Analysts Voice Concern Over Avon’s ‘Whack-a-Mole’ Market Correction Strategy

Wall Street analysts are concerned about Avon Products Inc.’s strategy to fix its many different geographic markets. The beauty company routinely corrects operations in one market — usually one of its larger ones — then turns to a different region to spruce up operations there. But while it’s off fixing the next market, things frequently start deteriorating again in the initial region, one analyst noted on Avon’s earnings call Thursday, referring to the phenomenon as Avon’s “whack-a-mole” strategy. For example, the Brazil business is showing signs of improvement. There, Avon has “refocused on the basics,” and numbers have gotten less bad. Brazil sales were down 2.4 percent in the quarter, executives said. But now that Brazil is on the mend, the company needs to devote attention to Russia, a market that did not adapt well to the sweeping changes implemented by chief executive officer Jan Zijderveld and his team. Challenges in Russia aren’t unique to the region, executives said on Thursday’s call. Avon will focus driving productivity to increase representative earnings, switch up sales leader incentives and implement a school to teach representatives how to be microinfluencers. “In terms of ‘whack-a-mole,’ in terms of one up, one down, the good news is that Mexico,

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