The lady who signed me up had bought a Range Rover. I paid £120 to join – but only made £12!
selling something, often beauty or health products.’
Some MLMs, however, encourage sales reps to spend upfront on expensive products they’re unable to sell. Clare Matthew’s unsold Body Shop products clutter the dressing table of her bedroom in Colchester, Essex.
In the year she worked for The Body Shop At Home — the directselling arm of The Body Shop — the married mum of two spent £600 on merchandise, earning only around £80 back and paying off the rest on her credit card. ‘I was stupid and was sucked in,’ says Clare, 42, now an administrator for a building company.
Recruited in October 2018, Clare spent £49 on a starter kit. But she says the only selling party she threw was a flop that led to fractured friendships. ‘I invited 20 people, but only two friends showed up,’ says Claire.
On Facebook, she and other Body Shop ‘consultants’ would rave about products to drum up business. ‘It was a con really,’ says Clare, married to Rob, 39, a civil servant. ‘And because there were so many of us it was hard to sell anything.’ Clare says if she did place an order — for 25 per cent commission — she’d be urged to spend more on products: ‘If I spent £70, for example, Body Shop would offer me a £15 hand cream for £10. So I ended up with lots of products I couldn’t sell.’
ASpOkESpERSOn says The Body Shop At Home ‘ offers a flexible opportunity to earn from the sales of products, as well as building a team of recruits to allow for more widespread sales growth opportunity, if they choose.’
The company added: ‘The Body Shop At Home is far from the illegal operation of a pyramid scheme, which typically focuses on sales of products or services with no independent value, and only encourages profit through recruitment.’ Teacher Olivia Thompson, 38, was also left out of pocket when she spent £1,400 on wellness products from high-end US MLM Ariix, after being told buying in bulk would mean better profits. In six months, she clawed back only £700.
‘I have a First Class degree — I’m not stupid,’ says Olivia, a single parent from London. ‘But I was sold a dream and ended up feeling like a joke.’
Ariix, with its £110 night cream and £66 supplements, stood out as ‘classy,’ says Olivia, who spent £200 on a starter package in 2018.
She too was told by her upline to flood social media with Ariix-related messages. ‘I said I’d cured my hangover with their vitamin drink, but I wasn’t telling the truth,’ she says. ‘It was like a cult.’ Ariix operates on a points system, under which reps have to earn 100 points a month — the equivalent of about £100 — to earn 15 per cent commission. ‘If I didn’t sell enough I got no commission,’ says Olivia.
Over three months, she spent £1,200 on more products, maxing out her credit card. She told herself it was worth it to gain an increase to 25 per cent. ‘My upline said she couldn’t tell me to spend the money — but that if she were me she would, and I would quickly make it back.’
Instead, Olivia alienated friends and family. ‘My sister said MLMs were “evil”. I felt judged by school friends — we still don’t speak.’
She felt increasingly despondent: ‘I was desperate and in tears.’
She recruited just one woman before quitting in December 2018. ‘I got into at least £700 of debt and would have been much better off getting another job,’ says Olivia.
Ariix says average annual earnings for all its 43,945 global sellers are £1,616 — but for full-time workers, it is £228,655. They claim there is no obligation to buy a starter pack. A spokesperson says they ‘discourage “product loading” in an attempt to increase commission.’ ‘We are very conscientious in our training that product purchase is not a requirement,’ the company said, adding that it is ‘ unable to control the actions of every single one of our reps’.
It added, ‘We regret this individual did not receive the support and follow-up from her team member,’ but denied Ariix was comparable to a pyramid scheme, adding: ‘network Marketing or “MLM” is based on the sale of high-quality products to consumers.’
Olivia, however, ended up throwing unsold Ariix products away.
Although MLMs insist the emphasis is on sales — rather than recruitment — this wasn’t Suki pickering’s experience of beauty company Arbonne. ‘The only way to make money and be successful was by recruiting,’ believes Suki, 49, who worked for the company between 2013 and 2015.
A digital analyst with an 11-yearold son, she hoped to earn money for retirement. Arbonne claims its most successful consultants earn an average of £212,000 a year.
Suki, from Warlingham, Surrey, spent £54 to become a consultant, and a further £850 on suggested products and samples in a year. In total, she estimates she spent over £1,500. ‘I lost all the money.’
She only managed to recruit one consultant. ‘ In hindsight I pressured her into it — she didn’t sell anything,’ says Suki, who spent two hours every evening trying to build up her business.
SHE left in July 2015 and sold her remaining s tock, at half price, on eBay. A spokesperson for Arbonne says consultants can join for £30, that there is an annual renewal of £25 and that ‘no additional purchases or inventory are ever required.’ Arbonne says all consultants earn 35 per cent commission on products.
A spokesperson added: ‘It is not easy to make money. It takes time, hustle and commitment, just as it does to start any type of business. The vast majority of our consultants report positive experiences, and this often gets overlooked.’
But Victoria Cannon, 39, had a far from positive experience when she worked for high-end jewellery MLM Stella & Dot. Married to James, 38, and mum to Grace, 13 months, she paid £120 to become a ‘stylist’ for the brand in 2017.
‘The lady who signed me up had bought a Range Rover,’ says Victoria, from Bedford. She set up a Facebook page to sell and was told to throw ‘trunk shows’, a sale via Facebook for groups of friends.
But even when a friend hosted a selling party, nobody bought anything. ‘It was like pulling teeth.’
She says part of the problem was the price — £85 for a necklace and £48 for earrings. In a year, she sold one ring to one friend, a necklace to another, and three items to her mum — ‘I think she felt sorry for me.’ In total she earned just £12 in commission for hours of work.
But despite her failure with Stella & Dot — which ceased trading in the Uk last year because of ‘challenging market conditions’ — Victoria has moved to another MLM, this time selling perfume and claiming she has earned £100 a month in six months with the company. ‘ This one is reputable. There’s no pressure. I get commission on the sales of the women I’ve recruited and I only work 90 minutes a day,’ she says.
These words, well intentioned as they might be, sound all too worryingly familiar. *
Stella & Dot and Forever living did not respond to requests for comment. Catherine and Olivia’s names have been changed to protect their identity.
‘ It was like a cult. I maxed out my credit card. I was ’ desperate and in tears