Zinzino Review v2.0: Coffee ditched for nutritional supplements
BehindMLM first reviewed Zinzino in 2013. Back then the company was primarily focused on Europe and marketed a coffee pod system.
Europe is still Zinzino’s care market but since 2013 the company has expanded to include nutritional supplements.
On the management side of things Zinzino is still headed up by CEO Bergheim Pettersen (right).
Around April 2017 a reader reached out and requested a Zinzino review update.
Unfortunately at the time Zinzino did not provide a copy of their compensation plan and I was unable to locate one otherwise.
Earlier this month another reader requested a review update, and provided me with a copy of Zinzino’s updated compensation plan.
Read on for an updated review of the Zinzino MLM opportunity.
Zinzino’s Products
Zinzino appear to have done a complete 180 with respect to coffee and no longer market it.
Instead the company offers a range of supplements targeting nutrition, personal care and weight loss.
- BalanceOil AquaX – “helps to increase the omega-3 essential fatty acid levels in your body (and) adjust your omega 6:3 ratio to optimal levels in just 120 days” (contains Aquacelle, an emulsifier to mask fish oil flavor and texture), retails at $65 for a 300 ml bottle
- BalanceOil Orange/Lemon/Mint – same as the AquaX variety (minus emulsifier) with “healthy and optimal eye, heart, brain and immune function” support, retails at $65 for a 300 ml bottle
- BalanceOil Vegan – BalanceOil “contains marine micro-algae oil combined with an extra high polyphenol content, olive oil and echium seed oil”, retails at $69 for a 200 ml bottle
- Balance Test – a “dry blood-spot test for home sample collection”, retails at $169
- Balance Capsules – “BalanceOil, conveniently packaged in capsules”, retails at $49 for a bottle of 120 capsules
- Skin Serum – “protect, repair & rebuild your skins extracellular matrix – ECM”, retails at $78 for a 30 ml bottle or $99 for a 50 ml bottle
- Xtend – “protect, maintain and renew your cells and tissues”, retails at $69 for two boxes of 60 tablets each
- Viva – “a dietary supplement that supports your general wellbeing in several ways”, retails at $29 for a box of 60 tablets
- Protect – “contains an effective vegan vitamin D3 that boosts the immune system and a specialized and standardized 1,3/1,6 beta-glucans derived from baker’s yeast”, retails at $59 for a box of 60 tablets
- LeanShake – “a delicious and healthy meal replacement for weight control”, retails at $104 for a 960g pouch
- ZinoBioatic Fiber Blend – “a tailored blend of 5 natural dietary fibers”, retails at $44 a tub
Zinzino products are also offered in various six-month autoship bundles.
The Zinzino Compensation Plan
The Zinzino compensation plan rewards affiliates for selling products to retail customers.
Commissions and bonuses are tracked via credits, which are converted to pay points at a rate of $1.35 each.
Credits
Zinzino refers to sales volume as “credits”.
All Zinzino products carry a ”credit” value standardized across countries and currencies.
Zinzino uses credits as an internal currency to … calculate commissions and bonuses in the compensation plan.
Unfortunately credit values for Zinzino products are not disclosed on their website.
For commission calculation, in the US 1 credit is paid out at a fixed $1.35 exchange rate.
Globally Zinzino pays credits out as commissions at a rate between $1.15 to $1.48 USD.
MLM Commission Qualification
Zinzino affiliates qualify for MLM commissions by generating 20 credits over their first three months.
From the fourth month onward an affiliate must generate at least 20 credits a month as well as 4 Customer Points.
Customer Points are generated via retail customer orders:
- a retail customer with a minimum 3 credit autoship order generates 1 Customer Point
- additional 3 credit or more retail product orders generate one Customer Point each
Generated Customer Points are valid for ninety days.
If a Zinzino affiliate doesn’t generate Customer Points via the above criteria, they can still earn one Customer Point if the sum total of their retail customer orders is 3 credits or more over a rolling ninety day period.
Zinzino Affiliate Ranks
There are twenty fixed ranks within the Zinzino compensation plan.
