LIAM SHARMA: White Mercedes-Benz, VSCO filters & cooked concerts. We need to talk about Arbonne
by Liam Sharma
God, I literally don’t know where to begin.
Let’s start with disclaimers:
- These opinions are my own. Please don’t butcher me.
- People’s names have been changed/blocked for privacy reasons; I think that’s only fair. I’m not out here trying to expose people. Also, I’m scared Arbonne girls will troll me. I don’t have the mental capacity to deal with internet abuse from girls who are high on Fizz Sticks.
- I’ve tried to reference all statistics mentioned, as I’ve found with Arbonne, these are constantly changing within the market. So if you’re reading this article in 2021, stats may be outdated.
It’s taken me an hour to type this sentence. This is a shit-show. I really need to do this article justice, for selfish reasons, of course. I’ve spent the last week digging into the cult-like brand, Arbonne. Stick with me, this isn’t bitesize. If you have any questions, good, so do I.
Arbonne is a multi-level-marketing (MLM) company that sells a buttload of products, well over 400 at any given time. Founded in 1980 by Norwegian entrepreneur, Petter Morck. Arbonne’s product lines include (but not limited to) vegan skincare sets, pollution defence SPF, makeup palettes, every hair essential, Fizz Sticks (these are my fav), protein bars, ornaments, beach bags, notebooks and scrunchies. You name it, Arbonne probably stocks it.
I knew little about Arbonne before embarking on this death sentence. To be honest, I didn’t understand MLMs or acknowledge how prominent they are in markets globally. I guess, I have never been the target market. I lost my MLM virginity watching season 1, episode 6 of Kath and Kim – entitled ‘Money’. When Kath gets roped into a pyramid-scheme to pay off her ritzy wedding with her hunk of spunk groom to-be, Kel Knight. Obviously, I immediately became interested. Over the years, I’ve had girlfriends randomly disclose they’d been weirdly Facebooked by a long-lost, high school acquaintance – who was wondering whether they’re up to starting their own business. It never really fazed me, at that point most of my girlfriends were too focused on getting legless during the weekends to start a business. My only assumption was that it was a fishy business model, and I’ve wanted to attend one of Arbonne’s annual Las Vegas conferences for years, you know, when thousands of people gather in a venue screaming for the latest vegan moisturiser. It had me hooked. I mean, I am all for a good moisturiser, bonus if it’s vegan, but this was something else, this was something more. These girls were flying from all over the world to partake in some sort of group choir, very biblical, I feel like people would have overdosed on oestrogen. Anyway, I digress.
I approached this piece with no-bias, for me, to get to the crux of Arbonne I had to set aside my personal predisposed assumptions and figure out how Arbonne came to be a $544 million company with hundreds of thousands of active independent consultants globally. What I figured out early on was that Arbonne is two separate companies in one, there’s the obvious Arbonne entity which sells tens of millions of lifestyle/beauty products yearly (Fizz Sticks) and then there’s the Arbonne entity which sells the ‘dream’. This ‘dream’ is what’s gotten Arbonne in hot water, this dream has spurred an anti-MLM army, this ‘dream’ has also got a gaggle of girls religiously supporting it.
Arbonne launched in NZ in 2016, it’s legally registered as an international MLM company – there are tonnes of MLM companies floating around, think Avon, Mary Kay, Morinda, Freelife, 4Life, blah, blah. Basically, MLM companies sell direct products/services to consumers through omni-channels. In Arbonne’s case, it has an online store, but it also recruits independent consultants to ‘start their own business’ and sell products on behalf of Arbonne, these independent consultants are basically franchisees. You pay Arbonne a fee to become an independent consultant and you earn a commission from your product sales, you can also earn a commission on sales made from people you recruit to become independent consultants, these people are considered your ‘downline’. Arbonne encourages its independent consultants to recruit people into the Arbonne life/job/cult (omg!), by doing so you’re earning a commission on their sales (you’re their ‘upline’) – hence creating a chain. So big picture thinking, say you get in early, you recruit one person, that one person recruits three people, and so on, you start earning a commission from SO many people. You’re making major bank, $22,000 a month sort of cash. I fucking love money. I’m in, you had me at hello.
