"... makeup, skin care, candles, essential oils, hormone gel patches, leggings, tote bags, juice powders, nontoxic cleaning products, whitening toothpaste, vitamins, nail decals, nutritional shakes and gardening towers. Women and multilevel marketing (MLM) companies have gone together since Tupperware and Mary Kay launched in the middle of the 20th century as ways for housewives to make money and get products to women in rural areas. Now, with social media, women who sell for MLMs have a whole new way.... The structure of MLMs is to blame for many of those 'Let’s catch up!'... 'I thought I had made a genuine connection with a mom I met online in a mom group,' said Erin Heger of Kansas. But after Heger declined this mom’s offer to become a Beachbody coach, the woman stopped talking to her. 'It really hurt,' Heger said. 'I even invited her and her kiddo to my son’s first birthday party. I felt like an idiot for thinking we were actually friends.'"
From
"How MLMs are hurting female friendships" (WaPo).
The top-rated comment is a real kick in the head for WaPo (how did they miss this?):
No reference to current Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose husband Dick DeVos is the son of Richard DeVos, founder of Amway, the greatest MLM scam of all time, and to which fortune Betsy and Dick enjoy a life of ease and privilege?
Posts
54 comments:
I was thinking up a rif on DeVos and Amway, then dammit.
"become a Beachbody coach"
This article would have connected with me on much deeper level if it had more pictures.
A fourth company was part of the Avon Garde of pyramids.
Shorter article, "Amway sucks: Women, minorities hardest hit."
So photos of kids and pets are not marketing?
All dark roads lead to Trump.
remember the days when MTV played music videos?
has become
remember the days when facebook wasn't just ads?
Find the Golden Goose; then Strangle It!
I'll say this about Amway: they reinvested in their home town. When Detroit was falling to pieces, the VanAndel and Devos families kept their business in the Grand Rapids area, renovated the Pantlind Hotel into the Amway Grand Plaza, opened good restaurants and fine dining and the BOB, and pretty soon all the wealthy families from the area followed suit. The hospitals were rebuilt, the local university expanded, minor league sports teams came. And now Grand Rapids is cool. Young people from Chicago want to move there when they start having families. The 616 group has created really cool loft spaces to live downtown from the old furniture factories and closed schools.
You may not like Amway or Betsy Devos, but the way their families treated their hometown is inspirational.
A guy at work asked me about his wife looking at getting into LuLumon. I ran a quick spread sheet for him. I had never run the numbers myself. Spread sheets are great tools to deflate emotional balloons, like promises of easy money. Raw numbers of how many events a year you need to do and the NET take home shows that the easy money requires a lot of hours. The wife went into it anyway. Last I asked they had $4000 of inventory had hadn't had time to do a "party" for months.
Our daughter has been through about 4 of these scams. Each time she thinks she will be more disciplined. Each time life gets in the way of easy money.
This has been completely true for me. We even met a really nice couple at a resort, she was super-kind to my kids, and after a day tries to give me some cleaning products, all-natural of course, and then came the hard sell. Since I was completely not interested she dropped us and moved on to her next...customers. So it isn't just on-line. But I have started blocking "friends" there who only sell things. No loss.
Pretty much the only product I've never come across is Amway!
Amway was a much more masculine endeavor, as I remember.
The analogy I was thinking of was Democratic identity politics.
“As a woman [or “fill in the blank”], you can join a ‘ground floor opportunity’ in a new power base.”
Except the power base categories, like in MLM schemes, keep cleaving: race, sex, religion, sexual preference, gender identity, etc.
The attendance at this year’s Woman’s March reflects many woman waking up to realize the “movement’s” interest in them as women had been eclipsed by an interest in pandering to antisemites.
It’s like waking up to realize the Women’s March leaders weren’t really interested in your kid’s birthday party after all.
Nothing wrong with MLMs. It's a great way for someone to make much needed income to support their families. The problem is how skillfully social media is used. There are guidelines to using it successfully. The majority of posts should never be about promoting the business but about general life stuff with only a sprinkling of product posts. And as MLMs require a high degree of relationship skills and forging and maintaining friendships, those with sub optimal ppl skills will not do well.
LuLumon
No big deal, but Lululemon is a big company, and Lularoe is a MLM (maybe out of business?).
Amway had some unique products that one could not find elsewhere.
MayBee at 7:39: topping the list of “things I wish I had written today.”
MayBee.
Thank you. You are 100% right. I never did care enough about the details of who. Just the numbers.
My daughter sells some kind of crap to her girl friends.
They all sell her some kind of crap.
This seems mostly to be an excuse to get away from the husband and kids for a night to drink a glass of wine and party like a married woman.
Grandpa babysits so Mom can go.
