Roll to Disbelieve
Hi and welcome back to a chat post! Multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs) are finally receiving the negative attention they so richly deserve. This week, we have some interesting new developments on the anti-MLM front, including the closure of a couple of MLMs!
(MLM terminology: an MLM is a multi-level marketing scam. Endless-chain recruiting and sales to a closed system are part of what make it a scam. “Huns” work as unpaid salespeople and evangelists for the scam, with fewer than 1% of them earning a living wage. The hun who recruited them is called their “upline.” “Upline” also refers to the entire chain of command above a hun. Anybody they persuade to sign up under them is called a “downline.” “Downline” also refers to everyone signed up underneath that hun — and whoever her signups manage to persuade to sign up, and so on.)
Mary Kay Has Left Australia and New Zealand.
A couple of weeks ago, Mary Kay (MK, a very old makeup-based MLM) pulled entirely out of Australia and New Zealand. They blamed market conditions there for the shutdown. They also claimed to have given their huns notice, but that’s not what I’ve been hearing from the actual huns.
Their blame might be overly simplistic, however. It’s not just conditions in Australia and New Zealand. It’s everything hitting MK at once.
Over on Pink Truth, we discover that MK faces problems worldwide, not just in Aus/NZ. They closed four of their 5 distribution warehouses last month already. That move cost “50 to 60 jobs per warehouse.” Further, they’ve already cut loose all of their customer service employees except for workers at MK center in Texas.
The sleuths at Pink Truth also noticed a lot of corporate restructuring going on recently. Various teams at MK’s mothership have quietly been getting trimmed: marketing, IT, quality assurance, engineering, and R&D.
What of the entire sales development team working with National Sales Directors (MK’s top huns)? All gone, though the ones working with individual sales divisions still have their jobs — for now. One of their sales development support people, Sean Keys, held a job title of “Vice President, Sales Force Motivation & Field Support.” He was extremely popular and regarded as a model employee, so his “deactivation” seems to have surprised a lot of folks.
Pink Truth also relayed rumors about problems at their R&D Center and manufacturing plant. These problems cause serious issues with production, further threatening MK’s profits.
Simply put, MK barely creeps along from month to month lately. It might not be long for them.
Gold Canyon Candles Has Shut Down. (Wait, Who?)
Another MLM, Gold Canyon Candles, shut down recently.
It’s not a huge one, sure. But it’s definitely one. MLM Legal makes that point crystal-clear. As with all MLMs, it paid huns according to a confusing scheme. Huns advanced in levels according to how well they recruited, not according to how well they sold their products. And huns earned commissions from their downline, while whatever they purchased earned commissions for their upline. The more a hun recruited, the more commission she earned. Oh, and they did the scummy “free car” thing other MLMs do that dazzle their huns so much.
Yes, every single red flag one was present and accounted for!
Gold Canyon shut down just as quickly and without-notice as MK did in Australia/New Zealand! I found the official notice from corporate — though the corporate site is already gone. They couldn’t even put a skeleton intro page on it explaining what happened.
The notice I found indicates that the closure was extremely sudden, “effective immediately,” and happening due to “insufficient funds.” My impression is that whoever owned it raided it for cash, then realized they’d accidentally slain the goose that laid their sleazy golden eggs.
Just as we saw with the MK shutdown in Australia/New Zealand, this closure appears to have been quite sudden as well. One hun indicated that she’d gotten notice the night beforehand. Another went to bed thinking (falsely) that she “owned her own business,” and woke up to trying to figure out what to do with her leftover stock.
One down, six bazillion to go. (Yikes…)
But don’t worry about those poor ex-Gold Canyon huns!
Other MLMs smelled blood in the water and sent their huns after them. One essential oil MLM made their intentions crystal-clear, in fact. I found identical copy-and-paste messages across Facebook and Instagram beginning with “Our condolences at the closing of Gold Canyon Candles” and following with come-ons to join their scam instead.
A Rumor To Give Us Heart.
A few weeks ago — and I don’t remember where I heard this, maybe here — but I heard a rumor that the people responsible for the podcast The Dream had gotten word from the gubmint that they were finally gearing up to do something definitive about the plague of MLMs in America. So when I heard that the FTC shut down one of those disgusting-coffee MLMs for wild income-earning claims and a pyramid-scheme structure, and also that they went after some scammy affiliate marketers, I wondered if this was the beginning of a new saga in this story.
Gosh, I wonder what such a move would do to the Hun-in-Chief in the Oval Office? Or to his top-level Cabinet staff? We’ve got the most MLM-friendly executive branch that’s ever existed in American history, it seems like.
In the middle of anxieties about illness, it’s good to know that some good stuff is happening somewhere, at least. And it can’t happen too soon. Huns are already getting shameless in promoting their MLMs during this outbreak. Either they’re falsely claiming that their products can protect or cure people, or they’re falsely offering up their fakey-fake “businesses” as a way to earn money for those who’ve lost their jobs.
A good legal smackdown couldn’t happen to more deserving people. Hey, maybe our government will give religion some side-eye soon. A gal can dream, can’t she?
NEXT UP: Christians’ non-solutions hit peak entitlement these days. We’ll look at why, and see why it won’t work. See you tomorrow!
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