Maybelline - Queen of the Drug Store in the 1930s

Vintage Drug Store Advertising Banner announcing Maybelline sold in it's original 75 cent box.

The original Maybelline box was sold only through classifieds in newspapers and magazines and wrapped in brown paper to protect a woman's reputation between 1915 and 1933.

Today this original Maybellne box is almost
 100 years old.

Maybelline brought a new flux of young customers into Drug Store's hoping to be discovered in Hollywood.

Maybelline was positioned at the front door of the drug store to encourage impulse buying.

Another drug store strategy was to place a carton of Maybelline boxes on the lunch counter and near the cash register to encourage ladies to grab it before they left the store.

A vintage Maybelline sign found in early drug stores.

The original Maybelline brush fit perfectly in the
 little red box.

During the Depression, the price of Maybelline was dropped to 10 cents and packaged in a much smaller box than the 75 cent version.  Now every woman could afford a box of maybelline and have beautiful eyes.

The Maybelline Girl now on carded merchandise, was introduced in the early 1930's at the drug store.

Color was added in the late 1930's.

A 10 cent Depression size brass tin of Maybellne Eye Shadow, featuring the original Maybelline Girl.

It was the beautiful advertising that brought the crowds of women into their local drug store for a box of Maybelline in 1932.

Maybellilne's Before and After Ad's were first seen in vertical  advertising found in news papers and magazines in the early 1930s.

The Film Cleopatra staring Claudette Colbert, inspired this before and after ad in 1934. 

Big Stars like Jean Harlow along with the Good Housekeeping seal of approval expanded Maybellines credibility in the 1930
http://www.maybellinebook.com/2011/07/maybelline-targeted-average-housewife.html


While your browsing, why don't you check out my new hilarious Blog called Saffrons Rule at  http://saffronsrule.com/

NICHE MAGAZINE SUMMER 2013 FEATURES LEONARDO DECAPRIO'S THE GREAT GATSBY, AS WELL AS SHARRIE WILLIAMS CELEBRITY COLUMN

NICHE MAGAZINE SUMMER 2013 

Turn to page 64 to see my column.

Look for my column on page 64

  

***FOURTEEN*** The Crash of 1929

While he didn't let on, Tom Lyle was having problems of his own. Despite the crash of 1929, it took two years for the Maybelline Company to feel its true effects. Although sales slowed, and the family fortune dwindled, it wasn't until 1931 that Tom Lyle received the worst possible news. The president of Chicago Guaranty Trust called him personally and told him that his ship had sunk. On paper at least, Tom Lyle was no better off than the guys selling apples on the street corner. He was broke.

The prosperity and opulence of the roaring ’20s were gone, as were the vamps who purchased Maybelline’s seventy-five-cent mascara. Tom Lyle realized that to save his company, he would have to rethink his marketing plan and come up with an idea that would put his product in the public eye at a price women could afford. The flashy, flapper look was being replaced with a more demure look fit for the times. Movie stars and socialites alike favored understated eye makeup. Only one out of five women now used Maybelline mascara, while four out of five women continued to use powders and skin creams.

Tom Lyle tried to market cheaper sizes of his products, but fashion magazines began to characterize makeup products “fit only for tarts from the wrong side of the tracks.” Major film studios, such as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Warner Brothers, and Paramount, jettisoned mascara and eyeliner altogether. It didn't help that the reigning empress of MGM, Norma Shearer, called eye makeup “the province of whores.” While Ponds Cold Cream and Helena Rubenstein’s makeup appealed to the rich and the upper middle class, Maybelline’s darkly colored lashes now only appealed to “the lower class.” While Tom Lyle made a quality product affordable and accessible to women, Emery created a logo to fit the times. “Quality yet sensibly priced” was printed on every advertisement page, and became the spirit of Maybelline’s campaign.

