No More Discontinued Color Products on Consultants’ Websites: Now What?

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.