I thought today was a good day to take a trip down memory lane. Two years ago Harper’s Magazine published an excellent article (the cover story!) about the pink pyramid scheme known as Mary Kay: The Pink Pyramid Scheme: How Mary Kay Cosmetics Preys on Desperate Housewives.  The story got tons of buzz, and there were spirited discussions about it all over the place.

Virginia Sole-Smith went undercover to dig into the world of Mary Kay, finding out the dirty truth about recruiting and inventory frontloading. She found out the sad truth: Mary Kay uses the public image of “enriching women’s lives” as the basis for misleading recruits in a “business opportunity” that almost guarantees they will lose money.

This is great time to review a 2012 Harper’s Magazine cover story, The Pink Pyramid Scheme: How Mary Kay Cosmetics Preys on Desperate Housewives.  Mary Kay immediately responded to the article, but with almost no substance. There have been two primary arguments corporate representatives use to “prove” that Mary Kay is not a pyramid scheme and is a real business opportunity (no, it’s not):

Mary Kay products are sold to end users!

Mary Kay’s Laura Beitler proudly proclaimed, “The majority of the product ends up with end consumers.” Yet when pressed for details on actual retail sales of products, Beitler admitted that corporate does not track this. Thus, her statement that most product ends up with actual consumers is 100% fabricated.

The struggles of new sales director who quit after the debt and the fight became too much for her.

Early in last year, Mia  was flying high. She was a new sales director, in a brand new Mary Kay car, and feeling successful with commission checks between $1,000 and $2,500 per month. The sky was the limit! She would determine her own success based on how hard she was willing to work!

But the truth was that Mia was faking it till she made it.  Mia was exaggerating about how much money she was making, because she believed in talking about your goals and acting as if they were already done! (Sound familiar, anyone?)

One morning, I heard this statement on a television talk show: “One obstacle to recovery is hope.” They went on to discuss how hope plays a part in people recovering from tragedies or moving forward in their lives. I thought it was very appropriate in relation to Mary Kay.

Raisinberry wrote an article on this very issue. Mary Kay lives and dies by hope. So long as you have the “hope” that you might be one of the big winners in the pyramid scheme, you will continue to pour time and money into this losing proposition.

Here’s the truth: Mary Kay admitted in a letter to the FTC that the company recruits 40,000 new U.S. consultants per month. (Boy, I bet legal wishes they had never written that, because they didn’t realize I’d keep repeating it!) That’s 480,000 women a year that the company uses.

Recently a pro-Mary Kay woman attempted to post the following comment on this site:

What does it matter how many people drive a pink Cadillac or how few people make alot of money? Most people in most businesses fail because of numerous reasons… Mainly they don’t work hard enough. As long as the guidelines are understood, which they are, then its up to the individual to make it happen, regardless of who makes what above them. Selling isn’t for just anyone and most people realize they don’t have what it takes and a few succeed. But if a few can succeed, doesn’t that mean anyone can?

Her conclusion is that “…if a few can succeed” then “anyone can.”  This comment is typical of the delusional nature of Mary Kay. I suppose if “someone” broke the world record running 100 meters, then “anyone” can break a world record,” right?  If “a few” people got a perfect score on the SAT, then “anyone” can, right?

Many recruits are snared into Mary Kay Cosmetics with the lure of executive earnings. They are told that the sky’s the limit, and the earnings are unlimited, if only you are willing to work hard enough. Sales directors tout their “highest checks” without ever mentioning all the business expenses that must be paid out of those checks, or that those are a one-time deal and don’t represent their normal commission checks.

The hard workers are the ones who make it big in Mary Kay, right? Wrong. One has to look no further than superstar Allison LaMarr, who was the fastest woman ever to make it to Mary Kay National Sales Director. Yet all of that hard work resulted in a downward spiral that culminated in Allison becoming the fastest quitter in Mary Kay history. She has flailed around since, attempting to be a personal coach, a failed participant  in multi-leve marketing company MLM Bellamora, a former “executive” for multi-level marketer Seacret Direct, and has been spinning her wheels trying to build a downline as a distributor for Seacret. (No wonder she stopped posting publicly about her Seacret stuff long ago!)

Written by ThePinkStink

Today I woke up and thought to myself, “I can’t do this anymore.” I graduated with a degree in Japanese. In other words, pointless degree. I loved the program, so I stuck with it, earned the degree, graduated, then thought… now what? Along came Mary Kay. One of my best friends held a “class” at her mother-in-law’s home and I attended it. She painted such a pretty picture, and I was feeling so down about my worthless degree that I thought, why not give it a go?

I did pretty well. Three recruits one month. Five recruits the next. Decent enough sales, I suppose, but after all, most of the profit was spent on re-ordering, re-stocking, taxes, shipping, cost of gas to get to and from parties, etc.

Last October I was talked into getting a credit card, although when I first joined I refused. But I was doing SO well, with all my recruits, that I thought, it’s time I’m a star consultant. Notice, I wasn’t doing enough in sales to get me to that point yet, so that’s why I said my sales were only decent. In the poor area I live in, my average class of 4-5 people gave me about $100 in sales. And that was on a really, really good day. I know skin care, and makeup, too by the way. I went to school (before Japanese) for esthetics for a while (and will be returning for esthetics this fall, thank goodness). I’m also a good salesperson. But my director said I was just making excuses when I said that my area is poor.

Written by SnoBaby

It annoys me to no end when people make statements of truth but don’t provide factual evidence to prove the point.

I used to only consider this when talking politics.  I’ll give an obviously silly and hypothetical example here.  My husband says, “I’m not going to vote for Candidate A.  He hates old people.”  My question…”How do you know he hates old people? What evidence do you have?”  Now, he may very well have evidence.  Great.  Just give it.  Maybe Candidate A helped write legislation that would cut social security or raise the retirement age.  NOW there is evidence to support his claim.  Perhaps it is hyperbole to say he “hates” old people, but at least you have grounds for saying you won’t vote for him due to his “actions” affecting old people.  Otherwise, the statement is just words spewed out with no relevance or validity.

Probably the most frequent challenge I hear to our real-life experiences with Mary Kay Cosmetics is, “Oh, there’s always one bad apple in the bunch. Don’t judge the entire company by that one person!”

Yet in maintaining this site, I hear similar stories daily. Stories of lying and deception in an effort to get to the top of Mary Kay Inc. I don’t care what anyone says. These incidents are not isolated. I have heard literally thousands of similar stories. Women in MK compromise their morals to move to the next level, get a few extra recruits, or win a prize.

The lies that multi-level marketing recruiters use to con people into signing up for their scams change little from company to company. Dr. Jon Taylor, a noted expert on MLMs, put together a list of common misrepresentations, and here are some of my favorites.

I bet all of us have heard most of these at one time or another in our Mary Kay experiences, either when we were being recruited or when others were being sucked into the pink vortex…

Presented as a great “income opportunity,” with huge incomes reported for many.

Recruiting MLM’s nearly always lead to certain loss for new recruits. A few are at the top of a pyramid of participants are enriched at the expense of a multitude of downline participants, about 99% of whom lose money.