Mary C. Crowley

Mary C. Crowley (April 1, 1915 – June 1986), was the founder and CEO of the Texas-based Home Interiors and Gifts, Inc., which became one of the largest direct sales home furnishing operations in America. Crowley was also a published author of works on women in business, and on self-improvement for women.

Career

Home Interiors and Gifts

In 1957, Mary C. Crowley founded Home Interiors and Gifts.

By 1962, Crowley and her daughter Ruth were running Home Interiors & Gifts, Inc., when the company's sales reached its first million dollars.

In 1977, Crowley was one of twenty business owners invited to meet President Jimmy Carter in the White House.

When the company celebrated its 20th anniversary with a three-day gathering attended by the company's top 10,000 saleswomen, it included celebrities including Bob Hope and Billy Graham. At the time, Crowley was said to be earning $1 million annually. According to the Texas Monthly, the "millionairess" owned "a Dallas mansion, two Lear jets, and a Colorado mountain retreat."

By 1983, sales had grown to be $400 million,

Management style Crowley was a devout Christian and an active philanthropist. She was the first woman to serve on the board of Billy Graham's evangelistic association.

Crowley was a career woman who put her beliefs and philosophy into her work. She was a generous person; during the holidays she allowed her employees to go on a supermarket shopping spree and she would pick up the tab.

She would open meetings at Home Interiors with a Bible verse, introducing, for example, a verse from Proverbs by saying, "Let's see what King Solomon had to say about leadership." Her marketing philosophy is "codified" in her book Think Mink!. Crowley, who owned a mink-covered Bible, used mink briefcases and coats as sales incentives in a system analogous to the Mary Kay Pink Cadillacs. She was also an in-demand speaker. Crowley was divorced from her first husband and had reared her son, Don Carter, and daughter, Ruth, as a single mother. Crowley remarried when Don Carter was 15.

Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics party plan company, was married to Mary (Weaver) Crowley's brother, Charles William Weaver.

Honors

In 1978, Crowley won the Horatio Alger Award, given to an outstanding businessperson, as did her makeup mogul friend, Mary Kay Ash.

One of Dallas Baptist University's seven colleges is named the "Mary C. Crowley College of Christian Faith" in her honor.

Works

Reprinted as You Can Too!