You Failed to Put On the Effort
A lovely Mary Kay consultant named Angie Halley was so kind as to leave this comment on a 16 year old article on my business blog about how Mary Kay burns through tens of thousands of recruits each month. It’s your fault the products didn’t sell. You need inventory on your shelf. You failed.
It sounds like you over purchased product at wholesale and didn’t do the work to sell it off your shelves. That’s on you. If you are serious about making money and being a business women, it is necessary to have product on hand for your customers, who wants to wait two weeks for their face cream that they ran out of yesterday? Can you imagine going to Safeway for groceries and they said, “Great! Come back in two weeks because we don’t carry product on our shelf”. No quotas, you work at your own pace and you get constant mentoring and an amazingly positive empowering work environment. Buy at wholesale, sell at retail…it’s a simple business plan. Don’t blame the company because you failed to put on the effort.
Visit the
PTC, this sounds good on paper, but do you stock everything MK sells? If not, your customers are going to have to wait. As for “buy at wholesale, sell at retail”, MK products are already too expensive at wholesale! This is why the few folks actually turning a true business profit in Mary Kay are not doing so by selling to the public. Rather, they make their money off orders placed by their downline reps…for product that, for the most part, never ends up in the hands of an outside paying customer.
It is a simple business model, as you say. From Mary Kay Corp’s perspective, the sales reps are the customer. But how to get the sales reps to over-order? You fool them into thinking they are business owners instead of customers. You are the perfect example.
In our restaurant we use PARs to determine when and how much to purchase. This is based on actual usage data. So if roast beef is not a big seller then I’m not ordering a ton of it just to make someone else money.
Tracy, I must vehemently protest your continual use of Poppy, Queen of the Pop Trolls, to represent these pink dinks. While she can be impetuous and stubborn, and kind of naive due to youth and the insular nature of the Trolls world pre-World Tour, she genuinely cares for her people and is unfailingly loyal to her friends. Moreover, she’s quite capable of learning from her mistakes and admitting she was wrong. She also is willing to accept even harsh criticism that hurts her feelings. She’s the antithesis of a K-Bot. /rant
It sounds like you over purchased product at wholesale and didn’t do the work to sell it off your shelves. That’s on you.
But we are so often told that it just “flies off the shelves”. But we’ve seen in the past two days that products build up because they are not being sold. That unscrupulous directors hassle women on their death beds tp put in that last order to make production for the month.
If you are serious about making money and being a business women, it is necessary to have product on hand for your customers, who wants to wait two weeks for their face cream that they ran out of yesterday?
Most people who use make-up regularly do not run out “yesterday”. They keep tabs on how much they use and replenish before they are totally out of their preferred products.
Can you imagine going to Safeway for groceries and they said, “Great! Come back in two weeks because we don’t carry product on our shelf”.
All large retail companies have complex ordering and distribution networks. It was one of the reasons Target failed in Canada. They were too ambitious and expanded the market beyond the computer’s capabilities leading to excess products in one store while others had none.
No quotas,
Except for that pesky $225 per quarter that you need to order to keep your 50% discount.
you work at your own pace and you get constant mentoring
Except you don’t. You are tied to your unit and your director’s goals which leads to sub-par mentoring if you don’t keep to their schedule.
and an amazingly positive empowering work environment.
What positive about hassling a woman undergoing extreme medical treatment to place a last minute order? How is being called a “heffer” behind your back empowering?
We have plenty of screenshots which show how your directors view their downlines, positive and empowering it is NOT.
Buy at wholesale, sell at retail…it’s a simple business plan.
It would be a simple plan if that’s all you are doing. But in Mary Kay Wagner Rogers Eckman Weaver Louis Miller Hallenbeck Ash’s company, we all know that is not how it works.
Don’t blame the company because you failed to put on the effort.
The company gets it’s money the second that you place your order and pay for it. The company actively encourages it’s consultomers to over-spend by offering baubles and trinkets to those who order the most. The “free cars” are paid for by wholesale orders not retail profits. Directors are pitted against each other be be in the walk across the stage, queen’s court, all the mumbo-jumbo that hides the real corrupt face of this so-called “own business”.
“Nobody held a gun to your head to purchase more than what you needed.” “You can’t sell what you don’t have.” Self canceling circular logic at play here. = MUST BE A SCAM OPERATION. If you’re reading PT, and you’re involved in MK – get out NOW!
A lovely Mary Kay consultant named Angie Halley was so kind as to leave this comment on a 16 year old article on my business blog about how Mary Kay burns through tens of thousands of recruits each month. It’s your fault the products didn’t sell. You need inventory on your shelf. You failed.
Commenting on a 16 year old blog post reeks of cowardice. Still, I’m certain Ms. Halley will be proud of using straight talk to Tracy and can bask in the fact that Annie has slayed the Pink Truth Dragon.
still she got her chance to explain to us about her understanding of the MK business. I wonder if she will feel committed enough to further expand on her position on this post.
If the products fly right off your shelves, why is it (generic) your fault that the products aren’t selling? Shouldn’t people be beating your doors down to get at those hydrogel eye patches and Mint Bliss foot cream?
Can’t have it both ways.
Popinki — I recently placed a large Ulta order online (bonus points from Ulta, extra Rakuten cash back, and lots of freebies/GWPs). I did so sans pants and without someone harassing me, unless you count the dog who kept dropping her stuffed raccoon on my lap. My order arrived in four days, well before I ran out of the items I had ordered. (Except one — that was my fault because I kept forgetting to reorder the eye crayon.)
Angie here is using the same tripe that was fed to me and others decades ago: you HAVE to have products on your shelves to succeed. If you don’t, your customers (giggle) will go elsewhere to find their skincare and cosmetics. Newsflash, Angie. The products only fly off your shelves if there is an earthquake or some other disaster.
No quotas? 🤣🤣🤣 I can’t believe they still say that after all these years.
Anyone who’s been in MK will tell you:
There are quotas to allow you to remain a consultant, quotas to keep your 50% off discount, quotas to keep your career car, quotas to keep your team members- for their orders and yours.
Calling it an “minimum wholesale order” doesn’t change the fact it’s a quota. 🤣
There are no *selling* quotas because MK doesn’t keep track of sales.
“If you are serious about making money and being a business women, it is necessary to have product on hand for your customers, who wants to wait two weeks for their face cream that they ran out of yesterday? Can you imagine going to Safeway for groceries and they said, “Great! Come back in two weeks because we don’t carry product on our shelf”.”
The thing is, they ARE going to places where the face cream is in stock, paying a whole lot less for it, and not having to dodge party invites and recruitment attempts. Whether it’s Walgreens, Ulta, or the Estee Lauder counter at a department store, expedited delivery from online outfits, or Door Dash, there are so many less annoying options than dealing with a MK consultant.
The Safeway analogy doesn’t hold up because you go into a grocery store expecting it to sell food. But you don’t expect them to have every possible food item at all times, due to availability, seasonal demand, demographics, etc. There’s a reason why they don’t have huge displays of frozen turkeys in July (or watermelons in November, for that matter). There’s a reason why the markets in my area, which doesn’t have a large Asian population, don’t have much of a Japanese food selection, but someplace like San Francisco would have plenty. They sell what sells and don’t tie their money up in useless inventory.