Andrea Jung Replaced At Avon

Andrea Jung has been relieved of her longtime post as Avon CEO after two failed efforts at turning it around.

On Monday Avon announced that Andrea Jung will move into the transitional role of executive chairwoman while Sherilyn McCoy, a former Johnson & Johnson executive, will replace her as CEO.

“We are thrilled to have someone of Sheri’s caliber assuming the leadership of Avon,” said Jung in a pro forma prepared statement.

A search for Jung’s replacement had been announced in December. By then Avon was deep into a six-year slump of declining sales, sliding stock prices and an SEC probe into allegations that it had bribed foreign officials. The same announcement had indicated that Jung would assume the position of executive chairwoman for two years once a replacement was found.

On April 2 Coty, a smaller European rival, announced a $10 billion public offer for Avon. The offer represented a 20% premium over Avon’s closing price on March 30, but was promptly rejected by Jung and the Avon board. Avon’s share prices had plunged 40% in 2011. Coty is now mulling a hostile takeover.

Jung has been criticized by analysts for lacking day-to-day management skills and for her failure to fix a broken supply chain. She has also been accused of failing to change a flawed and outdated business model which relies entirely on a corps of door-to-door salespeople. In an effort to fend off SEC allegations of bribing Chinese officials, in February Avon replaced the head of its China operations with John Lin, head of its Canadian business. In March Avon suffered a downgrade of its credit rating by S&P.

Jung’s replacement as Avon CEO ends, at least temporarily, one of the best known Asian American corporate success stories.

Jung joined Avon as president in January of 1994 after a year in which US sales had dipped 1%. Using the savvy and discipline honed over two decades in a series of department store marketing posts, Jung added new luster to a brand that had come to seem anachronistic in the dawn of the internet age by launching new product lines. She also conceived fresh marketing campaigns and built up enthusiastic door-to-door sales forces in developing markets like China and Russia where the Avon name meant much more than it had come to mean at home.

Jung’s success won her promotion in 1999 to the post of CEO and chairwoman. By that time she was frequently ranked among the most powerful and influential women in global business. In 2005 sales began to slip. Jung launched two turnaround efforts but failed to reverse an alarming decline in both sales and profits, leading to the announcement of her imminent replacement in December of 2011.

Andrea Jung was born in 1958 in Toronto. Her Shanghai-born mother and Hong Kong-born father had met at the city’s university. Her mother was both an accomplished pianist and one of Canada’s first female chemical engineers. Her father was an esteemed architect. When Andrea turned two, the family moved to Wellesley after her father accepted a teaching post at MIT. Her mother landed another chemical engineering job, but has since exchanged her technical career for that of a concert pianist. Her brother Mark, three years her junior, runs a San Francisco software company.

In high school Jung was student body president. She graduated magna cum laude with an English literature degree from Princeton in 1979. She began her career as a sales girl at Bloomingdales while still in college. She soon became the protegé of the chain’s female marketing chief Joan Vass. When Vass left to become CEO of I Magnin, Jung followed and worked her way up to general merchandising manager. She soon received and accepted an offer to become an executive vice president at Neiman Marcus, a much larger department store chain. Three years later, she was hired as president of Avon.

Jung is fluent in Mandarin, conversational in Cantonese and has a passable command of French. She has two children, one from each of her two marriages. Both have ended in divorce.