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Thousands of Women Say LuLaRoe’s Legging Empire Is a Scam

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Re: Thousands of Women Say LuLaRoe’s Legging Empire Is a Scam

#51

Post by astura »

Digory wrote: post #41
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a bunch of ladies who did LuLa Roe. It's not that they are more prone to falling for the business side of it, it's that they were attracted to the company for reasons besides the money they could make. All of them were extremely happy LulaRoe customers BEFORE they became sales people. I think if an MLM targeted the people on hacker news with a product that could make a solid side income through Programming mee…

I remember this being part of the pitch of Avon -- you're already buying laundry soap, why not build a business? Of course, at the bottom of the pyramid, you'd buy overpriced soap to keep up your minimums.

Avon is an interesting case because they started out as a legitimate direct sales company, not an MLM. I'm not sure when they turned into an MLM.

Avon's business model made much more sense back before we had mega retailers and the internet.

Re: Thousands of Women Say LuLaRoe’s Legging Empire Is a Scam

#52

Post by astura »

astura wrote: post #39
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced franchises aren't far off from pyramid schemes and MLM as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_fraud Math on a McDonald's franchise is here- https://www.mymoneyblog.com/mcdonalds-franchise-cost-vs-prof... "But if you spend 40 hours a week and only keep tabs on one location, it might really feel like you bought a job." It's looking like 5-6% net return is what you get which is worse than an…

Franchises are nowhere near MLMs. Franchisees don't make the majority of their income from recruiting other people to become franchisees. Franchisees don't have "parties" where they utilize social pressure to get people to make sympathy purchases of things they don't want or need.

I have to add here, the FTC found that 99% of people lose money in MLMs. This is obviously untrue with franchises.

https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/public_com... [PDF]

Re: Thousands of Women Say LuLaRoe’s Legging Empire Is a Scam

#54

Post by motogpjimbo »

kondro wrote: post #16

Not specifically about LuLaRoe, but The Dream[1] is an excellent podcast series about MLM’s, why people get sucked into them and why they’re not illegal (even though they probably should be). 1. https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/stitcher/the-dream

I can't help but think that Americans let these companies off the hook by referring to them as "MLMs" in the first place.

In the UK, we call them "pyramid scams", which is a much more accurate and damning term.

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