With South Africa’s unemployment rate recently increasing to 29%*, leading direct-selling beauty brand – Avon Justine – today announced the launch of its initiative to provide women with sustainable earning opportunities, tackling the country’s growing unemployment crisis while playing its part in empowering talented, yet undiscovered, local female entrepreneurs.
Speaking about the launch, Nishani Singh, Director at Avon Justine Pty Ltd, says “While its positive to note that the ratio of South African women engaging in early stage entrepreneurial activity compared to men is on the rise (annual increase of 17%**), an environment that supports female entrepreneurs needs to be further nurtured if we are to address South Africa’s unemployment crisis through boosting our country’s entrepreneurial activity.
“We have immense entrepreneurial abilities in our country, but ability, unfortunately is nothing without opportunity. Access to opportunity is key to empowering people to attain their true potential. This is our invitation to the women of South Africa to become their own boss, rekindle their entrepreneurial spirit while they have the flexibility to take care of their own families,” says Singh.
“Our initiative also has significant potential to create a ‘knock-on’ employment effect. Many of our beauty entrepreneurs, in addition to creating employment for themselves, have managed to grow to the point where they are able to create additional job opportunities for others. This creates a positive social impact at a time when South Africa needs it most.”
As part of the initiative, Avon Justine also aims to upskill South African women when it comes to harnessing the power of digitisation by offering smart business tools like the new Avon On Application – a digital tool that allows beauty entrepreneurs to place orders, access social media content and create their own content to promote on social media channels. Delivery of Avon Justine products has also been made quicker and more convenient by the company’s new direct delivery functionality.
“Due to increasing internet penetration and smartphone adoption, e-commerce is on the rise in South Africa. Consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with buying beauty products online and this is opening up a world of new opportunities for beauty entrepreneurs,” says Singh.
To mitigate against the high set up cost of an e-commerce site, Avon Justine beauty entrepreneurs will be able to create their own profile on the online business platform, which essentially enables the establishment of a personalised website without any of the usual start-up costs or ongoing maintenance hassles. “This will allow beauty entrepreneurs to reach new customers from the comfort of their own home and work on their own schedule.”
Singh notes that this latest recruitment drive is further testimony of the company’s commitment to champion the empowerment of women. “Our company has been empowering women for the past 135 years through its unique earning opportunities and social responsibility programmes. This is just the latest development in our effort to drive growth of local business through the promotion of entrepreneurship and the empowerment of women in South Africa.
“As a renowned global brand with a strong local footprint, Avon Justine is uniquely positioned to enable and empower women with the opportunity to ‘be their own’ and to own their future. We want to motivate and inspire women to choose themselves and reach their full potential by starting their own business, but with the invaluable support and backing of a distinguished beauty brand,” Singh concludes.
To join the Avon Justine beauty network, please contact us via one of the below channels.
