What Is Mary Kay Cosmetics About?

Welcome to my review What Is Mary Kay Cosmetics About? 

If you can’t handle the truth, you may not want to read this one.

Mary Kay Cosmetics has been around for years, perhaps even your grandmother has used the products or was even a rep in her earlier days.

If you look around your neighbourhood you will more likely find a Mary Kay Rep near you. Many of the reps even claim how much money they make but is it true.

I want you to know that I am not associated with Mary Kay Cosmetics in any way. If you are looking for an honest opinion on this company then keep reading as I reveal the truth about Mary Kay Cosmetics products and what it’s like to become an agent.

Congratulations by the way for taking the time to research the product before getting involved in it.

This is a great step in preventing yourself from wasting your time and money.

So, in this review I will go over:

1 what their products are about and if you should be using them

2 what it’s like to be an agent and if you should become one

3 how much can one expect to make as a rep, in other words, what are the chances of you making money with it.

4 if you are a rep, should you continue or throw in the towel now.

These are some serious questions to be answered and answered they shall be with honesty.

OK, let’s get started…

Mary Kay Cosmetics Products

Owner: Mary Kay Ash and Richard Rogers

Product: Money making opportunity selling cosmetics and skincare products (MLM)

Cost: $100 for starter kit plus you must sell $75 worth per month

 

Like some of the other MLM products I have already covered, this one as well has been around for a long time and is still going strong today.

The product is sold by both women and men however the majority of the reps are women.

Mary Kay Cosmetics was founded by an American businesswoman Mary Kay Ash. At her death, her personal fortune was worth $98 million and her company had more than $1.2 billion in sales and an international sales force of more than eight hundred thousand in at least three dozen countries.

How Did It Start

The company was founded in 1963 and was called Beauty by Mary Kay with $5000 and the Co-Founder, her son Richard Rogers.

This makes it the oldest or fist MLM company followed by Amway 5 years later.

Mary Kay started her business in a 500 sq ft storefront in Dallas with 9 saleswomen that signed up. Using the same house party model as Tupperware and others. Her representatives would invite their friends over for free facials and then pitch the products. The profits roared in with double-digit growth every year.

She charged twice for her lipstick than Avon which meant her reps got paid more. Everything took off so fast and before you know it she had offices in different countries like Australia, South America, Europe and Asia.

She was a very smart businesswoman who received several awards like the Horatio Alger Award, golden Plate Award of American Academy of Achievement. She was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1996.

As of 2014, Mary Kay Cosmetics has more than 3 million consultants worldwide and wholesale volume in excess of 3 billion.

Richard now runs the company as Executive Chairman.

Mary Kay Products

Their success lies in their products. They invested time and money into the research and development of a product to give their distributors and customers the best products in the market.

Those that used their products love them.

They have over 200 products to choose from which include:

• Makeup, Fragrance and Skin Care

They also expanded their products to cover the men as well:

• Men’s Colognes
• Shaving Foams, Creams and After Shave Lotions
• Face Soap
• and Sun Screens

The Quality Of the Products

Up until about 10 years ago, you would hear nothing but good from their products however today it seems to be a different story.

According to Consumer Affairs and many of the sites concerning Mary Kay Cosmetics, many are complaining about:

1. Side effects
2. Skin rashes
3. Dry Skin
4. Burning feeling on the skin.
5. and even outbreaks.

One of the products you hear a lot about is their Timewise. It’s a big surprise to see a company that has its own research and development department that are putting out products that are harmful to the skin like you would find in counterfeits from China.

Consumer Affairs Complaints

Here are some of the complaints directly from Consumer Affairs.

Here is a faithful customer for 30 years…

You can read more if you go to the ConsumerAffairs website, they have plenty. If you are a user of their product and find your skin not the same or is getting red or beginning to have a rash please stop using it and don’t put anything on it for a few days to see if it clears up. If it does I would advise you to stop using their products, they are not healthy for your skin.

Their products were once one of the best however it does seem they have changed the product line and seem to be having a problem with the consumers.

Can You Make Money With Mary Kay

As I have mentioned Mary Kay is an MLM company. There are two ways to earn money and that is:

1. Selling their products to your friends and family.
2. Recruit new members to be under you

Today you can also advertise on social media or even have a webpage up to sell the products which may work well for you.

Getting started

To get started in Mary Kay you have to talk to a Beauty Consultant and submit a Beauty Consultant Agreement then purchase a kit for the $100. The kit will contain everything you need to start selling Mary Kay products. You can even get to purchase the products for your self at a 50% discount. To keep using the discount you must remain as a seller and sell $225 of products every 3 weeks.

Once you stay active  you will make money by:

1. Gain profits from direct sales of products you sell to your customers which you earn 50 percent profit.
2. Commissions from your downline sales which is a 4% profit. This increases as your downline increases.
3. Team Building Bonuses can be from $50 to $3000 profit depending on your status.

This is the basic way to make money and it’s all theory until one applies it.

The question is do people make money with Mary Kay or not?

The Truth About Mary Kay Cosmetics

If you try and find out the statics about what the reps are making in Mary Kay you will be surprised to find out they don’t have an income disclosure statement. What kind of business don’t keep track of what their clients are making?

Those that don’t want you to know that’s who.

Like most MLM companies the majority of the reps make a very low income. The only Mary Kay Cosmetics Earnings statement I could find was from Canada (Thank you Canada for enforcing companies to reveal their rep earnings). Here’s what it had to say:

What this is showing us that the top end is getting all the money while over 98% of the reps make on average of $0 to $206 per year after sticking with it up to a year.

