One of our active consultant members sent me the latest copy of the Mary Kay “eMessenger,” the email newsletter that MK Inc. sends to its consultants.
Buried in the middle of the newsletter is this one-sentence notice :
Mary Kay® Personal Web Site Last Chance Section
If you have a Mary Kay® Personal Web Site, please note that beginning Jan. 15, 2009, discontinued MK Signature® color products will no longer be available for posting on the Last Chance section of your Personal Web Site.
So now what? Consultants won’t be able to sell the discontinued color products online on their websites. Why? What’s the point of this?
If you’ve been a consultant, you know how challenging it is to get rid of those discontinued products. Once new colors come out, usually accompanied by new packaging or design, customers want the new, pretty stuff, not the old stuff. Sure, you can have a 50% off sale and try to recoup your cost. In my experience, this is rarely very successful.
Now consultants are stuck with these old products AND they can’t feature them on the websites that they pay MK Inc. for each year, in hopes of getting rid of some of it.
Hmmmm…so what’s a consultant to do with all this old stuff?
I know! Sell it to a liquidator.
Oh wait…Mary Kay Inc. is suing all of them.
Another way MK runs “your business”. They used to let these discontinued and limited edition items run for 2-3 years, if you knew how to add them and kept your web site updated!
I’ve got an idea, since they are suing liquidators, let’s all have MK yard sales! If you are no longer a consultant you should be able to sell whatever you want wherever you want. Advertise it in the paper too…you’re not under contract anymore!
Take back your life…Mary Kay may have owned you and your business when you were a consultant, but not any more!
Mary Kay…take down that pink wall and let the consultants take a profit or at least get rid of the
stuff! You’re corporate greed and selfishness is showing and that’s not very “go give” is it?
AMEN Lipstick!
Even though I never sold any of my discontinued product through my “website” I always thought maybe there was a chance but not now. I’m glad to have found PLH and other sites so I can trade out my products.
Thanks PLH!!!!!!!
To me it shows that MK Inc. doesn’t support consultants much. They’re just cutting off options for them.
And people will continue to get sucked in and give their hard earned money (from a real J.O.B) to corp, buying some BS line fed by some director that’s so far in she can’t quit……..and the spiral of debt continues……LOL! (head shaking while laughing)
Heck, I never sold ANYTHING thru the website, but at least I did have the discontinued stuff listed!
My MK website was a joke. Never sold a thing on it. Yet another waste of $ on MK. I think the trick to MLMs is to absolutely hang on to your wallet at all costs. My sister takes her wallet nowhere – she doesn’t even carry a purse. If she’s buying groceries, or whatever, she takes only what she has budgeted to spend, and stops buying when the cash runs out. Brilliant. I have started leaving my checkbook and credit cards at home, too. It is so empowering to come out of a store none the poorer. Besides, by the time you get home, you are usually over the impluse-buying moment. And face it ladies, that’s what most shopping is – pure impulse.
Dang Russian spam….;)
Ha! Yeah…spam is bad but Russian spam?! That’s just over the edge. (I deleted it) 🙂
LOL! Thanks 🙂
LOL, well I’m a smaller seller and I got served today being accused of having active consulatnts supply me with my products, LOL! always bought my lots on ebay. I think it’s amusing and yet infuriating at the time. They want all of our records of who supplied me with my inventory??? Go to ebay… they’ve got it. and to request my computer and any backup servers??? Yeah, now MK thinks they can legally violate other’s and MY consititutional right to privacy???? I don’t think so. They’re screwing with the wrong people…. I love the copyright infringement allegations too… so now you can’t use a NAME BRAND product’s name to advertise it???
After reading through my papers and the other 2 sellers who have been served I find it amazing that these suits have been brought about merely on MK legal’s assumptions… NO facts, NO evidence… I mean you’d think that we were committing CRIMES or selling stolen merchandise. We paid for this merchandise just as the people who we buy from have paid. What is MK so worried about??? They’re making their money immediately. They don’t have to WAIT until items sell or more often than not… don’t sell! My neighbor is so greatful that she doesn’t have to deal with the consultant she had been dealing with who was trying to pressure her to JOIN for over 3 years…. it’s the poor women and men who have to recoup whatever they can get for the discontinued merchandise and they’re the only ones who end up losing. and did I say I wasn’t a consultant. I’m just curious what MK expects women to do with the items they discontinue 4 TIMES a YEAR during their quarterly crap. I have never seen a company change products as frequently and that is GREEDY!!!!
They reference the IBC at least 100 times.. AND???? I’m not a consultant so the IBC means NOTHING to me…. Does MK honestly think there are active consultants who sell the inventory to us??? Could we really give the deals and warrant the volume if we sold at wholesale or above? Mary kay’s logic is as convoluted as it can get. They’ll have to serve a warrant to see ANY of my records! good luck all!
Good luck to you pinkdreams…I hope MK loses their big pink building along with all these frivolous lawsuits. I would laugh if the judges through all these suits out of court!
