A Story from Andrea
Written by L J on June 6, 2008 – 9:37 am -Your Name: Andrea
Date Joined MK : 4/2008
When Left MK or Still Active?: Still Active - For Now!
Initial Inventory Purchased: $600.00
How were you recruited?:
a co-worker approached me and asked if she could practice giving me a “facial” for her new MK business. She asks me to accompany her to her weekly meeting. I signed up the next day.
Memorable experience you had in MK:
When I was asked by my Director to place an $1800 inventory order! I guess she saw the look on my face cause she quickly lowered the amount down to $600.00. I did not know anything about “inventory” until I got my starter kit and I felt deceived.
What did you learn from MK?:
Anything that sounds too good to be true probably is! I learned unfortunately to be more cynical and untrusting of any direct sales company.
What are you doing now? :
Working Full-time as a Substance Abuse Counselor and trying to sell this MK Inventory!
Additional Comments:
I wish I had did some research before signing up! But I have learned to be a more informed consumer and will look for answers to my own questions! Because you can not expect someone who needs you to earn her FREE car to tell you the real deal.
Tags: Mary Kay Consultant Stories
Posted in Mary Kay Consultant Stories |
June 9th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Sounds like you may just have a lousy director. Mine is awesome. I have worked retail before through a merchandising company, Mary Kay takes far better care of us than anyone else I have delt with in this profession. The key to Mary Kay is sticking with it and getting excited about the possibilities - if you can’t get excited, then you can’t make it work. People around you must be excited as well. By the way, if you are 100% certain that you want out, you should know that Mary Kay will buy back all of your inventory for 90% of the cost.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Andrea - your story is the same as mine. Nothing was mentioned about inventory until AFTER I’d signed up! What happened to the “You can start this business for only $100?” I also wasn’t told that inventory was OPTIONAL! I was told I HAD to order!
June 19th, 2008 at 1:25 am
I am a new MK beauty consultant and I have a great recruiter and director. They did not presssure me into inventory-they told my the pros and cons and told me about the different ways to build my business. In addition, they were honest about commision checks and recrutiing and told me it was my choice. Please know there are good and bad in every situation-you have to make educated decisions. I was able to take home literture about MK before I made a decision to sign-up. Furthermore, I was not pressured into anything- I was actually told to wait to make inventory decisions. Please be smart and not gullible ladies and some gents.
June 19th, 2008 at 9:00 am
New MK,
Good for you. But you’ll find that nearly every new MK consultant is given the same presentation about the pros and cons of inventory and how to build your business. It is your choice, but they will definitely encourage you to buy inventory.
They have to: that’s the only way you move up in MK.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Ginny and New MK,
I am glad that your experience have been positive. But for me that is not the case, I was told inventory was “necessary” if you wanted to grow your business. Because “you can’t sell from an empty wagon!”. I wish you both much success, but I am sorry I do not agree that excitement alone can make this business work. It’s just not set up that way, I feel it is set up so that the Top 10% make money while the rest barely make money or lose money.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
I agree with Andrea - I was hit with the “can’t sell from an empty wagon” line too. Wish I had remembered the ”don’t put your cart before your horse” line!
Once you get established customers, maybe some min levels of inventory, but before you have customers, how do you know what they’ll use?
June 30th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Hey everyone, MK NSD’s have make “inventory speech” CDs for Sales Directors to have new recruits listen to. The one I listened to (given to me by my SD, made by our NSD) talked alot about “building your business” and of course, the phrase “can’t sell from an empty wagon” repeated many times throughout. They make it sound like that’s the only option if you’re going to make it work. They do NOT mention that they get credit for “qualifying orders” and that they make commission off your order no matter how big or small it is. They are hoping for a qualified recruit, which = $600 order or more, so they can chalk up another point for queen’s court of recruiting or whatever they call it now. Also they HAVE to pull in a certain dollar amount in orders and # of recruits to keep their titles and avoid making co-payments on those “free” cars. If not, they get stuck with the bill or a demotion. For fear of this, many a MK Director places orders under inactive or former consultant’s names (without permission) to fill in the gap in order to make the required production. Sometimes when they don’t have enough orders in their own allowable amount, they just order up, even though they do not have any customers awaiting that product. Thus, the Sales Director’s huge warehouse of old pink junk is born. Thought she had all that because she actually has that many orders waiting? LOLOLOLOL
Oh, and there’s so much more shady behavior from uplines in MK, and MK Inc. knows all about it, but they don’t apprehend anyone because that would hurt their bottom line. Read more about it on the discussion boards here!
July 7th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Oops that first sentence in the above comment should read “have made”.
August 8th, 2008 at 1:44 am
Hi,
I’m not 100% literate on this site, but I just wanted to comment somewhere. I was strongly considering joining MK, and I just want to thank you all so much for guiding me through the pink fog. Your information was invaluable to me.
I was actually really excited about the idea at first. I am an artistic stay-at-home-mom, and the thought of doing makeovers for a living was attractive. So, I sent in my hundred dollar check with the lady who came by today. Not until after I signed everything, did she tell me that the minimum starting inventory was $600! Luckily, I had known someone who just ordered as they got orders, so I knew that it couldn’t be the “real” minimum. She finally admitted as much when I pressed her.
Now that I have been researching and thinking about it tonight, I came to realize that when it comes down to it, MK parties are just plain cheesy, as is all the literature that I’ve been given so far. I don’t want to be some kind of pink robot.
As far as “reinventing the wheel goes,” I’m a creative person, and if I were to do it, I would want to do it my own way. No pressuring, just girls having fun gettin pretty!
The recruiter wanted me to make a list of 50 friends/relatives for my debut party, and the script she gave was soooo whiny and pathetic. “I’m counting on you” blah blah. AND she was going to be the one giving facials at the party–some strange old lady no one knows? I was thinking of telling her no way on that humiliating party, but then I started having visions of going door to door in my neighborhood handing out flyers, inviting other full time moms to a block party to meet the neighbors. The tag line would be something like: “How excited would your husband be if you actually had makeup on when he came home from work Friday night?” (Since most moms of toddlers can look pretty haggard at the end of the day)
I did the math though, and I would need thousands of customers to make a living at all. So the question remained, even if that worked, where would the other thousand customers come from?
I already got suckered once with Cutco (selling knives-$215 starter pack-got my money back on that one too). The whole reason I was interested was to try to contribute financially to our family as a SAHM. But it definitely sounds like I would have to sacrifice a lot of family time to be successful at this.
And now, hearing that the product is not all it appears to me, especially that the mineral line could even be harmful… I called the MK lady and told her to hold the $100 check until I can “get more info” from her. She agreed, so I will go by tomorrow and tear it up. Also, I am going to exchange the Mineral foundation powder I bought for the Medium cover foundation. I prefer tumorless lungs, actually.
I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who was so helpful in sharing their opinions. You saved me lots of time and money!
Brenna