Mary Kay pulls plug on Australian and NZ operations
In an abrupt announcement on their Australian website, Mary Kay has advised they are closing their Australian and New Zealand businesses.
As of March 5th, Mary Kay advises it has closed operations in Australia and New Zealand.
The company cites “market conditions” in both countries, in which it states it ‘does not see a sustainable future‘.
Exact sales figures for both markets are unknown, although one can safely assume Mary Kay in Australia and New Zealand must have been in decline.
Although Mary Kay states distributor were ‘informed of the closures in advance of the wider market‘, although turns out this might have been less than 24 hours notice.
Just shy of a day ago, one Mary Kay distributor on the AntiMLM reddit stated she
didn’t see this coming. It was business as usual with promotions, new product, conference qualifications etc.
The distributor’s upline purportedly also didn’t know, and took the announcement hard in a “crying and distraught” Facebook live.
My Director had no idea. It was very sudden.
From the looks of her during the live, she wouldn’t have been able to play it off if it was a secret only the higher ups had known about for a while beforehand…
Three hours earlier, the distributor had posted about a new recruitment.
Mary Kay’s Australia and New Zealand social media profiles have been deleted. I only found one comment in reference to the closure on their global Facebook profile.
Mary Kay affiliates who want to return products to the company have until April 6th to do so, subject to the company’s return policy.
Apparently Mary Kay has removed access to distributor backoffices though, so recording return inventory might be challenging.
The decline started around 2012 when the company started focusing on China and Asia as its main markets rather than Australia and New New Zealand. Incentive and training trips were usually to HQ in Dallas, but that changed and trips were to China and other Asian countries.
The company was too slow to embrace consultant websites so customers could order online, the sales force were begging for this back in 2002/03 but nothing eventuated until around 2015/16.
I think you will find that the US business is also in decline compared to other cosmetic companies. It would be interesting to see the sales figures for the last few years and the consultant attrition rate at all levels
Given the very sudden shutdown with no warning, unlike Avon who did give their sales force more notice, could there be corporate or regulatory issues?
Dunno about corporate issues but regulatory are unlikely. AU and NZ are pretty lazy when it comes to MLM regulation.
Take note that any MLM company that boasts of making it in China but lets the rest of their markets decline, is typically exploiting non-regulation of pyramid schemes.
You can get away with a lot in China if you keep the wheels greased.