Tom Lyle saw his dream going up in smoke, and the Maybelline Company nearly went bankrupt. It occurred to him that to continue selling through mail-order was futile. He needed to put his products where women could purchase them cheaply and on demand—Maybelline was offered in dime stores, but at a very small as needed supply, and Preston and his drinking problem, failing health and poor relationship with Evelyn made him almost useless as a sales representative. He had to do something fast or sell the company before it failed all together. Rather than focus on an upscale market, he knew he’d still be able to sell his product to the working classes by making his products available cheaply and at retail. But to do that would take backing, and he was nearly broke. He asked his friend Rory Kirkland for a loan. Kirkland lent him enough money to keep Maybelline afloat until they could figure out what to do next. 

The family single-handedly held the company together, and everyone took less pay and worked longer hours. Tom Lyle concentrated on advertising, while Noel handled the administration of the company and the employees. Mabel’s husband, Chet, supervised the production of mascara, and Eva’s husband, Ches, managed shipping and the Maybelline trucks that transported products to dime stores and Preston tried to stay sober.

Also started a Blog on Word Press about my 1964 Diary. I will be posting each day of that year so check it out at http://saffronsrule.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/day-1-of-my-1964-diary/

Maybelline had no competition with Max Facator

  Maybelline devoted exclusively to EYES!

 Tom Lyle Williams was devoted to 

 "Beautiful  Eyes,"

                          Max Factor was best known as
                       "The Makeup artist for the Stars." 

Max Factor started out selling hand made wigs and theatrical make-up to the growing film industry and soon coined the word "make-up" based on the verb phrase "to make up" (one's face) in 1920.  Up until then the term ‘"cosmetics’’ had been used as the term for ‘"make-up" and was considered to be used only by people in the theatre or of dubious reputation and not something to be used in polite society.

When Maybelline was born in 1916 and until the late 1930's, women used the word Maybelline for mascara, saying,  "I need to order Maybelline," not, "I need to buy mascara," and like Max Factors Face Make-up, Maybelline was considered "the Provence of whores" and not used by respectable ladies.  

Maybe that's why Tom Lyle used the term  "Eye Beauty Aids" and marketed Maybelline as pure and healthy for lashes and brows.  Eventually Maybelline was referred to as Mascara and had no negative connotation.


By the 1940's the Factor Brand expanded into a variety of cosmetics while Maybelline remained strictly Eye Beauty.

In this 1937 Maybelline Ad Tom Lyle used brilliant color, a Maybelline First!  As Technicolor film replaced Maybelline's black and white ads.  Notice the products are now attached to cards that were placed on display racks - another Maybelline First, and the 75 cent box of Maybelline was  scaled down to a small 10 cent size so all women could afford a box of Maybelline during the Great Depression.

From 1915 to 1967 when Tom Lyle sold The Maybelline Company to Plough Inc, Maybelline controlled over 75% of the eye beauty market and never experienced competition from any other cosmetic company.

Read more about Maybelline's supreme control of the eye beauty market and Tom Lyle Williams genius as the King of Advertising in "The Maybelline Story."

Maybelline ad hits the stands as stock market crashes.

This is a very rare Maybelline Ad!  Look at the date this ad appeared in popular magazines. Oct 1929, was the month the stock market crashed!!  The October 1929 crash came during a period of declining real estate values in the United States (which peaked in 1925)  near the beginning of a chain of events that led to the Great Depression.

Sound familiar?  We are going through it again and Maybelline is still the number one eye cosmetic company in the world.  Even while other companies fail  Maybelline 
now -  Maybelline New York - continues to profit. 

As you can see Maybelline was selling for 75 cents in 1929, but by 1933 Tom Lyle dropped the price to 10 cents for a smaller size box and placed Maybelline in dime stores rather than mail order - thus making it available to all women.

Click here to watch a very short video about the Great Depression and imagine what Tom Lyle was thinking - how to keep Maybelline a float.

read more about Tom Lyle's marketing strategy and the beautiful ads he used to target every corner of the female market in The Maybelline Story.

He was truly The King of Advertising!