Written by Frosty Rose

If you value transparency, well, Mary Kay is not your safe space. Misleading income claims, lying about “free” cars and trips, incomplete training “to protect new consultants from themselves,” and that’s just the beginning.

There’s also the pesky detail of corporate changing product formulas at the drop of a hat (fine, it’s cosmetics, it changes) and not informing consultants until the last minute (not fine!). Of course, if you’ve earned (ahem… bought) the title of director, you’ll find out about these changes a few weeks earlier than your consultants, but you’re not allowed to share anything with your unit. Pinky promise!

Naturally, the Mary Kay sales force is about as good at keeping secrets as a sieve is at holding water. Especially in the internet age.

So, what’s the newest? Retinol, of course.

Following an announcement in the EU that Retinol will be banned in concentrations greater than 0.3% beginning in November of this year, Mary Kay has announced a change from Retinol 0.5% to Retinol 0.3% later this fall. The current concentration will be discontinued on July 1.

Now, I’m not knocking the formula change. I can even get behind the company’s reasoning for making such a change, independent of any new EU rules, which are not explicitly mentioned in any company materials that I’ve seen. The current product requires an eight-week “retinization process” (which sounds terrifying), and a calming product (eek!), and cannot be used daily. The new product will apparently be better for most users.

Retinol is a great ingredient, but it’s not one that you start blindly. And I don’t trust the average Mary Kay consultant, whose product knowledge is generally entirely nonexistent, to educate me on an ingredient that requires that the user work up a tolerance and combine other products for maximum effectiveness and minimum short-term damage.

Now, turning to the major problem with this new product, the price point! For a paltry 1 ounce of the new concentration, the retail price will be $70! Ulta has comparable retinol products starting at $8/ounce. Did they do any market research before they decided on this price point? Of course not, because consultomers won’t, blindly trusting the company to do what’s best for them. Ha!

At any rate, don’t tell any consultants about the change yet! After all, they’re not super-duper savvy business women who understand strategy, so they’ll all want to hold their orders until the new product comes out, and not stock up the whole month of July. Directors, on the other hand, understand the need to purchase, in June, absurd amounts of limited shelf-life products that will soon be phased out, because they want to earn a new dollar tree bauble from their national. Credit card balances be damned! We need a new knock-off Coach clutch! Sounds like good strategy to me…

In case you’re interested, here’s a list of color products that will be discontinued on September 15^th.

For the lurkers, please don’t be fooled by the sales they’ll inevitably run next month on these products. For once, please think like a businesswoman. Evaluate your current sales of these products, perhaps call your current customers and see if they want to purchase an extra one or two, and then only order what you’ll sell. Otherwise, it’s going straight to the landfill after you quit Mary Kay or die before you get the chance.

As for the retinol, just put on your best floppy hat and dark sunglasses, maybe don a trench coat, and sneak down to your local Ulta to save yourself some money. You know that’s what your customers are doing, minus the ridiculous disguise.