Mary Kay Review - Is This The Home Business Opportunity For You?

This Mary Kay Review focuses on the home business opportunity offered by Mary Kay's multi-level marketing business structure.

I have never had any links to Mary Kay and have never used any products of the Mary Kay brand but I am involved in multi-level marketing and have had experience with other MLM companies so I hope this article is both informative and unbiased.

History

Mary Kay Ash founded Mary Kay Inc in 1963 and after the first year had 318 'beauty consultants' who were selling 9 different products. It now sells over 200 different health and beauty products.

Consultants purchased products at 50% of retail and on-sold them to customers, they also achieved a percentage of the sales that the consultants they recruited earned.

Mary Kay Inc achieved over $1 billion in retail sales in 1993 and now has a revenue of over $2.4 billion and has over 1.4 million salespeople.

Payment Plan

Mary Kay Inc uses the well known stair-step breakaway plan to pay its consultants.

As part of this plan there are 5 basic levels of beauty consultant.

1. Independent Beauty Consultant (IBC), who becomes a Senior consultant after recruiting their first consultant,
2. Next is a Star Recruiter that is achieved after you have recruited three consultant, you also get a team building bonus on each new recruit
3. The next level is Team Leader which you achieve after recruiting 5 consultants
4. You become a Future Director after recruiting 8 consultants and then if you qualify you become a
5. Sales Director

I will not go in to the details of the amount of commission on sales or the amount of sales required to remain 'active', suffice to say it seems that if you normally spend very little on cosmetics you could end up with a cupboard full of product you will probably never use.

The Mary Kay compensation plan does appear to be a reasonably good one compared with many other plans, and of course it does have the benefit of longevity, having been in place over 47 years, however it is still a multi-level marketing plan with all that entails.

It is well known that the failure rate of MLM businesses is far higher than almost any other business and less than 5% of business owners make enough to be able to use their business as their only source of income.

It must be remembered however that a high failure rate is "the nature of the beast", and if you fail with a traditional brick and mortar business you are likely to lose a great deal of money but if you fail with an MLM your loss will be more related to the time invested.

Mary Kay is a solid company with a popular compensation plan, it produces what appears to be a a good quality product and the brand is easily recognizable, making it easier to sell. If you are interested in developing a MLM based home business and are interested in selling cosmetics, Mary Kay seems to be a perfectly reasonable choice.

To succeed in MLM two things are vital, training and motivation. While many MLM companies give good training on direct selling offline, when it comes to selling online often they do not have the depth of training available.

I recommend getting involved in an organization that provides excellent training as well as good mentor-ship to get a much better chance of achieving success in a shorter amount of time.

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