Every single piece of information you need to deep-dive into this company is on its website, or on YouTube. I will never get back the hours I spent reading Arbonne’s T&C’s, and you know what, that’s on me. The problem with the ample information Arbonne supplies is that it may as well be in gibberish, I literally can’t comprehend so many acronyms/terms/clauses etc, especially within its Compensation Summary, Success Plan and corresponding infographics. I pride myself on my average-ish IQ, I don’t think I am stupid. Sometimes I say stupid shit, hell, I’ve flunked classes in high school. But I have a BCOM degree that I’ve never used, and I NEVER failed a paper at Victoria (yass queen) – so I feel like I should be able to cognitively understand Arbonne’s fancy business docs. Especially since lots of new recruits are 18, fresh out of high school, impressionable, no expensive/useless business papers under their belt, so-called aspiring entrepreneurs.
Click here to read Arbonne’s Success Plan
Click here to read Arbonne’s Compensation Summary
Please don’t read these documents now, stay on track. I am not even close to being done and I’ll extract what I think is relevant and insert below.
The documents are loaded with acronyms: SRP, RV, OV, QV, PQV and WTF. It’s an acronym shower. It’s fucking raining acronyms.
I know. Imagine having the cognitive ability to process this infographic, like, to truly understand it without wanting to throw yourself into a wall. You know what this led me to believe? Arbonne (IMO) has over complicated its business documents. Kind of like when you’re on the last step of purchasing a concert ticket and it asks you to tick the box stating you’ve read the terms and conditions – but you never do, because life’s short and you have better shit to do. This is a loophole, lots of people can’t comprehend this, people sign-up without understanding the compensation formula breakdown (their fault). Why? Because they’re recruited by someone they trust, like a friend or even a family member.
This is Arbonne’s pyramid business model, conveniently reformatted in a square (for your viewing pleasure):
So what the flying-shit does this mean. Let’s break this down. Arbonne had over 174,200 independent consultants in 2018. Out of these independent consultants, only 17% received any earnings from the company in 2018. Meaning 83% of independent consultants didn’t get a dime. So for the chart above, the figures only account for the minority 17% of independent consultants who made bank. Based on the figures shown in the above table, 90% of all active independent consultants earn on average less than $4,000 a year (that’s $333 per month). It’s not until you hit RVP level that you start earning a substantial living salary – but only 3% of active consultants hit that. Also, this chart doesn’t include any expenses incurred, e.g. purchasing product, annual business fees, shipping, marketing etc. So this is your salary before your operating costs.
Do you know what this chart doesn’t account for? What about all the inactive consultants.
As the chart shows, there’s five levels to Arbonne (which is small compared to a lot of other MLM companies). The goal, obviously, is to move up the ranks. You do that by earning a certain amount of QV (Qualifying Volume), both on your own sales and on those you recruited. You must have over 250 QV each month to be considered an active independent consultant. If you don’t earn over 250, you’re considered inactive, meaning you can’t earn anything ($0) and you’re not included in the table above.
So from the chart above, you can infer that only 0.4% of all independent consultants make ‘dream life’ money. Lol.
When you start out at Arbonne you pay a $49 one-off fee, this fee gives you the right to sell products on behalf of Arbonne and Arbonne sets you up with your ‘own’ website. However, it’s not your own website, it’s an add-on to the primary Arbonne website. It’s all under the same domain holder, you can’t make your website baby pink with customised graphics that scream your individualistic flare. It’s not yours, it’s still Arbonne’s. You’re not required to purchase any product to start your own Arbonne business, however, Arbonne strongly advises purchasing a starter-kit (with samples to give away to friends/family), which makes sense, you need to touch a product, understand its formula, trial etc – to be able to effectively sell it.
Once you’re an independent consultant you get a 35% discount on all products (Arbonne’s ‘wholesale’ price). If you then sell this on at 100% SRP you obviously make a 35% commission on each product sold, you can flog it off in-person if you buy inventory (and you keep the difference) or you direct your consumers to your ‘personalised’ website to buy product and Arbonne will deposit your 35% commission directly into your bank account every month. Simple. Arbonne’s products are expensive (to most), looking at around $90.00 a serum, which isn’t unheard of in the beauty industry, but it’s not cheap. Especially when brands like The Ordinary or Inkey List have a similar offering.
The chart insinuates ranks are based on geographical areas, but it’s not. You can have several RVPs in one region, it’s just highly unlikely. Only so many people want to consume/sell Arbonne in one area, there comes a point when demand drops because the area is over-saturated.
Over the last week, I’ve messaged over 30 Kiwi Arbonne independent consultants. I wanted to pick their brains, basically, dig dirt. Sniff about. Chat shop. It’s probably my own fault 99% of them declined my offer, I am such a millennial that I felt the need to state I was an editor for Sauce in my IG bio – red flags, they knew I was intending on writing what I am doing today (screenshot below). Fuck.
