I received an email from a Mary Kay inventory liquidator that she was served with a notice that she was being sued by Mary Kay Inc.! I guess Touch of Pink Cosmetics has some company now.
This liquidator is a power seller on eBay and has been selling there since 2002.
According to the document this liquidator received,
” Mary Kay seeks to obtain testimony from ***** (which the method of getting the testimony is a request for the court to get my computer!!!) to determine the identity of Independent beauty consultants in order to file suit against them for breach of contract.
Also they seek to obtain such testimony to investigate a potential claim for tortious interference with contractual and business relationships and Texas common law trademarks.”
Apparently MK has now decided to go after the major sellers of all their excess inventory flooding the market. All the products that their former consultants couldn’t sell. All the products that their directors are purchasing month after month to keep their directorship. All the limited-edition products that they promoted that didn’t sell.
I’m no lawyer, but I don’t understand how once a consultant has purchased inventory that Mary Kay can tell them what they can do with it forever.
Regular businesses have overstocks of merchandise all the time. It’s the reality of retail. Ever heard of Big Lots? That’s where all the stuff that didn’t sell in regular stores goes.
If you’re selling Mary Kay products on eBay or an online store…please be aware of what’s going on. If you receive any notices from Mary Kay Inc, please let me know.
You know I’ll keep you posted on this!
i don’t have a problem with gals selling inventory that aren’t consultants/directors anymore – i believe the issue is the very latest product available from mary kay being sold on these sites. you cannot tell me that touch of pink or these e-bay sellers have all this “frontloaded” product that just came out this week or last. you wouldn’t even have time to order as a newbie, get this new product, decide not to sell, then list it on e-bay or have it available at top. so i’m not buying that poor top or e-bay sellers are just trying to get rid of old product that noone can sell. just my opinion
I don’t understand why, now, after all this time, MKC taken an interest in this? This liquidator has been in business since 2002! MKC made their $ when the IBC purchased the product.
Isn’t it like saying you can’t buy a used car from anyone except the dealer? I mean, wouldn’t it be up to the purchaser to determine if they want out-dated product or to purchase product from ? not affiliated with MKC, at a discount? The old, “Buyer beware” moto?
I guess it causes problems with current IBC’s but I haven’t seen where MKC has been too concerned about those issues in the past. (shrugging shoulders) Perhaps not as many baby girls or cleanser are being made in these troubled times?
I don’t think they have a leg to stand on as far as a former SD or IBC…you bought it, you no longer work for the company, if you wanted to liquidate it anywhere it should not be a problem! It wouldbedifferent if MK would buy back ALL of your inventory at 90% buyback, but until they do, I don’t thnk they have a leg to stand on!
lisa, We have IBC’s who send their inventory back as soon as they get it, as they realize they have made a mistake in joining MK. They would not get buybacl on their bonus product, so that is one way for new product to be sold legtimately to a liquidator.
As far as causing problems with current IBC’, there are current IBC’s who have never sold the product for retail, they simply get an order together with their friends and sell it for cost plus shipping. MK has said they are independent business owners (lol) and can sell for ANY price they choose.
A liquiator would have no way of proving that a person liquidating product was a “former” or “current ” IBC or SD as they do not have MK’s records and MK certainly isn’t going to tell them if the person is a current IBC!
With the economy being the way it is it is bound to be affecting MK sales too. You can’t tell me women choose to purchase makeup for their faces rather than putting food on the table.
BOO to MK the BULLY!!!
The answer, Tam, is they are apparently trying to bully people.
In the world I live in, when you purchase a product from a company, it’s yours. Mary Kay Inc. thinks that they can control what you do with their product forever.
If an active director or consultant wants to sell their products to a liquidator, is that liquidator not a customer?
And Lisa, liquidators aren’t just for old product, they’re for excess products.
Has anyone been over to eBay lately? Go type in ANY manufacturer of ANY product and you’ll see lots and lots of people selling it.
Liquidators have NO contract with Mary Kay Inc. They didn’t sign a consultant agreement. If Mary Kay Inc. is upset because their active consultants are selling to liquidators…well, is there anything in the Consultant Agreement that says they can’t sell their products to whomever they want? As I recall, the suggested retail on products is just that…suggested.
But after all, it is the Consultant’s business.
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
lipstick – i have seen lots of gals who let their children go without good meals so they could have cigarettes, liquor and drugs, so they probably would purchase make-up as well. and here’s a bag of cheetos and a can of soda, little johnny!
lisa, I know there are all kinds of people in this world and they don’t all have the best interests of their family as a priority like they should.
But no good mother would buy luxuries for herself if she didn’t have money for food and home for her children.
