Mary Kay Cosmetics: Destroying Half a Million Women a Year
To many, my fight against Mary Kay Cosmetics is puzzling. Why would I want to waste my time with it? After all, they’re only selling lipstick. It’s a harmless company started by a little old lady 45 years ago who wanted to give women an opportunity.
WRONG! Mary Kay Inc. is anything but harmless, and that’s why it’s so important for me to continue to educate people about the company. They are running a scam that brings in $2 billion in sales to headquarters each year.
Where does this money come from? Often from those who can least afford it. The name of the game is recruiting and frontloading. Bring her in and get her to buy an inventory package of $600 to $4800 right away. (If she doesn’t buy within the first couple of weeks, the chances that she will buy anything at all go down exponentially.)
Start with the largest package and work your way down. All the while, tell the new Mary Kay consultant that she can’t be successful without a “full store” of products. Tell her that if she wants to be at “profit level” and really start bringing in money for her family, she needs a lot of products. After all, you can’t sell from an empty wagon!
Mary Kay is a recruiting scheme. The vast majority of the products sold to the consultants is never resold to an actual customer. Is it because the consultants really don’t try to sell? No! It’s because the products are of mediocre quality and are overpriced. Besides that, women have oodles of choices on the internet and in the stores. There’s just no need to go through the hassle of dealing with a Mary Kay lady, especially when you know that she’ll eventually try to recruit you and never let up!
Here are some numbers and facts that I pulled together for Pink Truth, my consumer education site about Mary Kay. Word on the street is that recruiting figures are way down in the past year, but the below numbers are the most recently reported numbers from Mary Kay Inc.
From Pink Truth:
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some real figures regarding Mary Kay and consultant turnover. We often hear pro-Mary Kay women (and their brainwashed husbands) rave that there are millions of women who have had wonderful experiences as consultants, so the company must be fantastic.
Now here’s my theory. Are women quitting Mary Kay because it was everything they wanted and more, and because they were making money doing it? Or do they quit because they are dissatisfied and are not making money? I submit to you that the reason women quit being independent beauty consultants for Mary Kay Cosmetics is by and large because of failure in the business.
I do understand that some may be perfectly happy in Mary Kay, but quit because of family circumstances or other reasons. I’m just saying that the vast majority likely quit due to a negative experience.
Over time, Mary Kay has been increasing its beauty consultant count. Now it’s important to note that this is the count of consultants at any given time, such as the year end total. The number disclosed by Mary Kay does NOT include all the women who may have come and gone during the year. Mary Kay simply picks a point in time and says “Today we have X consultants.”
In the United States, there were 500,000 consultants in 2001. In 2005, that number was 715,000. Worldwide the numbers have been growing quite a bit faster. (Hence the push to open new markets like India and the Czech Republic.) In 2002, there were 950,000 consultants worldwide. In 2005, that number was 1.6 million.
Here’s where it gets interesting and where we find out the truth about the number of consultants that Mary Kay Cosmetics churns each year. I’m using United States figures below, because of the disclosures that Mary Kay made last year.
In 2006, Mary Kay disclosed that the company had over 700,000 independent beauty consultants in the United States. This was similar to the 2005 reported figure of 715,000 consultants in the United States. This implies that at the current time, the number of consultants is staying relatively stable. (i.e. For every consultant recruited, one drops out.)
Mary Kay stated in its response to the FTC’s proposed Business Opportunity Rule , that there are 2,400,000 “disclosure opportunities” (meaning interviews) per year. That’s 200,000 women interviewed per month. Mary Kay Cosmetics further stated that there are 40,000 new recruits per month. (Thank God those other 160,000 per month said no… a total of two million women per year who turn Mary Kay down.)
At 40,000 new recruits per month…
That means that during 2006, Mary Kay Inc. recruited 480,000 women in the United States, and 480,000 women in the United States quit. Add the 480,000 quitters to the 700,000 (or so) U.S. consultants on the books at the end of the year, and we’ve got a total of 1,180,000 (yes that’s over 1 million) women in the United States who were “in” Mary Kay at some point during 2006.
What a staggering churn rate, though, isn’t it? Depending upon how you look at it… 41% of the 1,180,000 involved during the year quit. Or of those 700,000 on the books at the end of the year, 69% of them will quit in the following year. 480,000 women churned and burned in 2006.
During 2007, Mary Kay will burn through another 500,000 American women. And in 2008, they’ll burn through another 500,000. And so on every year….
