Save yourself a headache and do NOT become a Mary Kay consultant. If you like the products, then buy them, preferably not at parties. (Check out eBay and Craigslist if you want to scoop up plenty of Mary Kay stuff that bankrupted consultants are unloading.) The “happy” Mary Kay consultant you know, the one that’s always bragging about sales and how well she’s doing? She’s most likely living on credit cards, or has a wealthy husband backing her folly.
I suspect the captive audience element has been a major factor. This is based on observations from decades ago that Mary Kay ladies seemed to flourish in rural, isolated areas. They provided an excuse for women to have a gathering, with a built-in icebreaker, so the “parties” were relatively popular; some participants might not have had any other real social interaction outside their families at the time. They also brought products directly to the home that the ladies might otherwise have to drive hours to find.
I would be surprised if it has not become harder to succeed in MK sales with the availability of dramatically improved communication and ready access to online ordering.
As a man, I have had limited experience with the Mary Kay world, but my one experience was great.
When I was about 20, my mom had a travel show on TV. She would have travel industry guests from all over the world. One morning, she told me to go pick up some woman from her hotel in downtown Atlanta and bring her to the studio for taping. With my new Porsche 924 only a week old, I was happy to have a errand to run. Skipping some details, the car caught on fire on the highway, and we had to pull over and bail. I was able to get her bags out in time, but the car and my Members Only jacket were goners. A fire truck showed up very quickly, put out the remains, and left me there with some Swedish woman in hysterics. I wasn’t much better, but a pink Cadillac pulled up and asked if they could help.
Cell phones were a decade away, and all I could think of was that this woman had to get to the TV studio. I asked if she could give this woman a ride, and she did. Being flustered, I didn’t get her information, name, tag - nothing. They just drove off with Mary Kay bumper stickers on the back.
After they towed my car away, I walked to my dad’s office - miraculously only 2 miles away! - and was able to determine that the nice Mary Kay lady had delivered her Swedish passenger to the studio on time, rather than taking her home to Zed and the gimp.
Because it corresponds with the loss of my beloved 924 sans insurance, every pink Cadillac I see reminds me of that day, making it kind of a wash.
As in some other MLM schemes, it’s one of the ones where an agent can be successful selling the product. There is a real product there that apparently some people like. I suspect it doesn’t work out that well getting very far down in the levels. Long ago I knew a woman who ran a boarding house. She sold Amway products. Not so much to sell them to others, she was her own best customer. She said it saved her a few bucks in the cost of cleaning supplies, and occasionally she had some outside sales to make a little money on. So not everybody goes broke with these deals. But I find the concept that you engage your friends and family to go out and engage their friends and family in expanding the pyramid for your profit somewhat distasteful.
I am friends with a couple that both sell MLM products. She took it up as a way to make money while being a stay at home mom, he took it up, with different products, to make some spare money.
She is highly organized and very outgoing. She has made a go of it for probably 8 years now, building layers of consultants/salespeople below her. I’ve recently learned that she is looking to get a full time job, because she can’t make enough with this. Why? It’s not because she can’t book sales, it’s because the people she recruits to be downline from her don’t stick around. They come in for a couple of years, and then stop. So what does this tell me? It says that being good at the job isn’t enough to earn a decent wage, compared to a school teacher in a mid-sized town. In order to make decent money, you have to have those layers of sales staff under you, that you get a cut from, and those salespeople have to stick around and keep booking shows, making sales, and recruiting more layers of salespeople.
Around here it seems, at least with my wife and her circle of friends, that most of them have caught onto the MLM parties spiel (Pampered Chef, PartyLite Candles, Passion, etc.) and avoid them.
They seemed really popular about 5 years ago but now everbody kind of knows what the deal is and rather not deal with the hassle of hosting a party much less attending one. Sort of like a dying fad.
Mary Kay is a particularly dangerous MLM scheme to get caught up, precisely because unlike Pampered Chef and the like, they insist that consultants keep product on-hand (at their own expense.) Plus, they discontinue and release new stuff 4 times a year, making a goodly portion of what the consultants have on-hand obsolete. Once the stuff is no longer in the catalog, the consultant will be most likely be forced to sell it at a discount, erasing any profit margin.
The consultants get caught up in a spiral of losing money.
All the while, her “upline” will be pressuring her to bring more people onboard, and order more products for herself and for on-hand stock, simply so that they can make THEIR quota, and so on. For every consultant who’s a top-tier empty-titled “National Sales Director” driving a “free” car (that has to be paid for 10 times over, every month, or it is repossessed) there are at least twenty bankrupted and financially drained women in her wake.
It is a really brutal, deceptive company that does a lot of damage to those people who can least afford it.
I have purchased makeup, Avon skin products, jewelry, and probably a few other things from these MLM parties. Not once have I discovered a product that is superior to that which can be more easily obtained at a far lower price. Often, the makeup and skin care products you can find at your local Walgreen’s are just as good if not better quality than Mary Kay or Avon.
And Mary Kay reps always look like painted up tarts to me. When I think of Mary Kay, my brain immediately thinks of Tammy Faye Bakker (Messner) makeup.
I recently saw a fascinating TV special about her. Tupperware really stabbed that woman in the back!
I agree you need a special kind of sales personality to be a success at that sort of thing–I would rather drink cyanide; I am not a sales type, worse luck.