Do You "Sell" Amway or Avon Products To Family?

[Ornery]

Does anybody know the details on selling this stuff? How much is the markup on a $5.00 bottle of soap or lotion? Do you buy it for $3.00 and get whatever you can for it? If the catalog says the price is $5.00, do you have to sell it at that price?

And lastly, do you make your family, especially parents, pay full price for it? Do you even try to sell it to them? Or do you clue them in that they can buy the same shiznit at Walmart for a fraction of the price, even with your discount?

 

[Total Refected Power]

Orn:

I doubt you'll be popular. After you exhaust your family then what? Door to door? Ug.

Good luck

 

[fobbman]

Friends and family will be afraid to come over to your house, in fear that you will setup a wipe board and start drawing circles on it.

When you find yourself at a local coffee shop looking to strike up conversations with total strangers in hopes of building your downline, put a bullet in your head instead.

 

[jobert]

A good friend used to sell Amway.

It is a typical pyramid con.

You will find yourself buying tons
of unneeded crap to get yourself into
the next bracket, and get your $30 commission.

Your garage will soon be overflowing with soap suds
and your friends will go to great lengths to avoid you.

You will wake up one day and say
"How could I have conned my friends
into being my 'downline'?"

 

[Ornery]

OMG, I ain't selling any of this junk! But I do know of someone in the family selling this stuff. I do know that other members of the family have some of these wares. I'd like to know what options this person has when selling it.

How much discount is available? What is the cost of this stuff. Could a $5.00 bottle be purchased for $3.00 from the supplier with the savings passed on to other family members? Is that same bottle even worth the $3.00? Could it be purchased for $2.00 in quantities of 10 say?

Edit: BTW, we've agreed (or I demand), that we have no Avon parties, jewelry parties or any other parties at our house and we attend none of them. My kids aren't even allowed to bring candy home from school to sell. When we have to sell raffle tickets or candy and what not for baseball etc., we just pay for the whole pile and give them away.

 

[BoberFett]

My theory that most people are @ssholes that haven't got a clue becomes more and more concrete every day.


Ornery

My wife and I were Amway distributors for a while. Our friends and family knew we were. We didn't try to bury them in cleaning products and they didn't stop being our friends and family. If they wanted to buy something, they knew where they could find it, and since they were friends and family, they even got a price break. No pressure at all.

Some of the products are good, some are bad. Some are an excellent value, like the laundry detergent and dish soap. Other products are terribly overpriced even at wholesale, IMO. The catalogs don't have printed prices in them, so you can choose to sell things for whatever price you want.

Edit: There is no standard markup. Things like make-up and vitamins generally have a very high suggested markup while others are rather low. For the basic cleaning products, if I recall (it's been several years since I've even looked at a catalog) the suggested markup is anywhere from 15% to 30%.

 

[NovaTerra]

Ornery: Get your friend hooked up with Primerica, if they want to sell stuff to friends and family. A LOT more money for the same kind of effort. An Amway rep who makes 30 sales a month makes about 30k/year. A Primerica rep who makes 30 sales a month makes 500k/year. I have done both, and seen the numbers. Amway is strictly chump change for most people.

Just a thought.

And no, I would never buy amway crap--internet deals are too good, you can get better stuff for less money.

 

[FlashG]

My wife has been selling this stuff for a couple of years now. She does OK $ wise but she really gets a kick talking to people about Avon stuff.

She usually takes a couple of booklets with samples and hands them out wherever we go. Home Depot checkout, receptionists at the doctors office, ticket people at the movies.. you get the idea.

The only problem is you need room to store and pack the merchandise for delivery.

She always goes to the monthly district dinner meetings. Sometimes I go with her.

This year she went to Vegas (16K reps showed up) for the annual get together convention. They had Cheir and Richard Simmons as guests. She had a great time and doubled her gambling winnings at the slots.

