Aibu to ask you to talk to me about younique!

[Pitterpatterpotter]

I have lots of friends on social media who try to sell stuff, eg tropic skincare and body shop, but I’ve noticed my 2 younique fb friends post all the time and have sent me message asking me to post their posts etc (which I haven’t done).

Anyway my lovely and usually sensible friend has now announced she is a younique presenter and I am worried about her. She has invested a lot of money already and seems to mostly be buying stuff herself. I have another friend who sells tropic who buys £200 a month of stuff off herself so I know this is common, but this particular friend doesn’t have any experience with makeup and doesn’t have much money. She’s changed completely and talks about younique all the bloody time. I’ve watched some anti mlm videos and read a good blog about younique and I’m genuinely worried about her. The company seems morally questionable with their charity work with vulnerable women apparently used to recruit new younique presenters. How can I help her? She’s investing money and time into this that she hasn’t got and every single time I speak to her she now tries to sell me something

If you do go ahead and speak to her consider this approach, though be prepared for any attempt at logical reasoning to fail.

MLMs all claim to have some world-beating product with umpteen unique selling points. They're so good you'll be turning customers away etc etc etc. They almost sell themselves.

Now ask yourself this. If you had an amazing product, possibly with little or no direct competition, how would you try and sell it? Would you try and get it onto the shelves of major retail chains? Would you invest heavily in mainstream advertising and sell through your own website with state-of-the-art distribution to back it up? Or, would you recruit a hodge-podge army of self-employed agents mainly comprised of the unemployed and SAHPs with little or no previous business experience?

That's a really excellent point.

I like the tropic products, I just buy from the website. I particularly like tropic after I went to a l’occitane party and their prices were huge.

I didn’t know Liz Earle was an MLM? Thought they were owned by Walgreens for some time now.

@TooTrueToBeGood you make a really good point...but i must correct you for calling mlm suckers 'agents'....the correct terms are 'consultants'....'presenters' and 'ambassadors' lol

Liz Earle isn’t MLM.

@YouokHun - well said!

I wonder how long it will be before Arbonne UK files its accounts with Companies House? The deadline was 30 September 2019. Perhaps Arbonne is not as moneyed as it would like us all to think.

I've just had to snooze a friend who's signed up to the 1:1 diet (Cambridge diet) as a "consultant".

I'm not doing to buy the products as I'm already more or less the ideal weight for my height and I'm definitely not going to become a "consultant".

She's certainly no advert for it - she did lose a load of weight when she started the diet herself but it all piled straight back on as soon as she stopped.

I know a local 19 year old who has set herself up as a Cambridge “consultant”, her parents have actually set her up and paid for her to rent a retail space in an expensive little town near me. Stupid parents, not just financially foolish but it would be far kinder to tell her to get a proper job paying the national minimum wage which will be a great deal more money than she’ll make in MLM. I know proper jobs are very hard to come by right now but surely she’d be better off doing nothing than doing MLM, doing nothing is certainly more lucrative and doesn’t piss other people off to quite the extent that endless spamming does.

Anyway, she’s a month in to her venture and other than her mother’s enthusiastic and multiple likes there is no interaction at all.

Ahh I remember when ‘consultant’ used to mean something.

Back in my late teens I worked in a call centre doing telemarketing and they had a way of categorising people we called by their job title. Along with other information such as household income, it built a picture for the companies who hired us of what different demographics thought of their product and so forth.

The word ‘consultant’ instantly made somebody a category A, the highest one. Along with doctor, lawyer etc.

Those days are long gone lol. It used to be a term used by someone with some professional standing and gravitas who could provide expert advice on a specific topic or area.

Now every other person is a ‘consultant‘.

“Ambassador” gets up my nose. I don’t remember seeing the Tropic embassy last time I was in Mayfair. And no, “Ambassador”, you’re not spoiling us: you’re just playing shop.

"Influencer" is worse to me, and that's what's some are now calling themselves

Clearly they see it as the "latest thing" and hope to have a bit of it too

Influencer doesn’t really bother me, if it’s used by someone who actually does make money through advertising. They’re literally influencing their followers to buy stuff and making cash from it. At least it’s actual work bringing in an income (cringe as fuck though when it’s someone with 200 followers and no brand deals).