Lipstick, I agree! But if they did have a little extra money for the Mother to spend, she could buy so much more similiar quality products elsewhere for a lot less money. I mean $ 13 for a lipgloss? We are not talking cheap!
Very true, Tam! We are suffereing some hard economic times right now and $13.00 lipstick is just too high.
Also I have found some very nice skin care lines out there for a lot less than MK. When I used MK I liked it, but when I stopped selling it, I was looking for something along my WS prices for MK that did just as well and I have found several.
Another reason branand new and not-yet-released MK products are seen on ebay may be that there are people who have the “privilige” of getting them 1st and use that for profit. SD’s, SSD’s, NSD’s,… they all have to make that expensive production or lose the fancy title and the gas-hogging car. One way to subsidize buying production may be to hawk these items for a higher-than-retail price before they’re released. There are people out there who are soooo excited about the new products that they’d pay extra to have them early, I knew some. Not only the little people at the bottom of the pink totem pole get desparate under MK’s regime. Just my 2 cents.
Very good points RTP!
Mary Kay is trying to cut out anyone buying out consultants because consultants are complaining as they have for some time that they can’t sell because people can buy it cheaper on ebay.
This is not cutting into Mary Kay’s selling product to the public, this is cutting into Mary Kay’s main business: Signing up consultnants, selling them large lots of products and directors making profits. Mary Kay’s highest volume of sales is not to the public it is to consultants. If they don’t have consultants signing up they are loosing money.
Also if the reality hits ebay, ebay will drop you like a fly. They have started adding this disclaimer to auctions:The seller, (name of seller), assumes full responsibility for the content of this listing and the item offered. Mary Kay can use VERO to end any listings they choose to on ebay and ebay will not protect you.
Thousands of people are in trademark violation on ebay and eventually the poop is gonna hit the fan.
When a company has a trademark it is against the law to use their name or trademark without their consent.
This law has been ignore for some time, but it looks like companies are going to start going after people because of the crisis going on.
So just my warning and information I have learned for any who try to make an honest living selling on ebay and be a stay at home Mom and who try to help consultants who have been stuck with discontinued product or just need out of a huge debt they didn’t realize they were taking on.
You’re exactly right Kathy.
It’s not about the product sales, it’s about the big inventory sales to new consultant sign ups.
But I don’t see how a reseller of Mary Kay, or any other product, is violating trademark or copyright if they are just selling the product.
The resellers of Mary Kay products on eBay are NOT
All of the things I listed above would be no-nos on eBay.
But simply selling a genuine product on eBay is not violating terms, so I don’t know exactly what MK Inc. is claiming.
MK Inc. has tried to scare people for years with this “Authentic MK products are only available from consultants” baloney. I’ve never seen counterfeit MK, as I stated before. As Kathy pointed out, the ONLY thing they’re really worried about with this “buy authentic” chant is that they won’t get new consultants.
Ladies, any way you dish this out or try to justify it, it’s wrong. I have been in MK over 14 years now and I’ve seen people come and I’ve seen them go. If you are going to do something, do it right, or don’t do it at all. If you buy a big inventory, then you must book the appts. necessary to sell it. If you cannot commit to your business, then MK is not for you. After being in MK for 14 years, I am just now starting to build a team. I do not preach inventory. I preach bookings. Whether you have inventory or not, if you don’t have any bookings, you are still out of business.
I really get tired of women in this business trying to reinvent the wheel or trying to bend the rules. The rules are made to help people, not hurt them.
As I previously said, anyway you slice it, if it isn’t by the book, don’t do it.
end of story
Be Authentic, evidently you are not reading the stories. These liquidators are not current consultants and the majority of people selling their product to liquidators are also no longer affiliated with MK. Most of them returned what ever product they were eligible to return to MK and sold the rest to liquidators or whomever they could at a loss.
If there are active IBC’s or SD’s selling to liquidators then they are taking a chance of being terminated…Oh my why would they want to stay with MK, a company who chooses to misrepreent their “flopportunity” with many recruiting lies.
Perhaps if justice is what they ae looking for, somebody needs to file a Class Action suit against MK for telling lies about the income to be made in MK.
Perhaps all those SD’s who use the number of hours a consultant spends doing a class to divide into their 50% (NOT) profit and call it making $25/hr also need to be sued for misrepresenting the income made in MK.
If you have been in MK for14 years, you know that is the BIGGEST lie told on a REGULAR basis. They don’t factor in the time spent making phone calls, ordering, stickering and putting away product, the cost of samples, the cost of PCP, Hostess gifts and incentives, cost of samples, class supplies, sales tickets, MK bags, etc.
Do you think manufacturers come after people who sell their products at a yard sale or a consignmnet shop? NO…that’s because they bought it and paid for it and now it belongs to them and they are free to sell it if they like.
