Losing Money on MK Inventory
Mary Kay products are so easy to sell! They just fly right off the shelf! It’s not even really like selling… you just share the products and people buy them. Except they really don’t. It’s almost impossible to create a viable retail business in Mary Kay or any MLM. (By viable retail business, I mean can you support yourself on retail sales alone.)
The prospects for selling the inventory you have on hand are so dismal, that women are willing to lose money to sell products to liquidators. Sure, Mary Kay has a program whereby you can return anything you bought in the last year for 90% of the wholesale price you paid. But anything older than that and you’re stuck with it. What are women to do? They build up thousands of dollars of inventory, adding a couple of hundred dollars here and a couple of hundred there. I shudder to think of the millions of dollars of products that are sitting in basements and garages and will never be sold.
One woman is trying to sell her inventory on Facebook Marketplace, hoping to get $1,250 for a lot of products worth over $2,000 wholesale. That’s a 37.5% discount off wholesale pricing. And she says that the price is the amount she still owes on her credit card for that inventory. She further said has “already lost out on thousands of dollars.” We can only guess how much inventory she had that she sold at a deep discount on wholesale prices.
Remind me again what a great business Mary Kay is? How you buy something for $1 and sell it for $2, and therefore have all the profits? Unless you can’t sell it (which is most people who get involved in MLM) and end up losing thousands of dollars.
Visit the
What they don’t tell you is the MK “wholesale” price is much higher than market “retail” for products of similar quality. From MKC’s perspective, the consultants are paying retail prices. MKC’s “cost” is a tiny fraction of what they charge the sales force for the products.
To make this a viable business for the sales force, MKC would have to drop the “wholesale” price significantly to allow the sales force to mark it up and still sell at a competitive “retail” price. As with all MLM products, the high distribution cost of the grossly inefficient MLM model pushes the price way too high for the product value, thanks to comissions and bonuses paid to so many layers of uninvolved upline parties. These products are simply too expensive for the value, making it nearly impossible to sell outside the downline.
By paying commissions and bonuses only to the person making the sale, MKC could drop by the “wholesale” price by well over 50%, making it at least possible for the sales reps to price the products competitively, giving them a chance to sell these products with a decent margin. As it is, even when selling at a loss, the products are still too expensive to create any real market demand.
But MLMs like MK don’t care what happens to the product once it has been purchased by the sales force. The downline is the true customer in their view…no outside sales necessary!
So many old products 20 years old at least. She can never return them. Pink and silver compacts late 90s to mid 2000s. So much debt. But the products fly off the shelf. Only during earthquakes and hurricanes or when the cat knocks them off. And to the far right expired Terme D’Isola. When it expires it apparently smells like degreaser mechanics use. Who is going to buy such a huge glut of MK? Not anyone in MK. Not allowed and it won’t give you commission.
And those eyeshadows and MK@Play were phased out in 2015.
Yeah…. there are a lot of products there that came out in the late 1990s. No one is going to buy products that are 30+ years old.
Her best bet is to throw it out and recycle as much of the plastic as possible.
Even if these were current items, no active consultant would buy them (unless recently discontinued) because they won’t get their “credit” for Star or DIQ or what have you.
It’s really freakin’ sad. If Mary Kay were truly about sales, they would base “production” on actual sales to customers, not on inventory orders. But alas, they wouldn’t make enough money that way.
She doesn’t understand sales at all. She’s asking an amount because it’s what she needs to “recoup”…when the truth is, the products will sell for WHAT SOMEONE IS WILLING TO PAY FOR THEM which may or may not be what she “needs”.
In legit retail (where I have a ton of experience), yes we set retail prices based on what we paid for the product, but we also carefully chose our wholesale suppliers and products based on what such products were generally selling for to the end consumer. This MK contractor, like all of them, paid MK what MK wanted for the product and then tried to push it on consumers at the retail prices suggested. BUT they didn’t sell at those prices. NOW she wants another IBC to buy them from her for a price based on what she NEEDS to get, not based on what profit the buyer might be able to resell them for. Not gonna happen. And trying to sell it all as one lot? LOLOLOLOL. Why would any MK bot buy this stuff from her, when doing so doesn’t give them any production credits from MKC or recognition from their unit or whatever? Again, NOT GONNA HAPPEN.
No kidding. Makeup only sells on the reseller sites if it’s fresh and a desirable brand, neither of which MK is. There is no demand for it.
What she is not telling people in her post is that nearly everything she is selling is expired and discontinued. Why isn’t Mary Kay corporate stepping in to have this post removed? I thought they were “ cracking down” on this sort of thing? It’s apparent they don’t really care.
FYI, y’all: https://www.dmagazine.com/business-economy/2026/02/mary-kay-ashs-son-and-grandson-locked-in-legal-battle-for-future-of-t/
Beautiful.
Heck yes!!!!!!!!!!!
*eyeballs*
*popcorn*
Just came here to post exactly that.
I giggled when Richard said “he never intended Ryan to be CEO, “as I felt he lacked the experience and work ethic required for the position”. It takes a strong work ethic and loads of experience to con women out of their hard-earned money, I guess?
It’s double hilarious because Roger spent his first CEO years screwing around doing nothing but spend money on luxury personal trips and someone else had to crack the whip to get him to sit down and do his job. Pot, kettle.
Not Roger, Richard.
This is THE BEST NEWS ARTICLE EVER lol. Maybe not that earthshaking, but for Pink Truth devotees — it’s the best yet! Thank you so much for finding this gem!
There are several parts I find extremely revealing regarding the motives for the lawsuits, but this is what I have found most appalling, and ultimately, not at all surprising.
Ryan Rogers provided the statement that he aims to fulfill good old granny’s wishes that the family remain committed to keeping the promises and honoring the duties mkash defined as:
– preserving assets
– treating every beneficiary impartially
– safeguarding the family legacy for generations to come
I am 60 years old. I have strived throughout my life to overcome my inborn naivete and stop being a font for believing all things stupid. Me has failed. Cause I truly, honestly did think that there would be a sentiment in there about the family legacy continuing to keep at the forefront the care and well being of the millions of people who have made MK the money-churning behemoth that has provided the descendants of the queen korpse to live in the manner to which they are wholly undeserving.
I truly did think there would be a little, tiny recognition for the lives raped and plundered by the family corporation for 60+ years now.
I meant to say “Thank you MultiLevelMoneylosing and Coralrose” for finding the article.
I did post all but the first two paragraphs in the article’s comments so my name is there, which is fine. Just don’t want anyone to think I might not have realized it would be, or that I might be upset. The only thing I questioned was if I should have had a definition footnote for my personal pet names/words lololol.