Mary Kay consultants are not on board with the new “My Shop” online stores that the company has set up for them. In fact, they hate it. Too many restrictions, not enough options, service charges, not enough profits. Most importantly, this program requires that all orders be filled by Mary Kay Inc., so that stale inventory you have sitting in a closet is going to keep sitting there.

Maybe we should give consultants more credit for understanding the scam. Maybe they get it that Mary kay is cutting the consultants out of the equation? Maybe this is a move toward an affiliate model of business?

Let’s look closer at My Shop. There are a few hundred thousand consultants in the U.S. (Mary Kay hasn’t told us the actual number in YEARS because they have dropped so dramatically. There were about 700,000 U.S. consultants in 2006, but then the reports stopped.) Let’s go with 300,000 consultants. In the first month, 42,000 consultants set up a My Shop.

Everyone at Leadership Conference got excited about that, but it’s only 15% of the sales force. Mary Kay hyped up the program for a few months, and this is all they could get?

And in that first month, there were 21,000 online orders. Think about this: It’s one order for every other consultant who signed up. Even worse: If you look at the total number of consultants, it means 7% of consultants got 1 order, and 93% got no orders. This is not a successful program.

Sales director Emily Schuette confirms that her unit doesn’t want to set up the shops. She called all of them. They weren’t biting, so she had to start a promo. Emiliy is giving away a Kate Spade wallet and $40 to one lucky winner!

It’s free for consultants to set up a My Shop, but no one is doing it, so you have to give away a prize to get them to do it? Something is wrong, don’t you think? Make no mistake, there are plenty of sales directors who aren’t setting up My Shop because it’s a bad deal for them.