Along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:
- Sales Rep – sign up as a Zinzino affiliate (not qualified for MLM commissions)
- Bronze – generate and maintain 4 Customer Points (20 credits in total) a month
- Silver – generate and maintain at least 750 credits a month across your downline
- Gold – generate and maintain at least 1500 credits a month across your downline
- Executive – generate and maintain at least 3000 credits a month across your downline
- Platinum – generate and maintain at least 6000 credits a month across your downline
- Diamond – generate and maintain at least 12,000 credits a month across your downline
- Director – generate and maintain at least 24,000 credits a month across your downline
- Crown – generate and maintain at least 48,000 credits a month across your downline
- Royal Crown – generate and maintain at least 80,000 credits a month across your downline
- Black Crown – generate and maintain at least 130,000 credits a month across your downline
- Ambassador – qualify for two income centers with at least 10,000 in monthly credit volume, and generate at least 150,000 credits a month across your downline
- Royal Ambassador – maintain two income centers generating at least 20,000 credits a month each, and generate at least 200,000 credits a month across your downline
- Black Ambassador – maintain two income centers generating at least 30,000 credits a month each, and generate at least 250,000 credits a month across your downline
- President – qualify for three income centers generating at least 40,000 credits a month each, and generate at least 300,000 credits a month across your downline
- Elite President – maintain three income centers generating at least 80,000 credits a month each, and generate at least 500,000 credits a month across your downline
- Global President – maintain three income centers generating at least 130,000 credits a month each, and generate at least 1,000,000 credits a month across your downline
- 1 Star Global President – qualify for four income centers generating at least 130,000 credits a month each, and generate at least 2,000,000 credits a month across your downline
- 2 Star Global President – qualify for five income centers generating at least 130,000 credits a month each, and generate at least 3,000,000 credits a month across your downline
- 3 Star Global President – qualify for six income centers generating at least 130,000 credits a month each, and generate at least 4,000,000 credits a month across your downline
Beyond 3 Star Global President an additional “Star” rank is awarded per
- new income center qualified for that generates 130,000 in credit volume a month and
- a total increase of 1,000,000 a month in total downline credit volume
Note that product order credit requirements can include an affiliate’s own purchases and that of recruited affiliates.
Also note that for the purpose of qualification, Zinzino uses a binary team compensation structure.
A binary compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a binary team, split into two sides (left and right):
The first level of the binary team houses two positions. The second level of the binary team is generated by splitting these first two positions into another two positions each (4 positions).
Subsequent levels of the binary team are generated as required, with each new level housing twice as many positions as the previous level.
Positions in the binary team are filled via direct and indirect recruitment of affiliates. Note there is no limit to how deep a binary team can grow.
For rank qualification, no more than 66.6% of credits can come from one side of the binary team.
Retail Commissions
Zinzino affiliates earn a commission on the sale of products to retail customers.
The Zinzino compensation plan states retail commissions range from 10% to 50%.
A one-time 10% Cash Bonus is paid when retail customers sign up for an autoship order.
Residual Commissions
Zinzino pay residual commissions via a binary compensation structure.
For an explanation of a binary compensation structure, refer to “Zinzino Affiliate Ranks” above.
Using a two-sided binary compensation structure, Zinzino track generated credits as follows:
- Bronze affiliates receive 7.5% of binary team credit volume
- 150 credits per earned income center and 11 recruited affiliates to 300 credits per earned income center and 22 recruited affiliates = same 7.5% residual commission rate
- 500 credits per earned income center and 50 recruited affiliates to 2000 credits per earned income center and 200 recruited affiliates = 10% residual commission rate
- 3000 credits per earned income center and 450 recruited affiliates (and higher) = 15% residual commission rate
Multiple Income Centers
Zinzino reward affiliates who sign up with an autoship order with three binary team positions.
Customer Acquisition Bonus
The Customer Acquisition Bonus is based on weekly credits generated across the binary team from new retail and recruited affiliate autoship orders.
- Small (500 credits in autoship volume on both sides of the binary team) = $270 CAB
- Medium (1500 credits in autoship volume on both sides of the binary team) = $540 CAB
- Large (3500 credits in autoship volume on both sides of the binary team) = $810 CAB
- XL (7500 credits in autoship volume on both sides of the binary team) = $1350 CAB
- XXL (15,000 credits in autoship volume on both sides of the binary team) = $20,250 CAB
Remember that the CAB is qualified for and calculated based on weekly binary team autoship volume.
Volume Bonus
The Volume Bonus rewards Crown and higher ranked Zinzino affiliates with a bonus on downline credit volume.
