Why Can’t We Trade MK Products?
Your Mary Kay sales director encourages you to NOT trade products with other consultants. Why?
Mary Kay Inc. makes less money and your director gets a smaller commission check!
Of course the company and the sales directors are going to “discourage” trading Mary Kay products among consultants. It is far better for their wallets if you have to place an order to get that one lipstick or eye color that your customer orders and you don’t have. And it’s even better for them if you don’t have your “earned discount privilege” and you have to order $225 wholesale that you don’t need (instead of just the one or two items that you need).
Now naturally, they’re not going to tell Mary Kay consultants that the reason they don’t want you to trade is for their own selfish reasons. Nope. They have to make up other plausible-sounding reasons. Yeah… they actually try to convince you that making you place a too-big order that has lots of items you don’t need is actually GOOD for you!
Here’s one handout on this:
In the early years of my business, we needed to place a minimum $600. order to receive 50% discount. It also could take 2 or 3 weeks to receive an order. As a result, we did a lot of trading and even borrowing from each other. Unfortunately, that did not aid in each Consultant becoming an independent business woman who had great money management skills. Some actually became dependent on their sister Consultants inventory and never built their product level.
Women who would never call another person and ask to borrow $200. in cash did not think about doing the same thing asking for product.
In our effort to be go-give, we created some really bad habits. By the time I moved from New Castle in 1992, my front door had become a revolving door with Consultants wanting to trade. I took full responsibility for creating that monster even by the way I was recruiting. I actually said in interviews, “The consultants all help each other out if we run out of certain colors, etc.” 🙁 Of course, we get what we talk about.
Side note: I could tell a lot about someone’s integrity by the condition of the products that they wanted me to take. 🙂
Now, the good news!!! Our business opportunity has continued to get better and better. We can now order as little as $225. and receive 50% discount. We can place an order and have it in a few days. The Earned Discount Privilege is available for those emergencies that we run out of something right after we order.
Therefore, we can run our businesses independently of other Consultants. It is not their responsibility to supply product for us to service our customers. Here are some things that I would like for you to consider for the new Year.
1. Build your product level up to the point that you can deliver to your customers anything they need when they need it. If you are not there yet, focus on skincare first because customers need that immediately. If they have to wait a few days for color, they probably will.
2. Place an order instead of calling another Consultant. It is always best to place at least $225. A larger order allows you to take advantage of bonus products. If you must order less, why not call a few more customers and get the order up so that your profit is not reduced by the cost of shipping.
3. If you get an order for something that you don’t have and your customer needs it right now, call another Consultant and give her the sale. If it is her product that is being sold, then the profit should be hers.
4. If a Consultant calls you to trade (I think everyone is passed asking to borrow)…it is O.K. to say No. One of my top selling Directors shared with me that someone called for a product, she went to look for it and came back and said, “oooooh, I only have 15 of those on my shelf and I fear if I give one to you, I won’t have what I need for my customers this week”.
5. Remember time is money. Time spent one way takes time away from something else. Any time spent trying to find product, going to get it, etc. is wasting both the person’s time that is asking for the trade and the person who is trying to accommodate. Everyone just needs to order and manage our own products.
I’ve often heard directors use a “quality” scare tactic to try to get you to not trade products. You know…. gosh, you never know how that consultant stored her products and it would be so much better to get fresh products from the company…
Sorry, but trading is a great way to help one another out, especially when your recruiter placed your first (large) inventory order for you and happened to get you odd things you’ll never sell.
Visit the
“…oooooh, I only have 15 of those on my shelf and I fear if I give one to you, I won’t have what I need for my customers this week”.
::Popinki snortlaughs hard enough to startle the cats, who give her reproachful looks::
Like anybody is selling 15 items a week, total, let alone 15 of the same thing. And if she did sell all the remaining 14, she could just drop $225 to replace it, right? And when #15 comes along 🤣😝😾
she can just give that sale to another consultant as part of the Go Give spirit, right?
The fact that they’d think anyone would find this plausible or reasonable just shows that they’ve got zero respect for the IBCs’ common sense and intelligence.
I am currently on a quest to find a new blush. Do you know how many of each color my local Ulta stocks? Three. Max. Fifteen of one item is absurd in a real retail shop—unless you’re a grocery and the item is milk. Cosmetics don’t turn over that fast! Real businesses know not to overstock.
And while we’re on the subject, why not just use My Shop? Then you can take your 30% profit cleanly (after shipping, of course) and not fool with inventory or minimum purchases at all!
^^ THIS. Major cosmetic stores don’t carry huge amounts of inventory unless it’s a new release (even then, the amount of X item is limited).
Ulta’s 25 Days of Beauty is currently happening, and there is more stock on the sale items because those are selling.
When I was a Dior makeup artist, it would drive me nuts that a store would hold a large event, our AE would bring in a lot of us artists, but then we’d run out of whatever is popular in skincare or makeup on day 1. We either had to think creatively with color or have the store ship them the item. None of the stores I worked in kept large inventories of items. They order based on last year’s numbers for that item during that week/month. It’s very controlled so that the store does not over purchase. The only exception (somewhat) was Christmas fragrance items. But even then it was based on last year’s purchases.
And Ulta even has real customers!
Recruiting and front-loading are the name of the game in MLMs like Mary Kay. Whether initial inventory or qualifying minimums, they want to keep the gravy train flowing from the consultants upward, regardless of retail sales.
Why $225 to get the discount? Totally arbitrary. I can see giving free shipping on only larger orders. But the $225 is totally arbitrary to force quarterly front-loading.
If this were really about retailing, the MK rep could collect and place orders for her whole sales team, with not a single person under her signing an MK agreement. Ideally, she’d have plenty of volume to be able to order what her sales team needed and keep up the minimums so everyone gets product at wholesale, no matter how little or how infrequently they sell, with no front-loading on their part, and very little, if any, inventory holding on the part of the MK rep.
These sales reps (who are not IBCs) would keep the margin, as the IBCs do today, but all the risk would sit with the IBC/xSD, as it should be, who would also keep all the commissions. The only sticking point would be who pays shipping cost to the end customer, when shipping is needed. Many simple solutions available there.
But no one does it this way in MK, because retailing is not the point. All the incentives are tied to ordering and recruiting, with no corporate incentive to actually sell the product. If retailing were the point, what I described above would be common in MK, and the sales force would be incentified to actually sell, not just to order or recruit.
Alas, MK is a typical MLM, where the primary revenue source is the sales rep, not the outside customer. Sure, the Mk reps try to move product, but they end up with tons of unsold inventory, by design.
Mary Kay and the upline win, while the downline loses.
The ONLY way I was able to make a small profit over the years in MK was by trading/buying a product off of other consultants. I could use the miles as a tax deduction at least. It kept me from having to make a big purchase when I only needed an item I didn’t have. I looked out for what was best for me and my business and ignored my director.
But…you don’t make any real money by selling MK. You can’t. The system is designed to push you to recruiting or buying a lot of inventory you don’t need. You can ONLY make a small profit off of sales by being very frugral with party items and discounts, by trading when needed, not getting into the hype of decorating gift sets with lots of cute things, not going to seminar, conferences, etc.
I made my gift sets from yard sale finds (baskets for 25 cents painted white, red, or gold, and so forth) that added no more than $1 to the cost of the entire set. I found pine cones and nature items as decor (free). I was very, very frugal.