After spending between 1 to 4 years you can expect to make an average of $206 per year which is only 1.6 people out of every 100 reps.

And if you stuck with it for between 4 and 15 years which is only 1 person out of every 2000 reps, you can expect to make $124,000.

In other words, don’t expect to earn very much commissions in the first year with Mary Kay.

In any business, it takes a lot of hard work and time to build it up. Most people expect money too soon and end up quitting before they really tried it.

The truth is it doesn’t cost very much to get started and if you really like the products and have a large group of people to sell it to and you enjoy it then you can do alright with it.

The biggest hurdle that most run into is missing out on the 50% commission. If you don’t make the quota of $225 in sales every 3 months you will lose out on the commission. This can be a real downer for most when getting started because they don’t know how to sell and they may be shy.

You can still earn money with the sales no matter how small they may be. This is great when you are not earning the commissions just yet.

This Is Not An MLM

The Company and a lot of the reps would claim that there is no quota but there is.

They also have a 90% buyback policy so if you decide it’s not for you you can get 90% worth of the products back providing they were not open. This also includes the kit.

They also try and claim that it’s not an MLM or pyramid but it is 100% MLM.

The reason they try and hide it because MLM companies have a bad name due to a lot of them take advantage of their reps by not paying out nearly enough to the reps. If a company is making billions why not pay the reps, after all, they build the business, they deserve it.

Let’s look at it for a moment…

Mary Kay’s income was over 3 billion in revenue, yet if you look at the earnings that the reps made it’s not very much and this is where a lot of the reps realize and end up quitting.

For a company that their reps brought in over 3 billion in revenue and yet they only paid them on average of $1000 for the year.

This is why it’s not considered a business but a hobby. You will have to have another person in the household working at least for a few years until you can get enough reps under you.

The other biggest problem with it is there is no residual income from all your hard work. Once you stop your income stops coming in as well.

Too Many Reps

Too many people know about Mary Kay and are not interested in it or they are already a client with someone else.

Oversaturation is a big problem with companies that have been around for some time. If you browse your neighbourhood you will more likely find several reps or use to be reps.

You will need a huge customer base to keep up on your quota every 3 months. Today you can use the internet to help increase the sales, again many are already doing just that and tapping into other reps potential customers.

Store The Products to Meet Quota

Mary Kay is the only MLM Company I know of that forces their reps to store the products to sell later.

By having a quota enforced upon the reps you are forcing them to buy that extra 50 or 100 bucks worth of products just to meet the quota in the 3rd month. If not you will lose out on your 50% commission in all the sales you made in the last couple of months.

At least they will get the commission but now they have to sell the products to get the money back. This is not something the reps should be doing.

I say SHAME on Mary Kay Cosmetics for enforcing such a quota.

This is just another way for the company to profit even more because if you don’t make the quota, they keep the commission.

It is unlawful to withhold a commission check from a sales rep for any reason.

If you store the products you will have a hard time to catch up the following month. There are cases where women have bought thousands of products to meet quota and have filled their spare rooms and even some cases the entire garage with the products. The products have a shelf life and therefore will expire rendering all the products useless.

The biggest problem is that if you didn’t’ make this quota you will have to sell even more to make the next quota. This puts just too much pressure on you as a rep and not worth doing.

There are much easier ways to make money than Mary Kay Cosmetics.

Lets Recap What Is Mary Kay Cosmetics About

Yes, Mary Kay is a money-making opportunity selling real consumable products.

They do have some awesome rewards from the diamonds on the ladder to the Pink Cadillac for those that make $100,000 in sales for the company.

Because they have a real product to sell and they do pay out their commissions when the quota is met proves that Mary Kay is not a SCAM.

I didn’t expect them to be a scam and still be around for 50 years.

Let’s cover the pros and cons as a business:

Pros:

1. They have awesome rewards
2. They pay out a high commission of 50%
3. They offer plenty of training and help
4. They have products well known

Cons:

1. Despite the 50% commission, the income potential is low
2. Has an enforced quota to meet before getting commission
3. The market can be situated in some areas
4. Products are expensive compared to market
5. Some of the newer products are not up to par
6. Losing customers due to poor product changes

Mary Kay is a legit business opportunity however don’t expect to make a living on it until many years in.

I don’t like MLM companies because they do tend to take advantage of the reps. The reason this happens is that you are not truly a dependable business, you are more or less working to sell one companies products which leaves them to control you.

To me, it’s very clear whoever put this together which I don’t believe its the name in the program because why would you put your real name on a product that everything about it is fake. You wouldn’t so therefore the name is not real either.

I don’t know about you but I don’t trust anyone that puts false claims on their advertising. If they are dishonest upfront then what do you expect to find inside their program? That’s right dishonesty.

For the above reasons, I DO NOT Recommend the Bulletproof Profits training program.

Are you tired of all the scams out there? then check out my #1 recommendation for building an online business the right way.

This is the program that works very well for me and you can even try it out for FREE yourself.

Don’t fall for the fake programs out there, it is sometimes very hard to tell the bad ones from the few good ones when you just starting out.

There are plenty of articles on my website that can be very informative while learning the ropes of online marketing. It will be worth your time to check some of them out.

I would love to know if you found my review helpful and informative, please leave your questions in the comments section below and I will be glad to answer them for you.