I am a licensed counsellor in New Brunswick, Canada. I am also an army spouse—and so many of our community are victims to the MLM world. I’ve always been anti-mlm and would roll my eyes at Avon far longer than anybody else, despite knowing numerous people who were selling or buying Avon religiously.
I have joined 3 MLMs and am an active member of one, and yes, I am anti-mlm. Hear me out. I am an author, and I am currently writing a book on shopping addiction, MLMs, debt, and a bit of hoarding. I’ve noticed that almost nobody is showing these things together, but I’ve noticed they are intertwined. A family friend had an entire shed worth of Avon and an entire in home “closet” of Avon that was a bedroom before that! She wasn’t even a seller, just a buyer.
Crazy, right?
I am a published author so I am writing this book while going through my own experiences of recognizing I am a shopping addict (albeit, I love the dollar store and temu—which in my mind temu also has super predatory “games” and gambling). The dopamine aspect of buying/selling/acquiring is all so integrated. I’d love to interview you for the book… but onto why I, the anti-mlmer, had joined 3 MLMs.
I have become close friends with a member of my community who is a veteran—her spouse is also a veteran. This woman is a member of not one, not two, but seven MLMs (possibly more that she’s forgotten about). I have her permission to share her story for my book, but I want to keep her name anonymous because I do love and value her as a human being. It’s exactly a shame to me how many MLMS she has joined. I have been in her basement to help her organize—and there are roughly 100 unsold Scentsy warmers (and these are the $100 ones), as well as numerous color street, gel moment, etc (she’s even in competing MLMs, which does make me laugh). I’ve offered to sell her stock via my facebook because I personally don’t give a damn if Scentsy tries to hit me with a lawsuit, I’m highly educated and know they have a fat chance in hell doing anything to somebody for selling items as a yard-sale type deal.
Anyways, I joined three MLMS – two were under her for Colorstreet and Scentsy. I hate that I actually like Scentsy products, especially since I’m allergic to 80% of them, but the actual warmers are great and they are basically the same price as the ones at Walmart, yet are nicer. I am not telling anybody to buy Scentsy, especially since my husband who doesn’t get migraines started getting them only once we had Scentsy going. I’m keeping the warmers, but have already made my own soy blend waxes with essential oils in the past, so I will go back to that (by the way, I have bought essential oils for 10+ years, and never once knew there were MLMs for it. I went on the natural movement forever ago, back when you still had to basically import from Europe or USA to Canada). She asked me to sign up for colorstreet and paid for the kit herself. Since this friend does so much for me—and I mean a lot, I said fine. I don’t like the product and I do gel nails myself and have no interest in these weird wraps. I will say colorstreet worked better than Dashing Diva in my opinion, but both sucked over-all. I joined scentsy under her on my own because they had a 50% off package, so I did get the products at like a huge discount after tax, so I did save money I would have otherwise (stupidly) spent. I also joined Norwex (the one MLM who never found her), but that was only because the starter kit was shipping only, and while I think their products are entirely overblown, I didn’t mind spending $10 for 2 cloths and the dusting mitt. My mom loves Norwex and at LEAST me being signed up gives her about $8 off per order, so if she’s going to buy it I’d like her to at least get a discount. My mom is MLM-wise, was also an MLM hater, she just happens to GENUINELY like Norwex. Fine. The price I paid for Norwex evens out to about what I’d spend on dollarstore products and I like their window cloth for cleaning my glasses. I immediately canceled the “store” the day I joined. I also cancelled Scentsy and Colorstreet, I’m not getting any hidden fees here, so don’t worry.
Part of me joined these MLMs because I wanted to see behind the curtain. I was already writing the book at this time, so I wanted to see the inside of how their models worked.
My friend is a member of the following MLMs that I know of:
- Scentsy
- Colorstreet
- Gelmoment
- Melaluca
- JR Watkins (mlm that also sells in stores, actually love their products, sadly).
- Zyia
- Pampered Chef
- Chalk Couture
- Farmasi
My friend is vastly talented and also makes her own stuff with sublimation, etc. I used to be a web designer so part of my goal is to try and slowly get her away from MLMS entirely. I’ve basically made it my new life-goal to unload all of this Scentsy from her. I’ve already spent like 20 hours in her basement organizing. Next step is to organize and sell off what we can, so that at LEAST if she’s having orders, there’s no backlog of losses.
My friend never pressured me into any MLMs, I actually offered even in the colorstreet way. I offered because I wanted to see the exact rules/terms/and back offices of these MLMs because it is incredibly fascinating to me.
I have to wonder how a kind veteran woman ended up in 9+ MLMs… who was the first one to get her involved? When I asked her why she stays she didn’t even list money as the reason, but instead the free trips and the community surrounding them. This makes it even worse in my eyes. As I am sure you know, military communities (especially for those out) are incredibly isolating.