You might find names such as LFI(then LongFar China, now LongFar International), Venture Era Local, Amway, NuSkin and Totalife familiar. These companies market and sell health and lifestyle products ranging from magnetic mattresses, bras and bracelets to fuel additives for your vehicle, health supplements to ‘cure’ a plethora of illnesses such as diabetes to diamond jewellery.
You might have been approached by your friends or family, and in my case a really old friend who appeared out of nowhere, to either buy stuff you never thought you’d need or to ‘join’ them in this little business of theirs. The approach is pretty subtle, my husband received a call on his cell from this long lost old friend of ours a few years ago about selling diamonds as a part time, with a potential to earn SGD400 for a few hours per day. Naturally, my husband was pretty keen and his friend told him to dress smart and come over to Sims Avenue for an interview. When he told me about that ‘interview’ I was curious. At that point of time, MLM was simply a news headline; I had no idea about it. Funny thing is, I thought it was a business in the black market. Come on, selling diamonds? Part time and no mention of a jewellery shop?
What we found out at Sims Avenue killed us.
We were told to park the car at a Shell gas station near Aljunied MRT station, and walk towards the back of Shell to get to the building. If you are not familiar with the Aljunied area it’s right on the outskirts of the red light district of Geylang amongst industrial buildings.
There it was, standing tall in all pride and glory, a grey building with a huge purple LFI sign in italics. Parked in front is a fancy green Lotus Elise, with several Beemers littered around it. (Oh and apparently a friend said the Lotus was fined numerous times for illegal parking – a little something to talk about later).
OH YES I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT SUCH A COMPANY – LFI.
And then there are throngs of people standing and chatting merrily in front of the entrance. There was an open unit too, where people were making payments, people getting weighed, and more people sitting down and talking. Strange, I thought. Are all these people coming for an interview to sell diamonds part time too?
Standing there awkwardly with my husband, he called his friend, whom within seconds greeted us with a warm welcome. After a small chat we were then brought into the building for a tour.
We were brought into the open unit that I mentioned earlier. It was buzzing with chatting and laughing and hand shaking and people weighing. There was a jewellery shop called Jewel De Fred or something, complete with Cisco officers guarding the place. There was a huge range of diamond bracelets, necklaces, earrings and rings, and that friend commented ‘You can approach me if you wanna buy a good big diamond ring for cheap.’
Funny, I thought that my husband could help himself with buying the diamond ring if he got the job SELLING those diamonds.
Then we took the elevator to this huge room where there were MORE people talking on cafe like chairs and tables littered with company publications and magazines. On the walls were posters of photos of men posing with their flashy cars and marketing strategies and business models and health and beauty products as well as photos of old women who participated in a company beauty pageant.
This is where the brainwashing starts.
I didn’t pay much attention to the conversation going on as I was more interested in reading the magazines on the table. And whatever that was happening wasn’t making any sense as it was supposed to be an interview and it turned out different.
But the magazines were interesting though. Numerous products brought in or marketed by the company were featured, including top sellers of featured products. There was also a section where successful employees were featured, with their flashy cars, sprawling homes and luxurious lifestyles such as having yacht parties and popping champagne like P. Diddy.
Enticing.
When the conversation was over, and on the way back to the lobby, I saw smaller rooms with talks going on inside, with topics such as, or probably as I vaguely remember, Health 101 or something like that. Our friend said,’Oh you can attend such talks to further understand the products and its benefits, the company believes in constantly upgrading its employees’ or something like that.
So to be ‘employed’ you have to pay an SGD10 or something, and cough up about SGD5000 for a ‘starter package’ which I think consisted samples of products such as a few bottles of Atom Power fuel additive, and some health products.
My husband said to our friend he’ll think about it as 5000 bucks is a huge sum. And so we left.
We went home and did our research about that company. My husband is familiar with this, he told me there are a few terms to this such as MLM as used in this post, the Pyramid Scheme or the Leverage system. So what are they?
‘A Multi-Level Marketing or Pyramid Selling scheme will typically require participants to pay an upfront charge. In return, the participants are promised financial rewards for each additional participant recruited, as well as all new participants who are in turn brought in by their recruits - hence the pyramid-like structure.
As more salespersons are recruited, participants hope to recover their upfront charges and earn sizeable profits. However, such a pyramid scheme will eventually collapse when they run out of new recruits, resulting in those salespersons at the bottom of the pyramid losing all their upfront charges.
In the interest of consumer protection, the Government's regulation effort is targeted at preventing the proliferation of such high-risk schemes.’
Source: Ministry of Trade and Industry Singapore, http://app.mti.gov.sg/default.asp?id=567#10
So they say, in MLM recruitment, you buy the products at wholesale price and then sell at retail price. And to make more money, you recruit people so that you can earn a percentage from their sales.
So all you got to do is convince 10 people that they need the product, and get them to convince 10 others that they too, need the product. And 10 others and 10 others and what do you get? A pyramid! So imagine how many people there are going to be under you, and you earning from their sales and recruitment. Also imagine, the thousands of other people above you, earning from your sales and your recruitment. So what does that make?
An awfully saturated market where people are not making money anymore, especially those at the bottom of the pyramid.
And when you’re sceptical what do they say to you?
‘Unlike most others, you will never fail, because you are a winner, and this is an opportunity of a lifetime.’
'Looking at you, I'm sure you can earn a top managerial position in no time'
And when you’re not making money what do they say to you?
Will they still be there in the first place to say anything to you?
Eventually the one making money is that person who started it all, and he is hundreds and thousands of people above you, and he is smiling with the money you paid for your starter package, using that to pay for his fines by parking his Lotus illegally.
And also, if your product, such as Atom Power, is really damn good then why don’t the big automotive companies or even the F1 endorse the product? And who on earth would wanna put a fuel additive that is made in china into their precious cars?
And why can’t REAL doctors, NOT ARTISTES endorse the health supplements you claim to help ‘cure’ diabetes? Get proof too, of a real person who suffered from diabetes and getting better after eating your product. And why would a person want to buy a product from a company that has had stuff recalled like Menergy and Mentalk?
And Recruiters, why can’t you show me your cheque or bank account as proof of money you’ve earned from this?
Do your research about this, here are the links.
For info on how MLM can be illegal:
Ministry of Trade and Industry Singapore
http://app.mti.gov.sg/default.asp?id=567#10
For info on how MLM products could be dangerous:
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/350990/1/.html
Health Sciences Authority Singapore
http://www.hsa.gov.sg/publish/etc/medialib/hsa_library/corporate/pr20072009.Par.1666.File.tmp/HSAMediaRelease__HSACautionsAgainstConsumingMenergyMEssenceCapsules_121208.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment