CousinPooh (CP) and I thought it'd be fun to have a "Cousins Night Out" and so we went to be pampered at a Pink Cadillac People (PCP) Makeover. Makeover it was.
To the bat cave! This was one scary night!
We met at the Courthouse Marriott where Ladies in Red Coats and Ladies in Gray Coats arrived with lots and lots of "flair" (see Office Space, the Movie). I wasn't sure if the point of the Pink Cadillac People was to wear as much flair as possible or sell lipstick.
I decided it was the flair.
It started off without much to fear, we sat at tables with our mirrors and our little dabs of this, little dabs of that (not too much), listened to how everything is made, and then mashed it all over our faces in time to march into the Tuesday Night Meeting of the Red Coats and Gray Coats to a boom box blasting "Money! Money!" Watched a little old lady get a tiara and a sash, more smiles, more nods, more Red Coats and Gray Coats and teeth and that vague look like these were actually pod people from the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. They looked like people you might see down at the Safeway, throwing the meat into the shopping cart with the twinkies and Ritz crackers and cans of Alpo, but on closer glance, there was that vague look of pod people. In fact, they reminded me of Anne Rice and her vampires, out sucking the blood from unsuspecting cousins looking for a night of pampering.
What we really needed were pampers.
Then came the sell, and more sell, and more "Money! Money!" and dizzy clapping, the vague pod people in Gray Coats, the vampires in Red Coats swirling durvishly with coupons and raffle tickets.
I answered all my "no" questions "yes," just to be, well, me. Yes, I love my job! Yes, I am paid more than I'm worth! Yes, I have more vacation than I know what to do with! Yes, I can work whenever I feel like! Yes, Yes, Yes! I am woman, hear me roar!
They looked at me with pity, that knowing look of Ladies in Red and Ladies in Gray who've seen my kind before, who dares to put up quite a front, silly girl, and then they know will turn in the $10,000 profit in the first month and be driving the pink caddie by July. They'll get that little tiara on my head before the spring's over and I'll be weeping and singing "Money! Money!" and they'll smile with that knowing look and nod, they've seen it all before.
I gave them back their raffle tickets, knowing I'd blown the free lipstick.
But they gave me the free lipstick anyway, vaguely, sweetly, drifting into the shadows in their red and gray and driving away in their pink.
After all, they just want to sell me some lipstick. Nothing more.
CousinPooh got Round Two today - thought she was buying eye shadow but got a PCP CD instead and promises of a Red Coat of her own.
Pass the pampers, please.
And to think, all we really wanted was some pampering and some lipstick.
Now all I can see is CousinPooh and BabyBlue racing around the Beltway in our Pink Cadillacs.
bb
Rethink the Pink?
By Aleksandra Todorova
QUESTION: A Mary Kay representative told me that if I became a rep, I could deduct the cost of my skin-care and cosmetics products from my taxes because I'd be running my own business. She assured me that Mary Kay isn't a pyramid scheme. Is this true?
ANSWER: You're smart to consider such offers carefully before diving in. Yes, people can make money through multilevel marketing companies like Mary Kay Cosmetics. But it's important to understand the business model before loading up on those lipsticks and lotions. Mary Kay Cosmetics, established in 1963, presents itself as an opportunity for women — many of them stay-at-home wives — to earn income. Today it's the second-largest direct seller of beauty products in the United States, surpassed only by Avon Products (AVP1).
Mary Kay sales reps, called "independent beauty consultants," sell door-to-door, at parties, and directly to friends and family. Mary Kay products aren't available in retail stores or on the company's web site.
Consultants buy their inventory from Mary Kay, and sell the products at roughly twice the price. Mary Kay will buy back unsold inventory for 90% of what the consultant paid for it. But shipping fees and sales tax aren't refunded.
There's another way to earn income from Mary Kay: by recruiting new consultants. Recruiters earn a percentage of each inventory purchase made by the consultants they have recruited. And when recruits start assembling teams of their own, the first recruiter makes a commission on the inventories purchased by the recruits' recruits, and so on.
Sounds like a pyramid scheme, you say? According to the Federal Trade Commission, a pyramid scheme is a multilevel marketing plan in which the main way of earning money is by recruiting new distributors of a product. The best way to tell if a multilevel marketing company is a pyramid scheme is to find out how most of its sales reps make money — by selling the product to end customers or by bringing in fresh recruits, says Robert FitzPatrick, president of Pyramid Scheme Alert, a consumer organization, and author of "False Profits." (For more on this, read this FTC article2.)
FitzPatrick has studied plenty of multilevel-marketing business models, including that of Mary Kay. "I wish I had a good black and white answer for Mary Kay," he says. "What we find is that elements of Mary Kay are operating like a pyramid scheme and elements are operating like a direct sales company, a legitimate business."
The majority of Mary Kay products are eventually sold to customers, FitzPatrick says. But during the past few years, there's been a noticeable shift in focus from selling to recruiting.
BB NOTE TO SELF: Next time, bring the pampers.
No comments:
Post a Comment