- Crowns receive a 1% Volume Bonus on up to 25,000 credits per income center
- Royal Crowns receive a 1.5% Volume Bonus on up to 50,000 credits per income center
- Black Crowns receive a 2% Volume Bonus on up to 75,000 credits per income center
- Ambassadors receive a 2.25% Volume Bonus on up to 100,000 credits per income center
- Royal Ambassadors receive a 2.5% Volume Bonus on up to 125,000 credits per income center
- Black Ambassadors receive a 2.75% Volume Bonus on up to 150,000 credits per income center
- Presidents receive a 3% Volume Bonus on up to 200,000 credits
- Elite Presidents receive a 3.5% Volume Bonus on up to 300,000 credits per income center
- Global Presidents receive a 4% Volume Bonus on up to 400,000 credits per income center
- 1 Star Global Presidents and higher receive a 4% Volume Bonus on up to 500,000 credits per income center
The Volume Bonus is paid out on a minimum 10,000 credits generated weekly on each acquired income center.
Rank Achievement Bonus
Zinzino rewards affiliates who qualify at the Diamond and higher ranks with the following Rank Achievement Bonuses:
- Diamond with at least 750 credits monthly on each side of the binary team = $3500 bonus paid over five months
- Director with at least 1500 credits monthly on each side of the binary team = $7000 bonus paid over five months
- Crown with at least 3000 credits monthly on each side of the binary team = $15,000 bonus paid over ten months
- Royal Crown with at least 5000 credits monthly on each side of the binary team = $20,000 bonus paid over ten months
- Black Crown with at least 7500 credits monthly on each side of the binary team = $25,000 bonus paid over ten months
- Ambassador with at least 10,000 credits monthly on each side of the binary team = $35,000 bonus paid over ten months
- Royal Ambassador with at least 12,500 credits monthly on each side of the binary team = $35,000 bonus paid over ten months
- President with at least 20,000 credits monthly on each side of the binary team = $150,000 bonus paid over twenty months
X-Team Qualification
Various bonuses in the Zinzino compensation plan are tied to X-Team qualification.
To be X-Team qualified an affiliate must have 10 personal Customer Points that generae at least 50 credits per month (includes an affiliate’s own purchases)
X-Team Express can be qualified within an affiliate’s first 60 days by
- maintaining a standing autoship order and
- enrolling at least ten retail customers on autoship who together purchase at least 50 credits worth of product each month
X-Team Express qualification provides
Fast Silver Bonus
The Fast Silver Bonus pays out $202.50 and triggers double credits for new customer orders.
To qualify for the Fast Silver Bonus a Zinzino affiliate must (in their first thirty days):
- have a standing autoship order
- qualify as a Bronze or higher and
- generate at least 375 credits in product orders and/or purchases
To maintain double credits on new orders a Fast Silver Bonus qualified affiliate must either
- continue to generate 750 credits in orders a month or
- maintain X-Team qualification
Mentor Bonus
Zinzino affiliates who qualify as a Smart Bronze receive $135 plus a 5% Mentor Bonus on residual commissions paid to personally recruited affiliates.
To qualify as a Smart Bronze a Bronze affiliate must
- have a standing autoship order and
- recruit at least four affiliates on autoship.
Note the above qualification must be met within a new Zinzino affiliate’s first thirty days.
If the four recruited affiliates also qualify as a Smart Bronze, the recruiting affiliate’s Mentor Bonus is doubled to 10%.
Whichever Mentor Bonus rate is qualified for continues to be paid out as long as the qualifying affiliate maintains Bronze or higher rank.
A Mentor Bonus qualified affiliate can also receive the 5% bonus on downline affiliates who do not qualify for the Mentor Bonus.
A-Team Bonus
The A-Team Bonus rewards qualified affiliates with
- a 20% cash bonus on new customer orders
- a monthly $135 bonus
- double credits from retail customer new and ongoing orders and
- 1 Director Trip point per month
To qualify for the A-Team Bonus a Zinzino affiliate must have 25 Customer Points and be generating at least 125 credits a month.
Pro-Team Bonus
The Pro-Team Bonus rewards qualified affiliates with
- a 25% cash bonus on new customer orders
- a monthly $202.50 bonus
- double credits from retail customer new and ongoing orders and
- 3 Director Trip points per month
To qualify for the Pro-Team Bonus a Zinzino affiliate must have 50 Customer Points and be generating at least 250 credits a month.
Top-Team Bonus
The Top-Team Bonus rewards qualified affiliates with
- a 30% cash bonus on new customer orders
- a monthly $270 bonus
- double credits from retail customer new and ongoing orders and
- 5 Director Trip points per month
- a $25,000 one-time bonus paid out over 25 months ($400 a month)
To qualify for the Pro-Team Bonus a Zinzino affiliate must have 100 Customer Points and be generating at least 500 credits a month.
Note that to receive the entire $25,000 bonus, Top-Team qualification must be met for twenty-five months (can be non-consecutive).