Mary Kay, destroying half a million women’s lives every year.
Related posts:
- The Continuing Mary Kay Cosmetics Con
- Press Release: Fraud Investigator Develops Public Awareness Website Regarding Mary Kay Cosmetics
- The fight against Mary Kay Cosmetics gets some press
- Scam busting: Being indoctrinated into the Mary Kay world
- Mainstream Media Recognizes Mary Kay Cosmetics As a Product Based Pyramid Scheme
Tags: mary kay cosmetics, mary kay inc, pyramid scheme
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Comments (624)
This is so true I was scamed into it at the young age of 19. I was talked into getting a credit card and buying the starter kit. My recruiter also told me I needed to build a stock to be successful. So I started to try selling it but fail completly. Who wanted to hear a 19 year old tell them what was best. My credit card soon went to collections cause I had no job to fall back on. I quit school and have been waitressing ever since. Trying to pay my bills and trying to fix my debt.
Bible reading Christian on one hand and Tarot card reader on the other? Doesn’t mix! I won’t preach here, just wondering how you can justify making money on something like reading Tarot cards.
The math really does explain it all. In 2010 approximately $2.6B in revenues with 1.8M beauty consultants world wide. That’s exactly $1,444.44 in sales annually per consultant. Right around the amount of “inventory” initial consultants are told to purchase. Given that approximately half churn each year it becomes very obvious as to who the few are that are making money – it’s not the directors or consultants – it’s the executives and the rest of the 4,600 or so actual employees who are actually employed by the company (with benefits like insurance and vacation and a regular salary). Say whatever you like but the math simply does NOT support any kind of success at MK. BTW I have never worked for MK or been a consultant – just been hit up by those who wanted me to join.
I am a current consultant, and I am in the process of quiting and sending back my inventory! I actually was pretty happy as a consultant, but found it rather strange, that we are unable to advertise our MK site online!!! I ran an ad on google, which ended up getting linked to eBay, I received an email from an anonymous director, whom said she was turning me in for illegal advertising!! Hmmm, why was this director shopping on eBay for MK products anyway?? Really, I don’t have the time or money to put up with the craziness of this business, it is a complete scam!!
Many years ago I was a MK rep and the above article is completely accurate. In 1995 women did not have the ability to research such fraud. I am currently looking into AVON and would love any feed back you have to offer. Stay Strong and Aware Ladies, Be well, Kel
Thank you for the posts & for opening my eyes, was ready to become consultant after losing my job two years ago & not being able to find any work.
Linda, you can’t compare buying groceries to buying make-up. Make-up isn’t a nutritional factor in your families life, well at least not in mine. Besides if you need make-up Right Now!, like you need food, then there are more issues there to think about.
its even harder to sell
yes, they did this to me too. I wish someone would file a class action lawsuit against them because I am still stuck with over $1000 worth of old inventory. Obviously people are so desperate that they are selling it on ebay and amazon for less than 25% of the retail value despite the fact that amazon and ebay take 30% of the sale price!! literally women are selling the things for pocket change.
My best friend is now a consultant and started off paying not just $100 for the start up kit, but purchasing $1200 on a Mary Kay credit card. She joined Mary Kay to help eliminated the debt she already had from loosing her job and being a mom of two small girls, but the way the economy is right now this turned out to be a bust! No one is buying especially at their rediculous prices! I fear she may have dug herself into a deeper financial hole!
Mary Kay put my daughter and her husband so far in debt it was ridiculous! Always the promise of the brass ring, which only seemed to be caught by the directors/recruiters. She unexpectently passed away recently and there is still a box of unsold Mary Kay products we have to disposs of. Thousands of $$$ worth “you need this to keep your business going” stuff that will now go to the dump!
Sue, you can return your inventory and they will give you 90% of your money back.
I wasn’t aware that buying parts for your car to make sure it runs was a waste of money. And in the MK world, you drive to your shows, classes, fairs, training, etc. So if your car isn’t running, I don’t think it’s going to work out quite that well.
At least they’re happy being scammed? That’s like saying “Who cares if they’re being beaten, as long as they’re happy when it happens.”
And for far less money, women can find other social groups, such as a book club. At $15/month for the book, it’s a far better outlet.
I am a Mary Kay dealer have been for 3 months. I have not sold anything. Why? Because I have absolutely done nothing. I am concerned with societies excesses always blaming others for their unhappiness. If it was not Mary Kay then it would be something else they would have buyers remorse from. We need to be responsible for our decisions and actions we make and not blame others.