Amway is not for everybody. No MLM is for everybody. But in all of them, some people do make some money. With Amway a LOT of people made (and still make) money. You have to work it. Work it. Work it. It's not for the faint of heart, or those who think they can sell all family members on taking this up. You actually have to recruit and manage those under you. It's not easy.
No...I've not done it. But I've known enough people who have in the past and some did very well. Most just gave up and ended up with closets full of detergent.
This is far less evil than declaring yourself an 'activist' and creating a 501c organization to avoid paying taxes while you hit on people for donations to pay for your trips to conferences in Puerto Rico. At least with Amway, people get products they can use.
"My daughter sells some kind of crap to her girl friends. They all sell her some kind of crap. This seems mostly to be an excuse to get away from the husband and kids for a night to drink a glass of wine and party like a married woman. Grandpa babysits so Mom can go."
I know you love to think about Marxism, so... that's false consciousness, right?
To me, it shows how little people value friendship. If you really do value friendship, it's a sad world out there. How can you put what you would into a relationship if it has no similar meaning to the other person? It makes no sense.
ST's line reminds me of the old "Women work for pin money." Does anyone say that anymore? Does anyone remember what "pin money" was? Money that you pin inside your blouse and use for incidental items when you're swanning about town?
Weird. I was about to ask if anyone says "swanning" anymore.
To me, it shows how little people value friendship.
I found that little people value friendship more than big people do.
Nothing wrong with MLMs
If all they were selling were products. The real money is in selling "distributorships." The products are just a legal fig leaf.
Derbyshire reports that in NYC mothers want a Chinese nanny. Learning Spanish is for losers, the language of busboys.
There was a popular one in the 70's in which the marks would get all gussied up and meet in nice restaurants to show off their success to newer and potential marks. Anyone remember the name?
Swans in grand rapids could be a viral gif.
I see how easily a MLM takedown could be green-lighted at the Amazon Press.
Avon and Tupperware made sense as MLM type of products in the days that they were popular.
The proliferation of stores, strip malls, BIG malls didn't exist everywhere and even in some urban areas, the suburbs were relatively isolated for "shopping opportunities"
The internet was an UN-imaginable science fiction concept. Buying things by looking them up in catalogues or in advertisements in magazines (remember them...those paper things that came out once a month)was chancy. You didn't get to see the product until the mailman delivered it.
SO for the rural and suburban housewife, most of whom were stay at home spouses, the idea of a get together with others in the neighborhood to actually be able to see and touch the products, to be able to try ON the makeup or perfume before buying was a giant leap forward for womankind.
Plus the parties were fun. Friends. New acquaintances. Food. Drinks even.
My mom went to many Avon and Tupperware parties, even though she was a working woman (rare in those days). It was difficult for her to go 'shopping' with her work schedule. AND she liked the products.
The sales/parties, as I recall from my childhood perspective, didn't seem to by high pressure. Just fun and convenient.
Ralph There was a popular one in the 70's in which the marks would get all gussied up and meet in nice restaurants to show off their success to newer and potential marks. Anyone remember the name?
Mary Kay??? They even swanned around (lol) in their pink Cadillac that were given to the most successful. Who wouldn't want a PINK Cadillac /s
No, DBQ, it was couples.
I've dabbled in an MLM company, but haven't made it enough of a priority to make it work. As long as you are selling something of legitimate value, I don't see what the problem is. Friends make recommendations to friends all the time. Not every MLM is a scam or a pyramid scheme.
There are lots of MLM products that I really like - ThirtyOne bags, Tupperware, Avon, Norwex, etc. But I’ve never sold any of it myself, and I’ve never hosted a party. I just ignore the press to host one.
In college, another student tried to sell me on selling magazines door-to-door in the summer. Thankfully, the Boy Scouts had already soured me for life selling lightbulbs that way.
Divorce was unto a plague among my daughter's girl friends. Destroyed families and caused economic havoc.
The girls all waited until their mid 30s to get married in the hope that having a job and being more experienced and certain about what they wanted from life would ward off the monster of divorce.
So these parties serve a dual purpose. You can go out at night with the girls and post up some FB pics of the group proving you weren't out doing something you shouldn't have been doing. The girls do, however, get together for other purposes than selling to one another. River cruises, festival outings. But always with the proof pic.
We live in a small town and many of my daughter's girlfriends are school teachers. They are extremely concerned with bourgeois propriety.
Is Amway still a thing?
My mom used Amway when I was growing up. Big old box of laundry detergent.
What's wrong with a strong family business?
Are those only allowed on the left?
I don't like to sell stuff to friends. Discovered that decades ago when someone tried to get me to sell Mary K. Then someone tired to sell me Mary K makeup. Yuck on both ends.
My mom did Avon and Tupperware parties. Those were great.
They are extremely concerned with bourgeois propriety.
The ones who aren't boinking their students.
Teaching used to be a high prestige, low pay profession. Too bad the unions and educrats ended that.
