Let‘s start at the beginning. Jumping back a little bit in time, whilst my then fiancé and I were ‘setting up house’ I came across Tupperware, of course I had remembered from my childhood that there were parties and demonstrations and well, pretty much everyone I knew had Tupperware, so I wanted to buy some for our home, but it was expensive and I could save a considerable amount if I became a rep - it seemed like a good idea, especially since I was in-between-jobs - so I joined in 2004.
In March 2005 we had just moved to a new home, we were planning our wedding in June that year and it had been a rough time for me employment wise. I was made redundant the second time around in 2003, had several jobs in 2004 and had just about settled into a new job when I was dealt another blow in April, another redundancy. This was number 5 in less than 5 years and I was getting pretty fed up. Fortunately my fiancé had a good income and we could manage on one salary, so we focused on our wedding and I was going to look for work after, of course I did my CV and put my name out there, but didn’t expect much before June and then it was summer holidays and we were going on honeymoon, we enjoyed that summer and I was all set to go back on the job hunt when we discovered we were expecting. Now that threw a spanner in the works! There was no way I was going to get a new job knowing that I would be going on Maternity Leave within the first 9 months of starting. So I was to be a Stay At Home Mum.
Fortunately I had Tupperware, or so I thought! The company decided to sell up to a consultant with a rich husband. The lady wasn’t happy with the new way MLMs were to operate, you see they had just brought in new legislation to stop inventory loading and uplines selling from their garages to their recruits ‘downlines’. Selling down the line would be considered pyramid selling, something that is illegal in the U.K. and around the world. Instead anyone at any level now had to go out and sell products to the general public. It meant that this lady now had to go out and work, rather than rely on a steady income stream from her downline and not having to work hard to make a profit. So out of spite she had her husband buy up the company and Tupperware UK 2.0 died a slow death whilst she did not respond to any of the Reps asking for support with returns, refunds, and other business related concerns. It closed before I even gave birth to our first baby.
I had to find something, and hey presto! Up pops Jamie at Home. Yes Jamie Oliver had an MLM at one point. I bought into the hype, Jamie Oliver was very popular at the time and he released some fabulous crockery and kitchen utensils. Again they were expensive and I could save a sum when I joined, so I did. It didn’t last long as I found carrying all those items around a very heavy load and I was out doing in-house parties in the evenings, when I would really rather be at home with hubby and baby. Who says you get to spend more time with your family when you join an MLM? Yeah, that’s a lie!
I did a stint of PartyLite candles some time between January and November 2008, again to get the freebies and the discount. In November 2008 baby number two arrived and there were complications, I was walking on crutches before the birth and after things were tricky, so carrying bags full of candles and holders was not an option. I let my account go dead and that was it, no more MLMs — or so I thought!
In 2010 I went to a charity fundraiser for ‘The Eve Appeal’ hosted by a friend and there was this lady there with lots of skin care and makeup. I wasn’t really interested in buying, but you want to be polite and maybe contribute a little to the fundraiser, so I put my name in for the raffle, bought a lipstick or mascara or something and I thought that was it.
Little did I know that the raffle ticket box is a big old Mary Kay ‘Hun Trap’ - they ask for your contact details so they can get your prize to you, it all makes sense and seems harmless. Your name goes in a box and the lady will do a prize draw and someone gets to take away a product, but “in Mary Kay everyone’s a winner!” And so I found out, as the lady called me to congratulate me with my ‘free facial’ which I could share with a friend, or four, in that she would come to me and I could invite some friends and they would also get a ‘free facial’. I only invited one friend. I bought the products and that was that.
A year later the lady came asking if I wanted to join her team. She wanted to get to the next level in the career path and needed 28 people on her team. Would I be one of her 28 and get all my products that I already bought at a discount. They keep getting me with those discounts aren’t they!? 😉
I was an Independent Beauty Consultant with Mary Kay for over 9 years… this year in January I left. I quit. I sent back everything I bought in the previous 12 months for a 90% refund (more on that later).
This is the story of why I left.
The reason I’ve decided to write this is because so many people are falling victim, like I did. Shortly after I left this article came out in the news: https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-55145586 this is my story and how I felt about ‘the business’…
In my case it was “I’m going for a promotion and needs 28 people in her team, would I join and be one of her 28?”
My initial answer was “no, thanks, I’ve done party plan before it doesn’t work” I had done Tupperware and Jamie at Home before.
“Oh but I don’t actually have to sell anything, I could just sign up to get the discount for the products I already buy myself.”? oh ok then!
It was a win-win arrangement, she got one of her 28 and I would get a minimum 30% off my beauty products… I was already paying less than the Clarins I used to buy, she knew exactly what made me tick, discount and helping people.
She got me on those. I signed up.
Then she did this ‘launch party’ for me, I said to her it wouldn’t work, but I invited the 30 people she told me to invite, if 15 turned up I’d have a great party.
Only 2 turned up, one brought a friend and I hired a room in a village hall and someone else was setting up in another room, who popped her head around ours to see what we were doing. Only 4 people in total and they bought products, £250 worth. Well that was an unexpected win, coming home I told what had happened and hubby agreed, it sounded like it might be a good idea to maybe try this. After all, the kids had started going to preschool and school, I was just sitting at home, it might give me something to do.
