Back in the day the suburban rituals were all the same. Around Halloween all of the catalogues would come in, Sears, Wards, Spiegels, Best, there were thousands of merchandise companies from J.C. Penny to Woolworth that marketed their wares almost entirely through seasonal catalogues. The books would come in day after day as the weather got colder, you’d leaf through the color pictures skipping back to the toys past the clothes and auto stuff and circle all that you hoped and dreamed for come Christmas morning. It was all there from BB guns to Barbie dolls, from footballs to little Ponies.

Around that time of year, somewhere near Thanksgiving, the parties would start in earnest. The cheese and cracker trays would come out and low and behold along would come the Tuperware lady, and of course the beloved Avon Lady. She always brought candy and we’d sit in the kitchen as the mothers and their friends would try out Avon cosmetics and drink wine and chat away. Avon cosmetics had that stigma of beauty, all those shades and stark colors, all those women trying out lipstick and eye shadow and whatnot. That was when the buying would start in earnest and the gentle make-up party would turn into a mad frenzy or buying free-for-all akin to a bidding war on the floor of Wall Street. There went an order for two shades of lipstick… no three types of eye shadow, but wait, what base would go with all that new make-up? Before long the cheese and crackers were gone and the party was winding down and the free samples were packed up and the Avon lady had her book full of orders to fulfill, and it would be a few months before we would se the Avon lady again, but that was in the seventies.

Avon Cosmetics are a whole different ballgame these days. Gone are the catalogues and most of those companies that lived by them, gone are the semi-annual parties, oh, there are still Avon ladies, but you don’t have to wait for a visit to place an order. Out with the old, and in with the internet. While most companies did not survive the transitions from catalogue ordering to internet purchasing, Avon is alive and well, better than ever. Now you can order Avon cosmetics online any time of the day and have them delivered whenever you want from the Avon store. Avon is a branding name for make-up like Kleenex is a branding name for tissue or Xerox is a branding name for copy. Avon is carried all over the internet, featured on sites like Yahoo and Google. Avon is a bigger business now than it was when it sent its salespeople into your home to take an order. Now there’s no need to break out the cheese and wine, no need to start a bidding war with the neighbors to purchase you Avon cosmetics, they await your beckon call, as many colors, as many applications as they ever had in that bulky make-up case, just visit the Avon shop, browse through their pages upon pages of merchandise, which is as high quality as ever, and choose the Avon cosmetics that you desire, at will, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, right from the comfort of your own home.