More Speculation on Mary Kay Circling the Drain
Written by Parsons Green
Seminar is quickly approaching. Mary Kay just announced that both the Corporate Office and the manufacturing plant would be closed to visitors. Mary Kay attributes this to the need for corporate employees to travel to Fort Worth for seminar. They just won’t have the staffing to handle guests.
The Mary Kay ladies are upset! Even though seminar is in Fort Worth, it’s still close enough for consultants to drive to Dallas to visit these facilities. Jacqueline Kerris was going to have her son was going visit too.
Natalia Travilina laments that golden era of Mary Kay is over. New consultants will never know how great it used to be. 
Karen Saphos reminds Jacqueline that Fort Worth is an hour away. Please give the company grace. Jacqueline shares that she’s been a director for almost 25 years. They’ve always had seminar – why now does corporate need this group of employees to work at seminar? Karen adds that she’s been a director for 37 years. Mary Kay can’t control this. Jacqueline says the company doesn’t have to provide shuttles. Consultants can find their own way to get to these buildings.
Hillary Briggs has a BOLD thought. She feels the company is saving money with all these changes and will soon give directors higher bonuses and commissions! Pat Ringnalda is a realist and isn’t sure why Hillary thinks this. She’s seen a decrease in sales because her customers don’t want to use My Shop! Sylvia Barritt is scared that there will never be another seminar in the Dallas convention center. She has heard that the company is reducing staff because of the focus on My Shop.
Stacy Steele wants everyone to focus on sharing the opportunity with more women. It’s the company’s responsibility to save money. Tami Kring reminds everyone that corporate visits have always been scheduled when the career conference is in Fort Worth.
Why do you think corporate has nixed these visits? Could there be something they don’t want consultants to see? Or has the financial situation become so dire that they can’t spare the employee expense to make these tours happen?
Visit the
The corporate building is for sale. They might be packing things up and closing things down.
“From what I understand, they have a very slim staff because we are moving into a digital direction.”
Is MyShop is just an offering to give the appearance that MKC does not expect the sales team to front-load? If the incentive structure does not change, and downlines decide to hide MyShop from their customers and front-load anyway, any harm they do to themselves is on them. MKC can simply say, “Look, we provided a simple mechanism to allow you to run your business without front-loading. Your choice to order more than you can use or sell is on you, not us.”
Secretly, MKC will hope most downlines will hide MyShop from their end-customers and continue to over-order, and continue MLMing without any direct pressure from MKC. The uplines will keep the front-loading pressure on…their commissions depend on it! If the FTC comes calling, MKC will not hesitate to throw xSDs under the bus, even though their incentive structure rewards this exact behavior.
I just don’t see how MKC can survive without front-loading. But they are clearly afraid of FTC action. Ryan is in quite a pickle.
They’re not hiring. I wonder if there have been layoffs, or if they’re counting on regular attrition rates to thin out the workforce at HQ. In the new agreement they’re telling people not to overbuy inventory. Sales are down overall.
My wild guess is that the Big Announcement coming this fall will coincide with them moving manufacturing overseas. Probably SE Asia and/or China, where labor is cheap and the laws are different. I also have a hunch that Ryan will become some sort of honorary figurehead
so that he won’t have to try and think or interact with the huns any moreto carry on Granny’s legacy but the actual running of the company will be by a board of directors straight out of Dilbert.Oh, and the Consultomer Complaints department will also be outsourced overseas, to which the huns will react predictably.
And we get to watch!
Shoot, I meant to reply to Data Junkie.
They already have a manufacturing presence in China, ostensibly so they can comply with China’s requirement to animal test without allowing those products into the US market where they pride themselves on not testing on animals. But, as with all things, there’s very little visibility on what goes where. Just another set of magic tricks played on unsuspecting customers, ahem, consultants.
It sounds like Mary Kay is running the company on bare bones staff. Are there any statistics on lay-offs in manufacturing or corporate? If the corporate headquarters building is for sale, where are they relocating to? Are they thinking of sending manufacturing out of the country? JAFRA a company that started in Malibu, CA moved their manufacturing to Mexico. That company is 70 years strong mostly due to the Hispanic market. Their annual conference includes a company night ( closed to the public) at Universal Studios! Mary Kay doesn’t even have enough staff to allow for museum and manufacturing tours at the consultant’s expense to get there from Fort Worth. It will be interesting to hear what other announcements Mary Kay has in store for Seminar attendees. Stay tuned!