创业故事:雅芳掌门人成功秘诀

 
  For Andrea Jung, the chairman and CEO of Avon Products (AVP), this moment happened right after college, when she was in the management training program at Bloomingdale's. All day everyday, there she was in the stockroom, switching vendor hangers for store hangers on thousands of pieces of clothes. "I remember calling my parents around Thanksgiving and saying, 'You paid for me to have a great education and this is really not that meaningful…Maybe I will quit.'"
   对于雅芳产品公司（Avon Products）主席兼CEO钟彬娴来说，她在大学毕业后就不得不面临这样的一个时刻。当时她正在接受布卢明代尔百货公司（Bloomingdale's）的经营管理培训。她整天都得呆在仓库里，把成千上万件衣服上的衣架换成经销商的衣架。“我记得我在感恩节的时候打电话给我爸妈，我说：‘你们拿钱供我接受优秀的教育，但我现在所做的事情真的没有一点意义……或许，我真的该辞职了。’”

   Jung, who grew up in a traditional Chinese-American family with a tremendous amount of discipline, had made her way to Princeton and wanted to go into the Peace Corps. But her parents didn't have a lot of money, so they insisted she take a more conventional path. When Jung called them about quitting that first job at Bloomingdale's, "the reaction was fast and furious," she recalls. Her parents told her: "You are not quitting. You start at the bottom and you work your way to the top."
    钟彬娴出生在一个传统的华裔美国家庭，家教颇为严格，读完普林斯顿大学（Princeton）后，她曾希望加入美国和平部队（Peace Corps）。但当时钟家家境并不富裕，所以，她的父母坚持认为她应该走一条更为传统的道路。所以，当她打电话告诉他们自己想从布卢明代尔辞职时，钟彬娴回忆起父母的反应是“迅速而又激烈”。她父母说：“不许辞职。你要从底层做起，一步一个脚印走向成功的顶峰。”

    "So, I didn't quit," Jung says. "I persevered, and it ended up being a really terrific run in retail."
     钟彬娴表示：“于是，我放弃了辞职，选择了坚持。最后证明，这段经历让我在零售行业有了一个很好的开始。”

    She traded retail--Bloomingdale's (M) and then Neiman Marcus--for the beauty industry, moving to Avon in 1994. Jung was assigned to create a global Avon brand and did that so impressively that she was considered for the top job three years later. But she got passed over. And though she felt tempted to quit, she stayed. Two years later, she got the CEO job and became the youngest female chief executive in the Fortune 500.
   她先后加入了布卢明代尔和内曼．马库斯服装公司（Neiman Marcus），1994年从零售业转行到化妆品行业，加入雅芳。钟彬娴当时接到的任务是，打造一个全球化的雅芳品牌，三年后，她出色地完成了任务，成为公司CEO的热门人选，但最后却未能如愿。尽管她当时产生过放弃的念头，但最后还是坚持了下来。两年后，她被任命为CEO，成为《财富》500强（Fortune 500）公司中最年轻的女性首席执行官。