Do You NEED Inventory?
You’ve just been recruited into Mary Kay, and your recruiter and sales director are telling you that you need inventory. You can’t sell from an empty wagon! No one wants to wait for their products! Sephora has products on their shelves, so you should too!
Unfortunately, purchasing inventory is one of the biggest downfalls for women in Mary Kay. Women end up with more products than they can sell, but they still end up needing to place orders for inventory they don’t have, and their inventory stockpile gets bigger and bigger.
Even if you try to be cautious and only purchase a small amount of inventory, you will run into problems. If you can find customers, you will not have the products they want to order, so you will be constantly placing orders. There are minimum order sizes, so you will find yourself ordering extra products you don’t need, simply so you can meet the minimum.
One Pink Truth member came up with this answer to the question “Do I need inventory?”:
This is a twofold question. First of all, do you need an inventory? Certainly not in the beginning. Most women are familiar with online ordering, and waiting for their products. Women that order from in-home distributors expect to wait for their products. So as you begin your experience with Mary Kay, you need to take time to determine your customer -base, and see what you sell the most of.
If you are tempted by all the free products that are included in your initial order, remember that it is like buying things you don’t need, just because they are on sale. Don’t fall into the trap of getting “free” product and ordering product you don’t need just to meet the bar for the next bonus. Unless you sell it, it becomes debt, not an investment.
What size inventory should you have? As you gain customers, you will begin to have an idea as to what products you sell the most. When you are able to determine what would be valuable to have on hand, then you can slowly begin to order a couple extra things here and there to have ready for your customers when they order. To be honest, you do NOT NEED TO HAVE PRODUCTS ON HAND. Charge your customers shipping if you need to, and order their products in groups. In any given month, several customers may reorder, and then you can place one order at the end of the month.
Do not, under any circumstances, allow your director place your first order, especially if you have decided to buy an inventory. She will order you a sampling of almost every product, things you may or may not be able to sell. YOU need to determine what products you will sell, and no one else. This is your decision. If you do not know what to order, do not order inventory! Make a smart business decision and wait until you have the money to place an order, money generated from your sales.
Please avoid getting a credit card and placing an inventory purchase on it. It is debt, according to any financial adviser. It affects your credit score, opens up yet another temptation to buy even more extras for your Mary Kay adventure, and starts you off on poor financial footing.
You may lose a few sales because you don’t have products on hand. However, the small amount of profit you might have made on those sales is nothing compared to the money you will lose by stocking inventory you don’t need, purchasing additional unneeded products to meet order minimums, and the interest you will pay on the credit card debt related to your inventory purchases.
Visit the
This is still very misleading. If you don’t order at least $225 wholesale every quarter, you will be paying full retail for the items you sell. That means you will make zero margin on those items. ZERO!
So you now have to chose between zero margin and over-ordering (and thus losing money on unsold inventory). This doesn’t sound like a very good choice for a business owner to face. Meanwhile, Mary Kay Corp wins either way!
This is the most important point of all. If you really want MK products, just order them from a consultant; you might be paying full retail, but after adding up the quarterly minimums, tax, and shipping, you’re going to be paying close to or more than that anyway.
Better yet, get them off Amazon or Ebay for cheaper and skip the arm-twisting.
Or just get them from Chelsea Adkins! BOGOs on the daily!
Not misleading- she just forgot to put it in. The authors and Tracy are very transparent
Shay, my comment was directed at the member who was doing her best to describe how it would be possible to run a Mary Kay business without front-loading. My comment shows that Mary Kay makes this nearly impossible thanks to the quarterly minimum rule.
Every consultant faces this same choice at the start of every quarter:
1) Front-load to reach $225 minimum
2) Hold orders until $225 wholesale is reached
3) Submit orders as they come and work for free until $225 is reached (if ever)
My guess is most consultants choose option 1, which is why so many lose money. Customers won’t tolerate option 2. Consultants are unlikely to choose option 3, even though it makes more financial sense than option 1, because the thought of working for free is off-putting.
This is the terrible choice consultants have to make every single quarter when they receive their first order from a customer (for items they don’t have on hand).
Sadly, most choose option 1 and add to their losses (and to the pile of unsold inventory in their home).
“You’ve just been recruited into Mary Kay, and your recruiter and sales director are telling you that you need inventory. You can’t sell from an empty wagon! No one wants to wait for their products! Sephora has products on their shelves, so you should too!”
Of course, what they don’t bother to tell you is that Sephora and other retail outlets have buyers who study trends, sales patterns, customer demographics, and buy accordingly so they don’t end up with an overload of unsellable junk – in short, exactly all the boring, unpink, sensible things the author is telling you to do.
