Why Mary Kay Ladies Do Not Profit on Product Sales
They tell you that Mary Kay is all about selling cosmetics. You can make so much money, just for sharing these products with women who already use cosmetics and skin care. Yet women are not profiting from product sales. First, because they sell so few products and spend so much time trying. Second, because the products can’t be sold in a profitable way. They tell you that you buy Mary Kay products for $1, and sell them for $2. You’ve just doubled your money!
Except almost no one sells products for full price. Chelsea Adkins is the perfect example of this. She is always bragging about selling a ton of products and being one of the top women on the Queen’s Court of Sales. Here Jamie Taylor is bragging in April about Chelsea “selling $80,000.” No, she did not. She ordered $40,000. She sold it for $40,000. She had no profit. This is nothing to be proud of.
In April she ran this sale:
Two weeks ago she did the same thing, selling everything at BOGO (buy one, get one free…. in other words 50% off) or 40% off. She sold 633 products essentially for what it cost her to buy them.
Now Chelsea is running the same sale for the THIRD time this year. That’s right. Three big sales, zero profits for Chelsea Claytor Adkins.
Why is she doing this? Because she’s got to order a bunch more products in order to get Circle of Excellence finished. She doesn’t care if she profits one cent on product sales, as long as she keeps the illusion going.
Mind you, earlier this year Chelsea was “crowning million.” Everything was about being a “million dollar director” this year. Also she’s going to be an NSD next year LOL:
This all started when Chelsea was trying to finish the Cadillac a couple of years ago. She put massive amounts of products on her credit cards. (This is only a small part of her stash.)
Appearances are so important in Mary Kay, and to some extent it works. Chelsea buying her way into a Cadillac made her look successful. That image helped her recruit more. But it didn’t really make her a success. Last year she was complaining on Instagram that her credit cards were all maxed out. She blamed it on choices when she was younger. But let’s be real. If she was really successful in MK, she wouldn’t still have maxed out credit cards. (Nor would she have been evicted a few months ago from the house she rented but pretended she owned, and now living in her mom’s house.)
But she’s good at keeping the illusion alive for social media. For Chelsea, this includes a birthday (she calls it C-Day) weekend at an expensive hotel, eating expensive meals, and drinking expensive alcohol. Like a $263 shot of tequila.
Girl, pay off your credit cards and stop living at your mom’s house before you pretend to be wealthy. And most of all, stop lying about your sales. Just tell everyone that you’re selling these products for no profit.
Keep watching the movers and shakers in Mary Kay. They keep bragging about their product sales, because that’s how they make the “opportunity” look legitimate. But they’re not profiting on these sales, so there is no purpose. If you can’t sell products profitably, then MK is a pyramid scheme with the REAL business being recruiting warm bodies.
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Wow! What a sham!!
1) I hope she is charging full tax on this BOGO sale or she is LOSING big $$$.
2) I hope she is doing CDS also or she is losing $$$ paying for ship bags, time, assistant.
3) I thought she was married. Why is she back in her mother’s house?
4) also she looks as though she gained weight from all the stress.
Did you know that charging sales tax on the full retail price is actually illegal? Under state laws, you may only charge sales tax on the actual price the customer is paying.
That’s why MK Corp charges full tax to consultant aka customers. Not tax on wholesale
Well the alleged reason is that it makes it easier for the consultants, who don’t have to go out and get their own sales tax registration and file sales tax returns with their state. It also encourages consultants to sell at full price to recoup that tax they’ve paid in.
The way MK does it is not illegal or unethical. They have a process in place for consultants to get back the sales tax they paid to MK but didn’t recover from customers. The thing is that almost no one tells consultants they can and should get this money back.
Another bit of proof that you don’t ever “own” your MK “business”: you don’t have to get your own sales tax registration. No tax account, no EID needed…none of that.
Mountaineer95 — In Hawaii, I had to have an excise tax license for MK. One tax percentage on wholesale, another tax percentage on retail/cost sold and prizes. It’s not called the Peoples’ Republic of Hawaii for no reason, especially since the effective tax rate (since EVERYTHING has excise tax on it) was about 17%.
