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.
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.