Whereas consultant and ambassador are just infantilising and incredibly patronising: they’re words that used to represent achieving a certain level in your career or status or seniority. A foreign ambassador, a medical consultant. Their use is based on the idea that there’ll be plenty of women (it’s usually women) thick enough to

a) see the fancy title and believe it means something and is legit, or

b) get stars in their eyes at the idea of being able to call themselves an ambassador or consultant on their Facebook profile, and get hooked into it

And they’re right.

A large part of why MLMs are successful is that it gives women who are often skint, disenfranchised from the workplace or with low paying or no work an ego boost and an identity. How seductive is it as a stay at home mum feeling looked down upon by your career minded acquaintances to be able to say you’re an ambassador or consultant?

Anyone with half a brain and some distance can see it’s nonsense but people fall for it all the time. MLM psychology is very interesting.

Oh god my friend did younique for a while didnt tell us what it was she was doing, just messaged on Facebook saying shes started her own business and she has positions in her company If I'm interested. I had a flabbergasted laugh to my self, then she started posting younique on her facebook page, I was embarrassed for her tbh

Reps are the bane of my life. I run a little Facebook group dedicated to beauty stuff and right now we are inundated with Body Shop reps. It's like whack a mole sometimes.

Today I’ve been asked to share a post about the mascara (which I’ve been asked to share by 2 other people in the past). Not that I’d share it anyway, but I don’t think the mascara looks good at all from her pictures.

Another younique friend on Facebook put something on this week about how hurtful it is that people don’t support their friends and family’s local businesses. I felt like replying that I do go out of my way to support local independent businesses but that isn’t what younique is! She’s been going for 3 years and is black status. The fact a good friend of mine is now starting on the same path makes me so frustrated and sad.

A friend of mine has just started with bloody Younique, and has been posting the unconvincing mascara pictures. I left a comment about "please just do your research", and she deleted it! More fool her.

Another younique friend on Facebook put something on this week about how hurtful it is that people don’t support their friends and family’s local businesses

Standard claptrap I'm afraid and just another scripted response to anyone who resists it. With independent thought discouraged they resort to cliches, and if you mke the mistake of replying you'll just get more

I posted about Modere (no one replied 😞) which has appeared on my FB feed loads recently. I saw a yoga and wellness day advertised which sounded quite good and I was planning to go with a friend, but when I looked more closely I could see that it’s a con to try to promote Modere products.

Nowhere is safe from these scams. There’s a Modere shill who crows about her success, how well she’s doing, etc and then looked very foolish when various people asked her how this could be considering she is bankrupt.

It’s all smoke and mirrors, or fur coat no knickers.

I have a friend and a relative both at it with the younique. Spam spam spam. They both claim to be doing really well on it but I really don’t believe them.
I do buy from the friend who does body shop, but only because I’d buy the body shop stuff anyway from a store so if it means she gets a few percent from my purchase that’s all good.

Another younique friend on Facebook put something on this week about how hurtful it is that people don’t support their friends and family’s local businesses

Ah yeah the standard guilt trip post ‘shop local! Did you know when you buy from Amazon you’re lining the pockets of a CEO billionaire but when you buy from a friend’s business you’re helping a mom give her kid ballet lessons?’

It’s just designed to get more sales via guilt. It’s quite shameless really. You have to be in an MLM. It robs you of your dignity and close relationships while replacing them with the ready made echo chamber of your new ‘younique family’ etc.

I love Body Shop but as a matter of principle will only use their stores, and I feel a little dirty about that seeing as they run an MLM arm.

I've given up on the Body Shop. Between the MLM setup, selling out and going TRA I wont be purchasing from there again. I don't know how they're still going actually.

Yes, The Body Shop is dead to me after their revolting treatment of women, especially JKR.

I love Body Shop but as a matter of principle will only use their stores, and I feel a little dirty about that seeing as they run an MLM arm

I've stopped shopping there and at Neal's Yard who are also now an MLM.