Associates can move up the ladder by recruiting other sellers, and they aim for totems of performance recognition, such as diamond bumble bee pins or pink Cadillacs.
Mary Kay was the brainchild of Mary Kay Ash, a Texas housewife who started her own business in the 1960s and built an empire of sales by and for women at a time when women had few outlets for entrepreneurship or management. It's part down-home faith (service to God is one of the firm's key tenets), part New Agey, Oprah-esque self-realization, and part good old American hucksterism/optimism.