I started following threads and soon enough I found myself scrolling through a few of Arbonne’s independent consultants in the USA. Land of the free, baby.
I changed my bio and changed tactics. I messaged overseas consultants, pretending to be an interested prospect, I insinuated I had interest in joining the Arbonne family. I had them eating out the palms of my hands, weirdly, most replied with IG voice memos only – I can’t screenshot something that is a voice memo. See below picture. Here I am having a two-hour IG voice memo chat with a mum from Texas, let’s call her Dorothy.
Key findings?
Everyone had the same regurgitated answers. Arbonne is a life-changing company, you can be your own boss, work your own hours by the pool, you make what you put in. It’s ingrained in their heads; the answers are enticing. All the girls insinuated I should take the plunge, make impulsive decisions, you will never know until you find out. I feel like they were reading off memorised cue cards. The only interesting piece of information I extracted from these conversations was that a lot of these girls were in fact making more money from their ‘downline’ (from the sales of people they recruited), instead of from the products they were selling on their own accord.
A pyramid-scheme is a business model that recruits members based on the promise of payments for enrolling others into the same scheme, this promise outweighs the demand for its products. Pyramid schemes are illegal, Arbonne is not a pyramid scheme. There is a demand for Arbonne’s products, but it’s interesting to note that girls are earning more money from recruiting people, compared to what they’re earning from their individual sales.
At the very last minute, I was reached out to by a newly departed Arbonne independent consultant. She’d heard I’d been snooping around and was keen to have a chat. Thank you, Linda.
LIAM 😊: How long did you work as an Arbonne independent consultant for and what rank were you?
5 months, I was a District Manager (DM).
Why did you leave Arbonne?
I started to get red flags when two of my uplines were trying to get promoted to Regional Vice President (RVP) and National Vice President (NVP). You would never hear from them until the last day of every month, then they would be messaging constantly asking what sales you had coming through and tell you to message every single person on your Facebook and Instagram. I was close to hitting my promotion one month and one of my uplines asked if I had any $$ to put into "reaching my goal". Once lockdown started, I assumed Arbonne would close as it isn't an essential business. We were told to keep sharing how amazing the business is and that it’s the perfect time to ask people to join the business because they would be losing their jobs. The final straw for me was the Kimberly Valetti issue.
What is something you think the general public needs to know about Arbonne?
IT IS A CULT! Toxic positivity. Do not believe what you see on Instagram, the "free" Mercedes is financed under your name, most of these women get into debt buying product.
Did you use the product you sold?
Yes, we were told to be a "product of the product", and the reason we couldn't sell it was because we hadn’t tried all the products.
Did you enrol your friends and family into the company?
Yes.
On average how much money did you make per week?
$30 - but I was spending way more on products for myself.
Are you provided with material to entice other people into the company? Is there lots of training involved?
Yes and yes. The trainings are basically brainwashing sessions on "the law of attraction" and "you are the only reason you are failing in this business" etc. We were told to "sell the lifestyle" on Instagram, by only posting positive fun things like photos of car parties etc, so people want to join the business.
Did you feel like you were truly the CEO of your own company?
No way, you get told what you can and cannot do constantly.
Is it easy to move up the ranks?
We got told the easiest way to move up is to make your team wider. So recruit lots of consultants and then they get consultants etc. It’s not possible to move up the ranks alone or in a small team. So lots of people sell their products at consultant prices to get the "points" so they get closer to promotions, which means they are selling but not receiving any commission!
So why do so many people sign up to Arbonne? Because they fall for the dream, repeatedly. And then you get sucked in so far, you can’t get out. Kind of like a toxic relationship. I cannot articulate how eye-opening ‘insta-stalking’ Arbonne consultants has been. Honestly, thank god for IG highlights and the millennial tendency to over-share everything and furthermore save it as a highlight, so, nosy people like me can basically watch their entire social existence. I’ve seen too much, my word. I will say, the girls seem to be very close friends with each other (which is nice!), I wonder if socially vulnerable people are targeted on the premise of finding their true clique. I also wonder if people don’t leave Arbonne because they’re afraid they will forfeit their only friends by doing so.
When you first sign up to Arbonne, it is suggested you connect with 30+ people a month to ensure you’re reaching targets. I don’t even know 30 people, honestly, I can’t think of anything worse than cold-messaging people who used to bully me in high school, offering them a once in a life-time opportunity to be their own CEO. And then there’s the Arbonne soirees, consultants sells you the dream over budget wine and hors d'oeuvres, all you have to do is endure it for two hours and then get guilt tripped into either a) buying something or b) enrolling yourself. I also love how the smorgasbords at these events usually include salami, pastrami, champagne ham – yet the brand is based on vegan, cruelty-free beauty. It makes me lol.