Who you do business with is none of their business, if you don’t have a contract with them and the burden of proof should be on them.
you got that right lipstick! you just read through the papers and there’s is NO factual evidence.. just allegations and assumptions and we know what happens when we assume ;op It reads as if we SOUGHT these people out and MADE them unload their inventory. I’m curious how a logical Judge would rule being that no laws are being broken despite what MK and their pink hazed consulatnts think. I mean to truly sit there and have the absolute NERVE to demand MY personal computer???? What am I??? some kind of pedophile who watches kiddie porn?? I mean REALLY???? I know my attorney will laugh about it because to 1. expect US to come to them…. I don’t THINK so… they can come to ME! 2. actually think they have the AUTHORITY to subpoena MY records… hmmm.. I wonder why they’re not getting them from ebay or better yet, HIRE P.I.’s with the 2 billion they make and investigate your own damn consultants instead of demanding WE do that for FREE for them, LOL what a laugh! This is sure one to set some precedents. Mary Kay can’t seem to stay out of Court these days though, Huh? They’re being sued yet again for trademark infringement and not the FAKE kind that we’re being accused of, LOL!
Mary Kay can’t seem to stay out of Court these days though, Huh? They’re being sued yet again for trademark infringement and not the FAKE kind that we’re being accused of, LOL!
I wonder what kind of “excuse” they have for breaking the law? I mean being a company that profeses to put God first, family second and career third.
They are on a downward spiral…it would make Mary Kay sad, but ifshe were still alive and running the company maybe they wouldn’t be doing these things.
pinkdreams keep us posted on how things go for you…I’ll be praying that your case is handled fairly. Isn’t turning over your records a violation of privacy? If not yours than certainly those who do business with you?
I don’t think Mary kay ever forsaw what the internet would DO to not only their products but their reputation. Before 1995 a woman HAD to go to a MK rep to get products. Women only knew about Mary Kay from other MK women. They’d hear how wonderful it was, how much money could be made and never REALLY were told the TRUTH that selling MK will NEVER get you rich or get you that car. It’s all about recruiting and ruining lives that make people money in MK. With the evolution of the internet, we are seeing MORE and MORE websites outting MK and their scam MLM.. AKA Pyramid scheme. Now, women don’t have to go to a Mary Kay rep and be badgered and asked incessantly to have a party. Now women can come to ebay and other sites and get the products they want and the products that MK constantly discontinues for good prices.
Instead of looking at us and trying to sue us, they need to be looking at how FLAWED their “business model” (LOL, it was AMWAY’s business model first, they act like THEY created this type of business). Why can’t they just become a legitimate company??? A company that sells directly to their customers?? THEN we would truly SEE how many HUMAN BEINGS BUY Mary Kay cosmetics at their FULL retail price. LOL, and that would be a rude awakening for Mary Kay because they wouldn’t be able to con women anymore. The reason they have not evolved into a company that sells their products legitimately and directly to customers is because they KNOW full well, they will be OUT of business. How many times have you been guilted into going to a Mary Kay party and how many times do you buy something JUST to help a friend out??? I honestly think that THOSE are the ONLY legitimate sales Mary Kay has to REAL consumers.
I hope you win Pinkdreams….you’ve got my support and I’m sending positive thoughts and energies your way for the battle you’ve got ahead of you! 🙂
Pinkdreams,
More positive thoughts and engery your way! It is a shame you will be out attorney cost for this stupid wild goose hunt MK is going on! Just think, if they allow IBC’s to return the discontinued / unwanted products they were frontloaded with, then there would be no problem! Oh wait, then they wouldn’t be makin all the money or be “the best selling brand” then, would they?
pinkdreams, how are things going for you? I was reading backposts and this one fell between the cracks. I gues Christmas came and we all wer e not on line as much.
The more I think about this topic, the more I believe if MK really cared about the IBC and their business and REALLY listened to what the consultants want and need, it would be a win/win situation.
No company that wants to keep growing sticks with the same old tired ideas. They hire new blood, they listen to new ideas andthey listen to their customers.
Wildly changing products wjem you are so far removed from the consumer (not the IBC) is just like shooting craps…sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. MK”s idea of making sure they don’t loose is constantly changing product and issuing new catalogs without the old product.
They know the ocnsultant has to buy the new product to stay on top of the game and so MK makes their money by breaking the backs of the IBC’s.
Then when IBC’s get out of MK and can’t return ALL the product they sell it way below wholesale, just so they can get rid of the crap. When it ends up on e-Bay, TOP or Craig’s list, they want to cry
“foul”. Then they want to go for the people who are “rescuing” the broke former IBC’s.
pinkdreams, I’m still pulling for you and praying that you not only win against MK, but sock it to them for your legal costs.
I call this a “frivolous lawsuit” or a “fishing expedition” so MK can find out who is selling at below wholesale. I hope they find out that the only current IBC’s selling on e-Bay are their poor SD’s who have to unload the crap too!
Sorry about all the typos, I guess my mind got ahead of my fingers!
lipstick tell me more about this law suit; i missed it and since there are so many ebay sites selling mk products, why are mk corps attacking only you?
maroli, I am not personally being sued. I have never sold MK on e-Bay, or violated the terms of my consultant agreement. I am no longer a consultant as of Sept. 2007. If you want to view the article posted previously in these lawsuits, go to the top of the page and in the search box type in the words “lawsuits MK liquidators” and it should pull up anything to do with those topics.
You can also view all older topics by scrolling down to the bottom of the page reveiwing the posts as you go and reading those of interest and then clicking on the “older posts” button at the left hand corner at the bottom of each page, to read older posts on these topics.
There is interesting reading in many of these and you can also read the comments amde from both sides, pro-MK and anti-MLM!
maroli, let me correct my instruction on searching for the articles. Type the words MK lawsuits into the search box, then at the end of the articles there is a list of Tags…you can click on any of the tags and read more on the topic.
I hope this helps you! Welcome and thanks for posting. We are here for anybody searching for facts and info.
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