No One Wants to Set Up My Shop
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.
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I don’t know anything about it and it’s already annoying. If I had a crystal ball and looked at the time frame when I would say Buh Bye to MK, it was perfection. Chefs kiss.
Another way to look at this is MK taking a “stand” against front-loading. They no longer allow their online operation to directly support sales from front-loaded inventory. This leaves consultants with two options:
1) Deal with their stock of inventory then promote My Store and stop ordering
2) Continue to order personally then sell to customers without MKC’s online support
MKC can then assert that they have done everything they can to stop front-loading, and if the consultants continue to do it, it is on them, not MKC. But this becomes a token gesture only, because the incentives (commissions and bonuses) remain directly tied to recruiting and front-loading. Until those incentives change, recruiting and front-loading will continue.
Exactly! That’s my question on yesterday’s article about reward trips. Going to Switzerland. Who wouldn’t want to go? And how does one get that trip on the affiliate model? It just can’t be done unless one recruits and front loads.
MyShop is just a token gesture.
“I upped the ANTI” 😂😂😂 Honestly, I think the mistake makes it better.
And it’s going to be copy-pasta all over her downlines.
Do you remember way back how it was drilled into us that we weren’t to sell to anyone unless we had facialed them (except maybe a lipstick) and even then, we couldn’t “break up the set?” How silly it was to think that all of the products were formulated to work together so well that if I used a cleanser or toner from another brand I might burn my skin. Here we are now where anyone can buy from you and buy any product. This is NOT the Mary Kay way that Mary Kay herself taught.
“get their bootie’s in gear”
Is there a rule somewhere that MK consultants be illiterate?
Quite a few do act like babies at times.
They’re probably proud graduates of Liberty U.
OH Geez–I never heard of Liberty until last month! My son’s GF is going there (some sob story how’ nobody likes me so I need to move 15 hours away to start over) . Oh don’t get me started!!!!
I had the misfortune to work with a graduate of LU … I have seldom encountered someone to confidently incorrect about so many things.
I love when directors share privately how desperate they are for their downline do something – ANYTHING – to help THEM with their goals and it makes it’s way to the front page. 🙂
I misread “tiered” discount structure as “tired” discount structure. That fits.
Just another fyi: when a customer orders from MyShop, the consultant is responsible for the returns made by the customer. That means if the customer wants a credit card refund, the ‘cash’ comes out of the consultants bank account. The company ‘pays’ back the consultant in replaced product – not ‘cash’. How often will that happen to a MyShop consultant??? Tons of replaced product will be sitting on their shelves and depleted bank accounts!!!
Wow. The company has always been out to line their pockets and screw over the consultants, and now they’re getting downright blatant about it.
“The company ‘pays’ back the consultant in replaced product – not ‘cash’.”
That’s awful!
“It’s free for consultants to set up a My Shop, but no one is doing it. There are plenty of sales directors who aren’t setting up My Shop because it’s a bad deal for them.”
What a fiasco. This would make a good case study at a business school. You know, like Harvard…
Even if you got rid of all of the other problems with Mary Kay, this right here is enough for me to never EVER want to join: not getting a proper refund and being stuck with products you didn’t want and can’t sell.
With scammers out there stealing CC and bank info, the potential for leaving the consultant on the financial hook for theft and abuse increases the risk even more.
Or, if someone has a beef with their consultant, they can place a huge revenge order, return it, and get the money back while leaving the consultant depleted of hundreds or even thousands and stuck with a mountain of unwanted merch.
Nope, nope, nope! If money leaves my hand, money better be returned to my hand. Getting “compensated” with unwanted product is NOT acceptable at all.
“It sells itself.” Those words are more hollow than ever.
This is not good! The practice of using sales person to take in the return money (all of the sudden), looks to ease corporate financial burden. Playing the retail/wholesale game with your wallet on the line, after it is subtracted. Note the shop is yours when things are going good, but when they are not all you get is double the product return in more product. Golly gee whiz, sales rep gets to try to sell the replacements given out. And your are out the cash, may have interest charges, fee charges, or lose interest on savings acct.
MK Inc. Has always done a wonderful job of shifting financial risk to the consultants. Wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The Kate Spade shop which was located in the heart of the high-end shopping avenue the next town over closed at some point over the past couple of years but I’m not sure when. I’m no marketing expert of fashionista by a long shot but I think that the Kate Spade brand has seen its better days and will probably end up like Calvin Klein. Still around but not really considered current or especially popular.
I’m saying that because Emily S is making a huge deal about a Kate Spade wallet “valued at $98”. I’m going to hazard a guess without googling and say she paid nowhere near $98 for that wallet. Even if the wallet is in fact worth $98, if I don’t want to set up a My Shop, the possibility of MAYBE winning it if I set up a shop wouldn’t move me much, but apparently her downline thinks otherwise.
“she paid nowhere near $98 for that wallet.”
I’m guessing she “earned” it somewhere along the way and is re-gifting it.
She died a few years ago so it’s really not her designs anymore
That’s what’s happening with almost all of the so-called luxury and aspirational brands. They’ve made business decisions that devalued their names and now they’re pretty much just for brokies that are desperately trying to look rich. Even Hermes has lost significant value in the resale market. If someone is flashing a LV bag, they probably spent their last dollar getting it, and if they try to sell it, it will just sit there in Poshmark gathering virtual dust.
Like Michael Kors, Kate Spade has low resale value. Only get the purse if you really like it and are going to use it and you can buy it without it affecting you financially.
No wonder the SDs looove Kate Spade … they seem to have had the same English class.
I checked the outlet store and found this: Gifts for Galentines
That seems to be a popular typo for the people who use AI to write ad copy … which means it’s gonna get worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galantine
Per Google, Galentine’s Day is Feb 13, an informal day celebrating the friendships of women.
Unfortunate that it has the same name as the fruitcake of meats.