Top 200 Plus Bonus
The Top-Team Bonus rewards qualified affiliates with
- a 30% cash bonus on new customer orders
- a monthly $540 bonus
- double credits from retail customer new and ongoing orders and
- 8 Director Trip points per month (upon achieving Top 200 Plus qualification for the first time one Director Trip is awarded)
To qualify for the Pro-Team Bonus a Zinzino affiliate must have 200 Customer Points and be generating at least 2000 credits a month.
Top-200 Plus Bonus qualified affiliates also receive an additional $270 and 3 Director Trip Points a month per additional 100 Customer Points and 500 credits they generate a month.
Z4F Bonus
Z4F qualification allows Zinzino affiliates and customers to receive their monthly autoship order for free.
To be Z4F qualified, a Zinzino affiliate or retail customer must
- have a standing autoship order
- have referred at least four retail customers who together generate at least 4 Customer Points a month and
- generate at least four times the credits of their own autoship order via first-generation retail customers
Note that retail customers are able to refer new customers. Credit volume for other bonuses is paid to the upline affiliate.
The Z4F Bonus is 30 credits awarded the first time a personally enrolled or downline enrolled retail customer or personally recruited affiliate meets the Z4F qualification criteria above.
If double credits have also been qualified for, the Z4F Bonus is increased to 60 credits.
zCar Bonus
Diamond and higher ranked Zinzino affiliates qualify for a monthly $1000 zCar Bonus.
zPhone Bonus
Executive and higher ranked Zinzino affiliates qualify for a $500 a month zPhone Bonus.
Despite the name, the zPhone Bonus appears to be paid in cash with no strings attached.
Director Trips
To qualify for Zinzino’s annual Director Trip, affiliates must generate 125 Director Trip points a year.
Director Trip points are received through customer orders, recruited affiliates orders and qualifying as an Executive or higher.
Joining Zinzino
Zinzino affiliate membership is free.
Conclusion
Although Zinzino’s pivot from coffee pods to nutritional supplements may seem odd, I get why they did it.
In our 2013 review we hit Zinzino hard for overpriced products.
Their supplier, Rombouts, sold the same products much cheaper directly on their own website. This raised the question of who was buying through Zinzino?
With respect to the new lineup, nothing really stands out as unique but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Given Zinzino wasn’t launched around nutrition, I do feel they’re offering is somewhat bland. Sort of what you’d expect from a generic nutrition-based MLM company.
Again, that doesn’t mean Zinzino’s products are bad, just be sure to compare what they’re offering with what’s available locally and online in your area.
One particular product I want to comment on though is Zinzino’s Balance Test.
Zinzino’s BalanceTest is dry blood-spot test for home sample collection.
Leading laboratories in the Nordic countries analyze the sample to determine your fatty acid profile as a reflection of your diet.
It takes less than a minute to complete, and you can access your results online anonymously after about 20 days.
The BalanceTest identifies levels of 11 fatty acids in the blood with 98% certainty.
You will learn your blood levels of omega-3 and your ratio of omega 6:3 for balance.
At $169 this seems massively over-priced. A quick Google search for omega 3 home test revealed Omega 3 lab kits start at around $33.
Seeing as omega 3 supplement oil is Zinzino’s flagship product line, surely this kit can be sold closer to what it’s actually worth?
And the Balance Test marketing is also slightly off:
You wake up on Christmas morning, rush to the tree and start tearing open your presents…
An Omega 3 blood test kit…!? I HATE YOU MOM!
Yeah, don’t think most recipients are going to see that as being spoiled. Least of all if they find out they’re omega 3 deficient and then get pitched on Zinzino products.
Moving onto Zinzino’s compensation plan, the 2013 plan we reviewed was massively complicated.
The good news is Zinzino have made their plan simpler, although it’s still burdened by an abundance of bonuses and excessive ranks.
The credits to pay points to USD thing is a bit confusing at first, but not impossible to get your head around. I don’t know why Zinzino didn’t just go with PV/GV to keep things simple.
As for the bonuses, surely there’s an easier way to integrate them and consolidate the twenty available affiliate ranks?
That said I didn’t particularly find the plan confusing as I did with the 2013 one, just that it seemed to go on and on and on. You’re obviously not going to be able to explain Zinzino’s compensation plan to a prospect in any reasonable amount of time.
And, despite my best efforts, they’re probably not going to understand without questions even if they’ve got time to go over a written version.
So yeah, a bit of work to go yet on compensation plan presentation and simplification.
As to the plan itself, my first red flag was this suggestion to new Zinzino affiliates:
Number 2 naturally set off my “autoship recruitment” alarm. To be clear, requiring affiliates to purchase products to qualify for commissions and bonuses is pay to play.
