Comment Number: 522418-13199
Received: 8/20/2006 5:15:09 PM
Organization: Mary Kay, Inc.
Commenter: Carol Franklin
State: NM
Subject: Business Opportunity Rule
Title: Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
CFR Citation: 16 CFR Part 437
No Attachments

Comments:

I would like to take this opportunity to respond to the comments of Mary Kay Inc. re: the proposed Business Opportunity Rule. They believe that "the proposed Rule would subject...our independent sales force members to impractical, unnecessary and burdensome compliance requirements." As a member of that sales force I would welcome the compliance requirements. I never would have bought into this business if I had known how saturated my area is with MK Consultants. They make it seem so simple with the estimates of hours worked vs money made. When there are NO customers the estimates are useless. I think there should be a requirement to show what people are actually making in this business. A very very few are making excellent incomes, but those incomes are based on commissions from downlines, not sales to consumers. The commissions come from orders, not sales. Therefore, I fear that there is a very real push from recruiters and their uplines to encourage unnecessary inventory purchases with promises that "if you just work hard enough" you will be able to sell. Sadly, the market truly is saturated and people don't want to pay full retail prices when they can buy comparable products for much less on-line or at a local department/discount store. Since I've become a consultant, I have been exposed to about 35-40 other actively working consultants and NONE of them have been able to make a living wage from this business. I know there are many, many more in my area that have just given up. I wish I had known this sooner. If the rules your are proposing had been in place when I became interested, I would have been able to save myself a lot of stress and wouldn't have attempted to pull others into this "business". One more thing...Mary Kay's comments state that the Indpendent Beauty Consultant agreement confers the right to purchase products from the Company at wholesale. They don't mention that the consultant has to purchase a minimum of $200.00 wholesale ever three months to retain that "right". That's fine, I just think it should be mentioned. I find it humorous that their comments include the statement about the option of only purchasing products to fill orders. That's great, unless you haven't met your $200.00 min requirement, in which case you will pay full retail. The buy back guarantee is wonderful too, if you do this within a year of purchasing your product. Unfortunately, it's drummed into your brain that "unless you commit to this business for a full year, you just aren't really giving it a chance." So....unless you do some research on your own, you don't know that the buy-back is for a rolling 12 months and many people just give up and put the inventory away and consider it a loss. There are just so many things that need to be addressed and I think the proposed disclosure rules will be an excellent start in sparing a lot of people from a potentially devastating venture. In a perfect world. no one would give in to peer or upline pressure or partial truths, but in the absence of a perfect world regulation is required. I apoligize for focusing solely on Mary Kay, but that is my only frame of reference. Thank you for you attention.