 

[Ornery]

Thanks BoberFett. I'm am going to be extremely annoyed if I find out they are selling for full price. EXTREMELY! :|

I believe I got the pitch from Primerica by my step sister. We were trying to help her out. It was for life insurance, right? In the end, we had our agent and the Primerica agent there at the same time duking it out. It was UGLY! We bought nothing from Primerica...

 

[jobert]

You will find that most people with
experience with Amway either love em
or hate em... very little in between!

They don't really care what you sell the product for,
and you will probably ending up giving it away,
or stocking your own house with it in order
to get the volume you need to make more
than a few pennies in commissions.

In the beginning (a LONG time ago)
they had one very high quality product,
the laundry detergent, which kinda got them started.
It's too bad that over the years their marketing
practices have turned so many people against them.

 

[FlashG]

To the negative people out there. If you like doing something and use your brain it's not a con.

Is Avon a pyramid scheme? I think not. No one has ever suggested getting rich quick or anything of that nature to us. Yes there are a lot of gullible people out there. But it's up to the individual on how or if you handle your life.

You do have to be organized and spend time at this. Your not going to get rich but you can have a good time if you like this sort of thing.

 

[Wah]

anyone see the movie "Go"? That amway scene was hilarious.

 

[Ornery]

To be specific. The person I know doing the "selling" is getting a LOT of baby sitting, chauffeuring and general support from the person I see with products. If I were the person getting all these favors, there is NO WAY I would even expect ANY money for the products from the person doing all those favors. At worst, I'd expect them to be sold at cost. If I find out they are charging a profit for this stuff, I will go ballistic! I guarantee they've gotten their last PC tech support advice from me! :|

 

[jobert]

Flash...
Amway is the classic pyramid scheme
of all pyramid schemes.

But I certainly agree with most of what you said...
If you enjoy it, do it!

In our area, when they hold their recruiting meetings,
they DO INDEED imply that you will get rich,
complete with vacation cruises, etc. etc.

 

[jobert]

Ornery...
Most of the people who sell Amway
are semi or completely brainwashed.

They really think they're going to make
some real money at it, and they refuse to see it
for what it is, an unending string of
"distributors" trying to get more "distributors"
under them.

Then one day they wake up and see how they're being used
and quit.

Notice that Mr & Mrs BoberFett no longer sell Amway Products.

 

[Total Refected Power]

BoberFett:

My theory that most people are @ssholes that haven't got a clue becomes more and more concrete every day.

Thanks. I haven't been called one all day!

Bottom line. I don't want to be solicted by anyone for anything. When its time for me to buy something its of my own choosing. I don't care for a soft sell, hard sell or anything in between. Charities or organizations I just donate the money if it is appropriate.

i]No pressure.[/i] Most people cringe when invited to Tupperware, Cosmetic parties etc. There is a covert pressure always to purchase something. Don't be fooled that there isn't.

If that makes me and a lot of people I know @ssholes, than so be it.

 

[BoberFett]

jobert

I never expected to get rich. I don't like people; I'm not a nice person. That's a severe handicap if one intends to get rich in a pyramid deal. We bought some stuff for our personal use and to sell stuff to family and friends if they wanted it. We didn't renew our membership this year because we're divorcing and don't need anything more to deal with.


TRP

Your welcome. If there's one constant in this crazy universe, it's the fact that I can be always be counted on to be an inconsiderate jerk.

You don't want to be solicited? Do you refuse to watch TV and it's non-stop commercials? Have you ever picked up a newspaper or magazine and seen ads? Every driven down the road and seen billboards or business signs? Do you consider that solicitation and pressure to buy? I'll bet you have some FightClub-esque plan to destroy modern society and it's evil consumer mentality.

We let people know that they could get it from us. If they felt any pressure to buy then it was their own doing and I take no responsibility. Unless you consider saying one time to somebody "If you ever want to buy Amway soap, I can get you a deal" pressure, I never pressured anybody.

 

[jobert]

Bober:

Very sorry to hear that.
(I've been away from these forums for a while).
Hope there are no children involved.

