that he didn't remember if the product worked.
I tried it too, in the deep of November, and to tell the truth, I don't remember if it worked, either. I didn't sell many of these puppies, and if our shrugged shoulders impression of this product is any indication, perhaps it's just as well that beComing is beGone...
6:07:26 PM 
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