I really got tired of listening to MK lies so I got out after 8.5 years, and when the time comes YES I will sell to a liquidator, because I bought and still owe the credit card company for that product and I can do what I want with it.
Lipstick – you and I will never see eye to eye on this subject because you have formed an opinion and as all of us know, opinions are not necessarily the truth. I am a woman of my word, so I do not have to justify anything I say to anyone. My director is my National and I feel very accountable to her and how I run my business. I would never in 10 zillion years want anyone to ever say that I was or am a bad consultant or that I did anything I was not supposed to do.
There are no lies in Mary Kay – if people are telling lies then I am not aware of it. If you speak the truth, the truth will set you free. I am in a Unit where we don’t have those types of issues to deal with and I am sorry to hear that your experience was not positive. You and I could debate all day long about right and wrong, but the bottom line is this – yes, you paid for your inventory and technically, yes, it is “yours” but only yours for the selling, not the E-baying. Bottom line – it’s all in the training. It’s in the activity.
I have no intentions of leaving MK and look forward to earning my car and working my business the way Mary Kay and the good Lord intended for it to be.
As with all things, there are those who complain and there are those who do what is necessary to make their dreams come true.
I hope you ladies haven’t forgotten your dreams.
“opinions are not necessarily the truth”
Really, “Be Authentic”? That’s just what I was thinking about YOUR diatribe about working a MK business.
Keep looking forward to that car. It won’t happen with sales though. It will only happen if you recruit and get them to frontload inventory.
It’s true: you can’t sit on your couch and hope to sell anything, including Mary Kay. We’ve never disputed that you have to work. DUH. But you can work and work MK and find you have very little to show for it.
If the inventory is “yours for the selling” then when you aren’t in MK anymore and you’re stuck with bunches of inventory because they told you it was a great idea, then you have no obligation to Mary Kay Inc. anymore, as I see it. You can eBay it all you want. Liquidators that I know aren’t consultants, they’re helping consultants. They’ve been smart enough to start a business where there is demand.
And those liquidators really DO own their business….unlike those MK consultants. 😉
Be Authentic, it sounds like you are calling me dishonest and imp;ying that I did not run my business with honesty and integrity,
That would be your opinion and you would be wrong. I dropped out because I was honest with my recruits and I taught them not to order unless they were selling and not to order to meet goals or win a prize, but because they were selling and needed to replenish their inventory.
What I found is that doing it honestly takes time and I found it difficult to have more than 8 recruits active at the same time.
If you do it fast and hurry and recruit 30 people in 2 months time and get them all to invest in$600 wholesale minimum, you will have a very weak unit and you will not survive as a SD and you will not be able to keep your car. This is TRUTH and you may have to learn it the hard way, by trying it yourself.
To take time and teach them to sell first and then recruit and teach their recruits with the same integrity takes a lot of time away from your selling and recruiting.
Many ladies find out then that there is less profit in selling than what they were told. You end up spending way more than 5-10% on samples, supplies, PCP and hostess credit and hostess gifts. And as a recruiter the % you make for the month depend on how many consultants are active in that month.
Perhaps all those SD’s who use the number of hours a consultant spends doing a class to divide into their 50% (NOT) profit and call it making $25/hr also need to be sued for misrepresenting the income made in MK.
If you have been in MK for14 years, you know that is the BIGGEST lie told on a REGULAR basis. They don’t factor in the time spent making phone calls, ordering, stickering and putting away product, the cost of samples, the cost of PCP, Hostess gifts and incentives, cost of samples, class supplies, sales tickets, MK bags, etc.
So Be Authentic are you saying that in the unit you belonged to they used actual hours involved and not just the time spent doing the SCC to calculate profit and hourly “wage”?
I truly wish you the best and I hope you are one of the 2% that is successful and if you keep your honesty and integrity intact that would be just awesome!
I am a ex-rep and new to the site. I agree that MK inc. is upset that that people are selling things cheaper than they should. BUT after all it is suggested retail right? I mean I don’t see LEI suing people cause they are selling jeans on ebay now are they? MK is suggesting that these people are trying to come off as MK reps selling for MK. Of course with a second suite in the mix, I am SURE judges will begin to see the light of they havent already. MK Inc think they can bully their Reps into buying crap they don’t need and then KEEP it cause they can’t sell it. MAN I am SOO happy I’m not a rep anymore! BTW Anyone know a good place to buy a similar product as the combo/oily time wise lotion? I NEED some SOO bad LOL.
Jad, your point about LEI suing people selling their items on eBay is exactly my point. There are thousands of companies’ products being sold on eBay. And they’re being sold legally, because those people bought them. Once you’ve bought it, isn’t it yours? There are rules on eBay to protect companies from those selling fakes or using trademarked images and text, but beyond that, people can sell those items.