 

[Total Refected Power]

BoberFett:

You don't want to be solicited?

If you read my post carefully I said I don't want to be solicted by "ANYONE". There is an additional layer of pressure that some people feel when solicitations are made "face to face" or even over the phone. It is an intrusion that is not generally welcome.

Do you refuse to watch TV and it's non-stop commercials? Have you ever picked up a newspaper or magazine and seen ads? Every driven down the road and seen billboards or business signs? Do you consider that solicitation and pressure to buy? .

Sorry, you are on the losing end with this argument as hard as you might try. The level of irritation is much lower for TV ads (which BTW I always mute, tough to do politely to an individual) and print ads which are easily ignored. Background noise.

Some guy ringing the door bell trying to sell me soap or religion is a higher order intrusion that is not welcome.

BTW. I could care less if you sold this stuff. Different strokes.

I'll bet you have some FightClub-esque plan to destroy modern society and it's evil consumer mentality.

Plain goofy.

 

[Zenmervolt]

I spent over a year as a bellboy at a hotel that happened to be connected to a large-ish convention center, during my tenure there are four or five amway conventions that came through the hotel. While there were a good number of amway people who were perfectly nice, pleasant to work for, and decent tippers my general experience was that I would unload a 1970's full size conversion van, pile a bellcart to the top with what must have been the person's entire closet, lug the cart up to the person's room, valet park the rusting hulk of a van, and get tipped $1.00.:| As I said, there were nice people in amway, but in general my experiences with amway people were somewhat less than good. The ones who expected to get rich were usually the jerks, while the ones in amway as a means of picking up some extra "chump change" were usually quite nice. Anyway, just my experience, I mean no offense to anyone who sells amway.

Zenmervolt

 

[amdskip]

My mom sells AVON and she gets a discount on her order depending on the dollar amount. 35%=$250 order which takes a long time to get

 

[Ornery]

Hey amdskip, ask her how much a 16.9 OZ. bottle of "Vita Moist" body lotion costs. What's her cost VS what it's sold for? Also, could the same quality stuff be purchased for less at Walmart or somewhere like that?

Thanks!

 

[wyvrn]

Well of course there is profit built into the products, how else would they make money? But I believe in most cases they get paid on a PV (Point Value) and generally don't make money directly from each product they sell. There is a group in Amway that used the web (I belive it is Quixtar or something, I went to one of these a couple of months back) and the distributors do not have to keep products. Basically they sign people up who want to shop on the web, and make commisions that way. Sounds like they are attempting to change their sales practices.

For what that is worth...

My personal views on Network Marketing are this:

A lot of these companies, Avon, Mary Kay, Amway, et al. are legit and have passed govt. inspection. If someone wants to do this for a living, then that is their right. I did Amway in college and it was a very tough business, but it did teach me a little about taking care of money and getting out of the "employee" mentality, which has led me to budding career as a financial planner. I would rather chance working for myself at least once in my life than say I never had the guts to try...

About the whole pyramid thing, jobert, it sounds like you or someone close to you has had a bad experience. But your assertions that it is a con are false. You need to do a little more research into mutli-level/network marketing before you label the whole genre as a scheme or con. It is one of the fastest growing professions in America today. Home based business of all types are exploding. This country was built upon people who owned their own stores, farms, etc. Only in the last century has America become a nation of employees.

Not defending any one company directly, but it seems to me some people may not have all the facts here...

 

[jobert]

>>My mom sells AVON and she gets a discount on her order depending on the dollar amount. 35%=$250 order which takes a long time to get<<

Thanks, AMD.

That's what I was to explain.
You don't get a decent commission (discount) until
you build up the order. Many Amwayers build their
orders with sales to themselves and (embarassed) friends.

Your UPline distributors are laughing... they get a cut
of everything.

 

[Cable God]

<< anyone see the movie &quot;Go&quot;? That amway scene was hilarious >>




hahaha, yea it was hilarious