I rate Arbonne’s training systems. These girls are master manipulators and top-notch sales gurus, they know all the buzz words, I’ve taken the liberty to list a few of my favs:
Rich, do it, nothing is stopping you, boss babe, act now, look at me now, flexible working hours, CEO, loaded, new person, white Merc, success, inspiring, life-changing, cures anxiety, Las Vegas, wellness, health, love, be part of something bigger than yourself, dream, it’s the best thing in the fucking world.
Has anyone else noticed how similar Arbonne’s consultants’ IG feeds look? Why do they all use the same VSCO filter? How are they all so tanned? I think there is a formula amongst all the product placement. Everyone has been to some tropical island in the last year, overseas ‘work’ conferences, designer bags, PERFECT skin, did I mention tanned? Everyone is spewing positivity. But the most enticing marketing ploy in the whole company is the White Mercedes-Benz. Omg, the Benz.
Arbonne awards RVP and NVP consultants a white branded Mercedes-Benz, as a token of its appreciation. Every month you receive a payment towards ‘your’ car that ‘you’ have leased under ‘your’ own name. This payment is made based on hitting sales targets, which is substantial at a top-tier level. If you don’t hit targets, the payment doesn’t come through. Also, it’s got a big, fat Arbonne logo slapped across it, but it’s still your car.
I want to touch on the crazy, annual Las Vegas Arbonne conference. People wear their own country’s flag on their back, like it’s the fucking Olympics. Arbonne doesn’t pay for you to attend, so you fly half-way around the world, to then pay for a ticket to your own work event, I’m done. There is a virtual conference happening while I am typing this, for COVID-19 reasons this year’s conference has been pulled – it costs just $99.00 USD to virtually attend – what a bargain. Apparently Arbonne is announcing 17 new products, so keep a look out for those in the coming days/months.
Watch this video from 14 mins onwards, it’s lit. I’m serious.
I am not going to write about the plethora of coverage I have recently seen circling about independent consultants reaching out to vulnerable people in disturbing ways – making the most cooked claims. I need to defend Arbonne here, it must be practically impossible for it to regulate its consultants’ comms. Can you imagine how many people are invited to join Arbonne daily? All it took was one person to reach out to someone with terminal cancer suggesting they should join Arbonne, so they would have some money to leave for their family when they die. PR NIGHTMARE. That’s not Arbonne’s fault, that is the consultants, but then again – they’re representing the brand. The grey area is bottom-less.
Let’s talk about Arbonne the brand. Below is a list of products I think would be cool to have on your top shelf, please don’t run out and buy them. I just thought I would chuck them a lifeboat. I’m not going to bash something I haven’t tried – also, I have quite a few friends who regularly use a variety of Arbonne’s products, especially its skincare range.
I wonder if Arbonne will send me any samples, or like, influencer gifts. If you’re reading this and you’re from Arbonne, below is a list of products I would like to trial. Thank you.
Arbonne Fizz Sticks ($55.00 for 30 sticks), apparently, it’s like crack for women. I’m keen.
RE9 Advanced Brightening Set ($266.00 for 6 efficacious products), cute!
Super Calm Serum with Tiger Grass ($74.00) this sounds boujie and I want to know what Tiger Grass is, so.
Overnight Face Jelly ($59.00), the product description says, “Good morning, baby soft skin!”. I like that.
RE9 Advanced Prepwork Gel Eye Masks ($73.00),“I’m a morning person” eyes. Sold.
Say, I was interested in becoming an independent consultant, I would endeavour to penetrate an untapped market. Figure out where Arbonne isn’t prominent and go-ham (like, maybe in Bluff?). Like all MLMs, people at the top make dosh, and people at the bottom, don’t. If this isn’t clear after this article (report?), I have nothing left to give you.
One thing that does personally ruffle my feathers is the ‘create your own business for $49’ concept – as if it were that easy. It’s disrespectful and wildly inaccurate to claim you’re a business owner if you’re an independent Arbonne consultant. That’s deranged thinking.
Arbonne is not a scam, a very small percentage of people are making money, scams are illegal. I don’t really know what the fuck Arbonne is, but I don’t want any part of it – unless I get sent Fizz Sticks. I’ll take those.
Words — Liam Sharma
Image source — Liam Sharma, Arbonne & here