Soooo, insincere sales tactic is news in New York now? This is damaging "female friendships"?
Amway had some cleaning products that didn't cause rashes and smell like French whorehouses. They sold these niche products long before Procter & Gamble and didn't mess with society the way P&G does. I still have Tupperware from the last century that is air tight. I also have Glad food keepers that don't preserve squat, that I bought at Last Thanksgiving. BTW Glad products = %20 P&G.
The Pampered Chef parties had good food. I always hated when good friends got involved with such things and finally refused to participate.
One pal said she kept her distributorship for Longaberger baskets up just so she could get them at a discount. She gifted them a lot. She had a 7 figure income, so I figured she was quilted into helping a less successful sister.
As was pointed out upthread, retail sales is constantly evolving. Look to Sears, K-Mart, Eddie Bauer, Montgomery Ward on and on. Nothing lasts forever except the will to advance oneself.
Oh good heavens this brings back good memories. I remember the Avon lady coming to the house and sitting and going through the book and products with my mom. Mom never bought a lot (probably why she didn't go to parties) but my sister and I knew at some point we would be getting a little treat. She would buy those plastic children's pins with the perfume inside. We would get them as presents for Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, or whatever might be coming up.
When my sister was a young adult Princess House was the rage. My sister has a lot of Princess House.
I used to go to Mervyns, Target, Linens N Things ALOT. Two of those are gone and I haven't been to Target more than three times in the last three years. I get Amazon boxes constantly. But I sometimes miss browsing, touching, and feeling the products I'm interested in. I wouldn't mind the Amazon lady coming to my house for forty-five minutes and showing me things I might like based on my personal shopping history. No parties though, people in groups annoy me.
Ralph L. said, "In college, another student tried to sell me on selling magazines door-to-door in the summer. Thankfully, the Boy Scouts had already soured me for life selling lightbulbs that way."
I had a similar experience. It was I think 1969 and I was in Boy Scouts and we were selling light bulbs. I was eleven years old and I really worked at it. The troop was having a competition as to who could sell the most light bulbs and the prize was a TV. I would go out almost every day and I was pretty good at it. I sold over $2000 of light bulbs.
But by the time it was over, I had a bad taste in my mouth. The more I thought about it, the less I was I was proud of what I had done. It seemed to me that many people hadn't bought the light bulbs because they wanted them but because here's this child at the door that they felt wrong about refusing.
Besides the life-long distaste for selling things that this left with me, remembering that reminds me of some other things.
First, that time was in so many ways a much better world than today. It was a relatively safe world where children could wander alone all over the place and meet many hundreds of strangers without concern. Children don't do this today. I've never had a child in the last thirty years or so come to my door and try to sell me something.
Second, I am mystified by the amount. I know I sold at least $2000 in light bulbs and it was probably closer to $3000. But if we plug that in to an inflation calculator, $2000 in 1969 is about $13,358 today.
Is it even possible for an eleven year child to make over $13,000 in less than two months of activity today?
And what does it mean that it isn't? Is this an indication that the middle class was much wealthier back then?
Derbyshire reports that in NYC mothers want a Chinese nanny.
Fun fact: Amway in China is not called Chinway.
I know four “Amway rich,” maybe millionaires, one of whom is a woman. They don’t think of it as a scam.
Just in time for Girl Scout Cookie Season.
Thank you, Chuck.
Actually, Betsy DeVos has a metric crap-ton of money which she inherited from her father, who founded a very, very, very, successful automotive-components company. She really doesn't need Richard's cash.
They didn't bring up Amway because the reporters are all 27 and don't know about anything that happened before the internet.
What's wrong with selling products, MLM or not? Nothing. What's wrong is when people sell fake-friendship in order to use their new "friends" as cash-cows. It's hilarious and so predictable that the NYT now frames these classic sales schemes as a new way to immiserate women. Poor women, always a new oppression and stressor rolling down the pike at them.
My trouble with Amway is that anyone I met has never actually tried to sell me something- they've tried to recruit me into Amway sales. NOT interested.
I can sell things. In fact, I enjoy sales. Sold appliances for quite some while. It's a game. Customer comes into an appliance area and there's one of two possibilities. 1. They need an appliance. This makes the sale easier. You simply have to match them up with the right appliance for them. 2. They want an appliance. This customer is a little bit harder. Need/want are two different things. You have to convince the customer to say "Yes" to themselves before you can get them to say "Yes" to you. My ability to sell to the second type usually led me to be the leader in sales per hour. Few are ever "just looking"- they either need or want.
Air Force Magazine reports that a Colonel has been relieved of command for, among other things, requiring his subordinates to buy Girl Scout cookies.
Pyramid Marketing (Tupperware, Natural Living) seems a big thing among the Kansas/Oklahoma Christian SAH Mothers, for some reason.
Cleanliness being next to Godliness, am guessing.
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