Look at it this way: If you must do MK, they gush on about how you’re the CEO of your own business, so act like one. Think about will make money for YOU, not your director, your recruiter, or anyone but YOU. Director needs her unit to stretch production in order to keep her car or her title? Not your problem. Your national wants everyone to order an extra $1000 so she can get some title at Seminar with the multitudes falling at her feet? Her dream, not yours. Director offering some $2 trinket as a reward for loading up on limited edition products? Go to Dollar Tree and get something nicer. You signed up to make money for yourself, so think about what will put money in your pocket, not what will take it out just to satisfy someone else.
“Do not, under any circumstances, allow your director place your first order, especially if you have decided to buy an inventory.” Heck yeah. I read either an article or comment somewhere on here where a new consultant let her director pick out her initial inventory, naively thinking the director would pick the stuff that would sell well. The consultant lived in a very white area but the director picked out mostly product for people of color, saddling her with stuff she couldn’t sell and forcing her to order more product she could actually sell.
Director, if you’re so confident this is the business for me – how bout YOU loan me the money for inventory. These products fly off the shelf so there’d be no risk!!
1. Once your family and friends have ordered once, you will not be selling anything so there will be little need to reorder.
2. Getting involved with MK (at all) assumes some chance of success. You’d be better off buying lottery tickets.
3. Supporting MLM’s encourages fraud and scamming. Just go into a legit business.
You don’t need inventory. Your recruiter, director and national NEED you to have inventory, lots of inventory, because they succeed only if their underlings order LOTS of product.
And this, my friends, is the heart of MLM. No outside sales necessary.
Yep. I was going to say that this woman’s upline doesn’t like her very much.
Popnicki,
Sephora and Ulta do end up having excess inventory just as they sometimes can’t keep in demand products on shelves.
They can either send it back to manufacture – example:
I once was able to “score” a $49 Too Faced Eyeshadow Palette for $20 and was told I caught it just in time, because whatever didn’t sell was being sent back to the manufacturer the next day.
OR
They put it on sale and but still make money even with double discounts.
Here lies the problem why it works for a real business and brand and not MaryKay.
Ulta and Sephora pay real wholesale prices unlike MaryKay recruits.
MaryKay likes to say you can buy a lipstick for $4 and sell for $8
$4 is not a wholesale price for one tube of lipstick. LOL.
Sure you can argue a bunch of commission is being paid on it, but MaryKay is still making a very healthy profit.
Example: Youtuber Jaclyn Hill!
Who remembers her embarrassing lipstick sandal? They were expensive, $20 a tube or 3 for $40 people were finding hairs and all kinds of stuff wrong. According to Jaclyn; the makeup manufacturers weren’t mixing the products correctly and she went on to say that she would be using a different manufacturer and she was sorry as the tears flowed.
It was later revealed she continued to use same manufacturing company and through a lawsuit it was revealed the old and newer lipsticks were produced for less and 0.20 cents a tube. Also her popular highlighters cost of production was under $0.50 cents and selling for $30
I can’t remember what makeup “celebrity” who is the know (Michael Benner maybe?) said these prices for production were standard.
Yes, I remember doing returns to vendor during my retail daze. Anything there was too much of, stuff that was defective, or that just wasn’t selling well either got returned or sold on clearance. The difference is, real retail pays a wholesale cost that doesn’t have to pay for commissions all the way up the pyramid, so they can afford to sell stuff on clearance and still make a profit.
Whereas when Princess Chelsea and her pink pals sell stuff at 40% off, they’re cutting their own throats because they’re barely recouping their own inflated wholesale cost (and training their customers to never pay full retail again.)
By the way Pop, notice how I quoted score?
I was able to “score” ?
Honestly their products aren’t bad but also not great.
I love the names of their palettes like “Kitty liked to scratch” LMAO 🤣 😆😂
The Too Faced peach palette (amongst others) goes on sale allll the time. I get TF’s emails, and there is always a sale. That peach palette is one of their top sellers, so it will get marked down 50-65% everywhere — Ulta, Sephora, and the TF sites.
Jaclyn Hill and her lipstick scandal was a disaster for her brand. It didn’t help that she was radio silent for days as stories and photos were breaking on Instagram and more. Some influencers and other social media folks stood next to her. Jaclyn, Tati, Jeffree. – they all have lines that cost pennies to make. (Frankly, Jaclyn’s stuff isn’t all that great, in my opinion. Overpriced, underwhelmed.)
It was the pumpkin pallet
Lol it’s made by morphE go figure
Interesting thread o. Reddit forum , Jaclyn Hill Snark
Apparently she saw someone’s trademark and jewelry
Stole not saw
I am no Morphe fan. Their brushes are great, though.
They used to be good. Newer ones are falling apart.
Having inventory is so wasteful and dumb. It’s too easy to get make-up instantly online. Mary Kay way = archaic! It only sells dreams post-Internet. Therefore, the women who are recruited are the buyers of dreams, and are often left with just that—dreams. Get the security of having a regular job, and enjoy your life.