Mary Kay Review - A Review Of The Mary Kay Home Business Opportunity

Discover What It Takes To Build A Mary Kay Home Business

In this Mary Kay Review, we will look at the home business opportunity offered by selling Mary Kay products. Your success in building a Mary Kay home business depends on the financial stability of the company, the quality of and demand for its products, the compensation plan, the marketing strategy and on your ability to market these products at a profit. The Mary Kay company appears to be financially strong, and its products are of good quality. Your main challenge is in marketing. This Mary Kay review will show you what it takes to market Mary Kay products with success.

Mary Kay Business Review

The company was founded by Mary Kay Ash in 1963. From 1968, Mary Kay Inc was traded on the New York Stock Exchange, until 1985, when the company was taken private in a leveraged buyout.

In 2008, Mary Kay International had $2.6 billion in wholesale sales from more than 35 markets, and more than 1.9 million independent distributors. For the US, the company reports 600,000 independent distributors.

Mary Kay Products and Sales Options

Mary Kay is marketing a line of skin care, color makeup, body care and fragrance products. The products are sold by independent sales consultants.

Consultants are buying product inventory at wholesale, individually or in several starter packages. The packages carry bonus products and items, and may be bought on credit, with monthly payments. The company encourages new distributors to start their business by stocking products.

The products can be sold in five different ways: In person one-on-one, at a party, by telephone, through the consultant's Mary Kay Personal Web Site or by email. For website and email sales, the company ships the product directly to the customer.

Mary Kay Compensation Plan

The Mary Kay Compensation Plan is not publicly available on the web. The following information is from various independent sources.

There are three basic levels of distributors

Independent Beauty Consultant (IBC),
Independent Sales Director,
Independent National Sales Director.

All levels earn a 50% profit off the retail price of products they personally sell. As a consultant, you need to place an order of at least $200 every quarter to qualify as "active".

Once you are recruiting active consultants, you are qualifying for senior consultant and higher levels in the hierarchy. You are now earning an additional team commission of 4% to 13% on team orders and a team bonus of $50 for recruits joining with a minimum order of $600, depending on the size of your team of personal recruits.

With 8 personal recruits, you qualify to apply for the Sales Director level, and are asked to build a team of at least 30 active consultants, but only 8 have to be personal recruits. As a sales director, your bonus is increasing to $100, and you are receiving commissions and bonuses on sales volume and recruits in your entire unit, not just your personal team.

To achieve and maintain director status, your unit must generate at least $4,000 wholesale per month.

The higher sales director levels are expected to generate offspring sales director units, and are receiving increasing commissions on the sales volume generated by their offspring units.

Because of the team building bonus and the additional team commission, team leaders will seek to continue and recruit new consultants with an initial order of at least $600. Sales positions are not permanent. You must maintain qualifications, or you will get reduced to the level corresponding to your recent volume and team size.

Mary Kay Marketing and Training

Mary Kay marketing is centered on direct selling events, such as sales parties, skin care classes, facials, ‘On the Go’ appointments and so on. As an Independent Beauty Consultants, you are trained to start by booking Mary Kay sales parties and events with family, friends and business acquaintances as hosts. Later you are expected to move on to "real customers."

You can obtain booking and recruiting scripts and forms from your own sales director, other sales directors or from third party suppliers. Emphasis is on recruiting new customers as Independent Beauty Consultants. New consultants are advised to stock up on inventory.

Mary Kay Review Summary

The Mary Kay business opportunity involves selling skin care and cosmetics products. This is a market with many competitors, and you need to be able to offer a compelling advantage for customers to do business with you. Realize that you will have to learn marketing and sales skills in order to succeed.

Make a realistic assessment of what you need to do to meet the company's minimal requirements, and your own income goals beyond that. The main pitfall you need to watch for is to buy a large inventory without having gained the necessary marketing and sales skills. Your business success does not depend on your inventory but on your sales skills.

Find out how to build a profitable home business through direct response marketing. I have prepared a MLM marketing report and a series of video training lessons for you, all free of charge.

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To Your Success

Dr. Kai Drühl