April – By and large the women I have met through pinktruth.com DO take responsibility for their choices. What they cannot and should not take responsibility for are the lies they were told. There is rampant dishonesty in Mary Kay, particularly in the recruiting process and in conning women to stock inventory. They believed the lies they were told, as this unethical company promotes a squeaky clean image and pretends that the recruiters are “helping” women who come into the company. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are predators whose number one goal is to con women into the company and then con them into purchasing large amounts of inventory they will never be able to sell.
I received my starter kit from MK about 2 weeks ago and I have already quit. I felt extremely pressured to buy big bulks of inventory. I mean numerous calls, voicemails, texts and emails a day! I continously told the lady that my husband wanted me to prove i would have somewhat of a customer base before he would hand out that kind of money and she actually wanted his phone number so she could talk to him about it. She said he didnt understand how important it was that i have inventory before i can sell. Then after that didnt work she proceeded to talk me into asking friends or family for loans so i could get my inventory! I tried telling the lady I have 5 children and it is a month before Christmas I CANNOT afford to buy 600-2400 worth of make-up! I finally just had to start ignoring the texts, calls, emails, and voicemails. I was very excited about getting into the MaryKay business until I began too feel uncomfortable from all the pushiness. And to be honest it got to the point that my husband and I were getting pissed!
I was reading all the post and this is quite interesting to hear the frustrations from women who have not succeeded in Mary Kay. I am not a Sales Director but I am consultant with a few team members. I have been selling MK for almost 3 years now. I decided to learn first how to sell the products because the products do sell and women love MK products, not all but most of them. Whenever you(in general) decide to get serious about owning your own business you have to know your business. MK provides all the necessary educational tools for all of us to become successful in this business. You have to take advantage of using the tools. The Mary Kay Biography is very important. Without reading it one will never understand the business. Mary Kay talks about how important it was to her to make women feel special and appreciated. If you want more you have to do more. Everyone does not get this concept. She also talks about God first, Family second, and Career third. What an order! Success happens when you put your life in order. Success does not happen over night and if it did we would all be happy! One has to work hard and owning a home based business is very hard. It takes commitment and dedication to succeed. The companies we choose to go and work for has a person most higher than anyone and do you think that person sleeps more than we do? Look around at your surroundings and imagine how the businesses are still in business and then look at the ones that are not in business any longer. One should question why is that? What happened? I do think some of the directors in Mary Kay are a little persuasive but it’s only because they have set a goal for themselves and they make plans to reach their goals. She also has a goal set for that person she recruits. Without expectations what do you think would happen? No expectations, no results. For the person that started this website and the Pinktruth, I was almost convinced they were right. But I feel they were only right because they got tired of sales and rejection from all the no’s that you do get in this business. I learned over the years that when a consultant gets 1-5 no’s they quit. They first thing they say is, “Nobody wants to buy these products and people are saying they are too high”! But they don’t talk about how much money they just spent the day before. I have been trying to become a Director since I joined Mary Kay. I have been in and out of DIQ. Yes I was complaining to and ready to quit. But I kept asking myself why quit now? Other companies and home based businesses go through the same thing. Disappointments every single day and quarter. Did you hear the US Post office is getting ready to layoff over 100,000 workers? I think it’s good when you can air your frustrations, but I do know with Mary Kay Cosmetics you can call the 1-800 # and talk to a live person, you can pass out business cards and also get names and phone # from potential prospects. You can have a mentor other than your Sales Director or the person that recruited you. You have choices and that’s what I love about Mary Kay. I earn my money from selling my products and doing gift baskets. For the person that wants to return products, get creative and make some beautiful gift baskets. Go to some of the women’s shelters and donate a few. The military people are looking for some body & face products that they don’t have access to right now. Help someone and I know you will be helped. I hope this blesses you and prayerfully you can pass your blessing on to someone else. Great day! Cheryl
why didn’t you send it back to mary kay and get 90% of your money back?
I have seen a few ladies say this, but i will say it as well for people who didnt see it. People stuck with mary kay products that are not selling and send the products back and get 90% of your money back…
To the lady who was looking into Avon, save your time. Avon is worse than MK. If you don’t sell a certain $$ amount each campaign, you get no discount. I have sold both, MK products are by far better than Avon and so is the sales program, but I am out of both for all the obvious reasons – nobody was buying.