Get the money back from MK? Wow.
No, no, you get it back in your income tax refund.
Do they actually tell you about all the chargebacks in fine print somewhere? They told me about being able to send product back, but no mention of the chargebacks. I mean, I guess it makes sense to take back commissions if the product was returned, but just another example of how you only hear part of the truth before you sign.
“Under state laws, you may only charge sales tax on the actual price the customer is paying.”
In California (and I believe in most other states), coupons redeemed by a third party (e.g., the manufacturer) do not count; tax is calculated based on the retail price, not the discounted one.
I only mention this so no one ends up losing an argument about state tax law with some store manager; what you say certainly does apply to sales a la Chelsea. If you sell at a discount, you may tax only on the discounted price, then apply for a refund of the difference from Corporate.
I’d be curious to see how much she pays her assistant, who has now come to spend the week with her!!!
Which eats even further into the non-existent profits! But what else can you do when you have thousands upon thousands of dollars of inventory from all the times you bought your next achievement? You’ve got to get rid of it somehow!
“I hope she is charging full tax on this BOGO sale or she is LOSING big $$$.” She should be charging on the actual sale price, keep good records and ASK FOR A REFUND of the overpaid tax from the state, city or county … that is legal.
SDs and NSDs encourage charging “full tax” instead of getting a refund of the overage, even though it is illegal, because otherwise the consultant would realize how little sells for full price.
Dang Chelsea I didn’t know about the eviction. ?
You didn’t know about her pretending to own that house either, did you? Remember last summer when she got the pool, the hot tub, set up the cabana, etc…. in her backyard oasis? Of “her” house that she pretended to own but did not.
Now of course, Jamie has said in one of her videos that Chelsea is in the process of building her dream house, “a literal mansion”… but I don’t believe it for one second based on how she was quickly and quietly put out of the house they were renting.
If she’s building a house, she’d be posting pics!
Jamie just used the wrong modifier. It’s not a “literal mansion,” it’s a figurative one.
In other words, imaginary.
She’s making Jamie Taylor a ton of money…not only by ordering a crap ton of products, but trying to recruit enough to become a national. Does it bother Jamie that Chelsea is in debt and got evicted,?
Of course not. After all, Jamie didn’t put a gun to Chelsea’s head. In the MK world, that exonerates her completely.
Which is just that much more disgusting.
These girls will be the downfall of Mary Kay and don’t even realize it. It’s amazing that they can’t see the danger of posting their hype all over social media where anyone with half a brain can see what they are doing. Or maybe they just don’t care? So entitled.
Why on earth would God focus his/her/its time, energy and abilities on something so insignificant and unimportant as Chelsea Adkins becoming an NSD? Couldn’t God do something oh so much better with their time?
Like, I dunno… curing cancer, helping starving and abused children all over the world, combating climate change, inspiring better leaders to change the course of human history for the better…
But no, they’re spending valuable resources on getting Chelsea Adkins to NSD. Right.
Also, if God can’t even fix simple things like making sure everyone uses their blinker, why would he give a goldfish’s butt about Chelsea?
I tried to sell some of my inventory at a deep discount to get rid of some of it and got reprimanded by my director, but apparently it’s okay if you’re at the top of the pyramid. ?
Reprimanded by your director? I thought you were your own boss, CEO, entrepreneur, and owned your own business? Something isn’t adding up.
RIGHT?????
I’d imagine that some of the IBCs in her unit share some of the same FB friends as Chelsea. How on earth can they possibly try to sell their own MK stuff at profit to their FB friends when those same friends can just buy it at wholesale from Chelsea??? I think an IBC with a backbone needs to call Chelsea out on this. Of course she’ll probably just be told to find some new friends.
“her credit cards were all maxed out”
Yet, she’s ordering Pearl Star inventories.
Ways to glorify God:
1) Singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs
2) Taking care of the least of these
3) Do unto others…
4) Buy and scam your way up the Mary Kay ladder?