That was how my ‘beauty business’ started. I did the training, went to all the meetings, but didn’t feel confident that I could teach someone how to do makeup without actual professional qualifications, so I signed up to a makeup artistry course and got my qualifications.
I started to believe the company I signed up with was genuinely just a wholesale supplier to beauty professionals. After all most of the girls who joined either were already qualified or went through the training by the company and having done my MUA course I knew the training from the company was actually really good as I didn’t learn much more than I already had, other than some specific beauty treatments like eyebrow tinting, waxing and threading.
Knowing this got me to believe in the company and I already liked the products as I had been using them for well over a year by then.
I never thought the business was all about recruiting and the upline earning from the downline. The company paid the commissions to the directors and there were only really 2 people in the upline and that wasn’t exactly a pyramid, plus we always meet together with the other ladies, so it seemed more like one big team and they were just the more experienced ones who were teaching us newbies how to run our beauty businesses. There was always only a Director and her Unit. There didn’t seem to be any other hierarchy and they did call it dual level marketing, not multi level marketing, so it seemed all very legit.
Of course you have to hold some stock, after all you can’t sell from an empty shop and well, when you go into a salon, they always have some stock as well, either to sell to their clients and some to use in treatments and demos. So again that made sense and I didn’t have to buy in boxes of 6 or 12 as I had seen from other brands of salon suppliers, so again I thought I was on a good deal as an independent consultant.
So maybe Mary Kay wasn’t as bad as all the others, maybe this could work, maybe I could make it work. To be frank, after 9 years, I haven’t got much to show for my time as an independent beauty consultant, even after the additional training as a nail technician and beautician, I still didn’t get the clients to run a full time Beauty Studio, getting clients was the hardest thing.
It wasn’t so much a beauty business as a marketing business and in essence the directors are always trying to get their downline to recruit so they can move up the career path to become a National Director, the coveted spot at the top of the pyramid. If there’s a career path, then surely none of the consultants, National Sales Director or at the bottom of the career path, none of them are really running their own independent business. They don’t set the prices, don’t make or pick the products, it’s all dictated by Mary Kay.
There’s only 2 National Sales Directors in the U.K. that sort of echos the FTC’s statistics, only 1% makes it to the top in this business, the other 99% make less than living wages.
Maybe there are a few more in Mary Kay that make living wages, mostly the Directors, considering the wholesales discount is 30-40% for everyone (as you would do if you were buying wholesales from other beauty brands). Where in other companies only the top ever achieve that sort of wholesales discounts.
The top also get bonuses paid by the company purely on what their downline does, so whether you have 75 consultants under you in one line or a 1:2 matrix as it’s sometimes called or you have 75 consultants in a pyramid structure 5 under her, who all have 5, who all have 5 under them, the director makes 8-12% on all their orders from the company.
I still call it sales in my head, it’s not sales, it’s a wholesale order, the consultants are the customers of Mary Kay and frankly they don’t care if the products sit in a consultant’s home or office or if they get sold on to an end consumer. They don’t ask, they never ask, they don’t know how many of their products actually end up being bought by consumers, they’re only interested in the sales to the consultants and just assume that each and every consultant sells the products on to end consumers.
However they call it, Direct Sales, Dual Marketing or Multi Level Marketing, there’s recruiting going on and levels to achieve and in January we were informed of the company growth in many ways, 70% more consultants, so many more Directors in Qualification, so many more Directors, there were many mentions about how many more there were climbing the pyramid and only one mention about sales going up and that was 50%, less than the growth of the pyramid. Plus I found out that the company is not doing so well looking at the Companies House data, you can look for yourself and see what I saw. If you’re shocked that Amazon or Starbucks doesn’t pay taxes in the UK, you’ll get what I mean. https://bit.ly/2StOpyE
That clearly set the tone for me, confirmed to me what I didn’t feel right about for a few years… it’s all about the recruiting!
So I left, I quit, I left with a loss. I said I was going to come back on that sending back products I bought in the last year for a 90% refund, I was going to get 10% less than I paid for the products in the first place and then I got paid, in March, after I sent off my products at the end of January and know it got delivered before February ‘21. What’s worse, I only got paid in March and they paid me less than I was owed, so not 90% of the products that I paid. They short changed me by about £375 and I asked them about this and then they paid me about £120, so in effect they acknowledged that they short changed me, however they still didn’t pay me all that I’m owed. I have given 9 years of my life to this company and probably made them tonnes of money, yet they treat me like this and I know I am not the only one!
I still have plenty of products, but I find it hard to deal with it. A lot of it is out of date and I struggle to offer it to sell to people, it’s not something I can do with a clear conscience. So now it’s just taking up space in my home and in my head.
I decided to share my story, because I have to get closure on this and it’s part of the process to get my story out there. My story is mild compared to what others have gone through, at least I haven’t experienced the bullying, the alienation, the being shunned by the people you thought were your friends. My story is nothing like the stories I am now reading or hearing about. So if I am going to share some anti-MLM content, this is why, because I want to help others who have signed up to a scheme like this, not knowing how much damage this sort of business can do to people out there.
Disclaimer: this is my personal opinion, my view on how I have experienced my feelings and how I have interpreted what has happened. This is in no way to defame anyone or any company. It is not a message to put blame anywhere. I was not pressured into anything, I made my own choices based on the information I was told and what I had perceived as truth. This story is my beliefs and my opinions.