Sorry, must agree to disagree on this.  It is NOT your own business.  Remember, you are an “independent contractor”.  I cannot advertise any way I want, I cannot display anywhere I want, I cannot sell anywhere I want.  I am limited to the “rules”.  I do not own a business, because If I OWN a business, I can sell my business, if I want. 

I must abide by the rules and attempt to “find” customers to purchase from me.  Unless you see ALOT of people, or have time to solicit ALOT of people, once you have run through your family/friends/neighbors/co-workers, etc., THEN where do you go? 

Most of the places I attempted to find new customers at, ie businesses where I do business, already have ? who works there who lets them purchase at a discount so that consultant can keep her min. order. 

Quote from Donna “The “stupid” thing is to buy a whole store-full of inventory and NOT plan on being with potential customers to sell it!” 

Tell that to the SD’s who encourage full inventory to new consultants!  Of course, we all PLANNED on selling everything!  Matter of fact, I’ll bet most of us were told by our SD’s that inventory would be “flying off our shelves”!  We were all told how good we would be at this “business”!  How easy it was and we’d make 50%! 

You said having things that you’re not going to sell is bad business and I agree. The problem is that Consultants can never be sure what’s going to sell. They have to predict what items will be popular and which won’t.

So a Consultant has to figure out whether to stock certain colors or shades and how many. Some things are easy to figure out and others aren’t.

Even when you have built up a customer base, there’s no way to know what you will sell one week to the next. You can three of one item and sell out of it in one day. Then what? You have to either trade or purchase it from a fellow Consultant or Director (which the Company discourages you from doing) or you have to place an order.

It’s a constant juggling act that is difficult to impossible to perfect.

So I can’t see how you can claim to have “some” inventory and have it work great. Of course, we don’t know how much “some” is.

Don’t trust your SD to order for you, because she only ha HER best interests at heart and she will load you up on a lot of stuff besides the basics.

I agree you may want to carry some of the basic skin care items, but tht rest can be ordered and once ou know you have some steady customers, you can stock the basics so you will have what they need when they need it.

Stocking Limited Edition only helps your SD and MKC.  Nobody has any idea what will sell.
I would order only 1 of each and if there are a lot, stick to what you personally like.  Never purchase Ltd Edition in the fragrance line, keep some samples on hand for customers to sniff and let them know if they want it you will order it!

However, I think it is foolish to try and carry a “full store” as SD try to get you to do or to pay interest on something someone “might” want, sometime. 

It is difficult to determine what customers will want when you are first starting out and don’t have the customers.