Elizabeth Smith Exits Avon

Avon Products Inc. said Thursday that its president, Elizabeth Smith, is leaving the beauty products company at the end of October to seek out a CEO position elsewhere.

Smith joined Avon in January 2005 and has been president since September 2007. As president, Smith was in charge of the company’s global marketing, supply chain and information technology divisions and also oversaw global sales.

“With Andrea’s commitment as a relatively young CEO to lead Avon for the foreseeable future and with her full support, the time is right for me to seek the next step of my career outside of Avon,” she said.

Avon, which sells its products mostly by catalog and door-to-door sales representatives, said it has no immediate plans to name a replacement for Smith.

A slowdown in discretionary spending during the recession has squeezed demand for Avon’s cosmetics and fragrances, so the company has started to offer more products at lower prices.

In July the New York-based company said it would cut about 1,200 jobs, or about 2.8 percent of its global staff, by 2013 as part of a turnaround effort designed to save $200 million by 2012 to 2013. The job cuts exclude sales representatives.