Dorothy Brush "Random Thoughts" Published Aug. 3, 2005

The link between sports and cosmetics

It isn't often you find cosmetics featured in the sports pages but that is what I found in the USA Today sports section last week. Writer Luke Brietzke told an interesting story about Oklahoma head football coach Bob Stoops and his wife, Carol. The emphasis was on Carol.

Carol Stoops was recently named an independent national director of Mary Kay Inc. Fewer than 400 women in the world have earned this honor. The presentation was made at the company's annual gathering in Dallas. That city is important to the Stoops for another reason. It is there that the annual Texas-Oklahoma football game is played and Bob's team has done well in the past few years.

Mary Kay Ash began the company in 1963 with a paltry $5,000 to bring her dream to enrich women's lives to fruition. From that humble beginning in a Dallas storefront the company is now a billion dollar cosmetic company. It is just behind number one Avon as a direct seller of beauty products. There are 1.3 million independent sales consultants in the United States and 37 other countries are fulfilling Mary Kay's dream.

Carol began doing sales in 1991 and rapidly rose up the ladder. The pink Cadillac she was awarded marks how successful she was and this latest honor proves she is a champion in her field. $1.1 million in sales is impressive to say the least. Carol leads a team of 22 sales directors and 1,100 beauty consultants.

Yes, she is successful in business but also as a wife and mother. She works from home so the 6-year-old twin boys and their sister, 9, know where to find mother. During football season Carol has no problem traveling to games with her husband. It has been written that Mary Kay Ash often used this favorite quote in her talks. "It's an established fact that the bumblebee cannot fly - but the bumblebee doesn't know this so he flies anyhow." Carol believed those words.

As I read the story about Carol Stoops, I remembered a story a friend told me. She had to travel to Dallas on business and when she boarded the plane in Michigan she saw the plane was filled with women all dressed in pink. Each woman also wore a name tag. Normally a curious soul, this day she had business matters on her mind and didn't ask any questions.

Arriving in Dallas my friend headed for her hotel but when she got there she was surrounded by long lines of women in pink waiting to register. To make the whole thing even more surreal, she was dressed in pink too. It took a great deal of explaining before she was able to get untangled from the other pink women and get in the line for those not there for the Mary Kay conference. She laughs each time she relates her "in the pink" story.

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Dorothy Copus Brush is a Fairfield Glade resident and Crossville Chronicle staffwriter whose column is published each Wednesday.