Zinzino walk a fine line in how this has been implemented though. Autoship isn’t required to progress through the Zinzino compensation plan but is required to fully qualify for everything.
And an affiliate can negate the cost of their autoship order by generating the equivalent in retail customer autoship orders. Hopefully that is taken advantage of and isn’t just lip-service.
Customer Points are the wildcard that counter-balances affiliate autoship.
You need Customer Points to initially progress in Zinzino and they only come from your own order and retail customer orders.
That said residual commissions and ranks aren’t tied to Customer Point acquisition, so technically you can get by on autoship recruitment after your initial Bronze qualification (for some reason Bronze is the only rank that requires Customer Points).
One major red flag I can’t overlook is the tying of multiple income centers to an affiliate-spend.
When you purchase a Partner Product Kit you will be given two (2) additional Income Centers.
Affiliate “Product Kits” cost $60 to $949. Whether a $60 kit provides the same income centers as the $949 kit is unclear.
Regardless, this is blatant “pay to play” and needs to go.
All in all Zinzino is an improvement since 2013 but still a mixed bag.
Better meaningful use of Customer Points into commission and bonus qualification would go a long way, as would lessening the dependency on affiliate autoship.
Zinzino claims it’s “the most customer-focused direct sales company in the world”, so why not let the products stand on their own merit?
Hi! I am the one requesting the review this year.
I have been around zinzino for a year now, never joined but know people who are in it. Have also been at recruitment meetings and one-to-ones.
Regarding the point that you have to buy the products to start:They tell you that you have to buy the products for yourself for 1000 euro, to use them and get to know them before you can have faith in them and sell them to others.
What do you think about this statement?
Is it just a way your upline can get commission on you or is it legitimate reasoning?
Whatever they tell you, forcing affiliates to purchase products in MLM to qualify for commissions is pay to play.
It’s indicative of a lack of retail focus and autoship recruitment, which in any MLM company means pyramid scheme.
Thanks for answering! I too thought it was very pay to play. Nice to see that we are on the same level.
I think you need to read the compensation plan again!
1. Partner Product Kit is a one time purchase, not an autoship. The autoship-packages you find under the term “Z4F-kit”.
2. Since it’s free to join (Sales Rep) the reward for purchasing a Partner Kit is two additional income center. It has nothing to do with autoship!
3. As a Sales Rep you’re allowed to make commissions from the team as soon as you reach 4 customers and 20 credits. In Zinzino there are many leaders that have started in this way!
4. You only need an autoship for the Fast Start bonuses. When you have got 4 CUSTOMERS (not partners) that generates 20 credits, you can ditch the autoship (and many do!).
5. Most of the customers are on 6 months subscriptions and generates credits each month.
6. You don’t need an autoship to qualify for X-Team, A-Team and so on. But you have to have at least 4 own personal customers (not referal customers, coming from other customers, not partners).
7. You need to be X-Team to qualify for Executive up to Black Ambassador. In other words, you need to have YOUR OWN 10 CUSTOMERS in order to rank!
8. You need to be A-Team to qualify for President and above. In other words, you need to have YOUR OWN 25 CUSTOMERS in order to rank!
9. Zinzino is very customer focused! It’s a customer acquisition company, where the number of partners with 100 customers or more are many! Some partners just get customers in Zinzino, no team. The average number of customers per partner is 15!
10. Zinzino still sells coffee! But the coffee is only available in the original countries, such as the Nordic and Baltic countries. And it still tastes amazing!
I think you need to rewrite your review…
I had to go back and check where I got autoship from, I believe it’s from the kits all being 6 month subscriptions.
A six-month product subscription is autoship, regardless of what Zinzino wants to call it.
There’s no item in the Zinzino store for “Partner Product Kit”.
There are “enrollment kits” that vary in price from $60 to $949 but no indication whether $60 kits get the same two additional income positions as the $949 kit.
Seeing as all the customer “kit” options are autoship, I think I’ve followed on that the affiliate options must be the same.
Can you clarify?
still play to play. Be it a one-time purchase or autoship, Zinzino is still charging affiliates for greater income potential.
We didn’t claim otherwise (see Bronze rank qualification).
Unless you want to identify yourself as someone with access to Zinzino’s books, please don’t pretend you know what the majority of customers and affiliates are doing.
Zinzinos till forces affiliates to signup for autoship to qualify, which is the qualification information we provided.
We didn’t claim you needed autoship for the other bonuses, but for X-Team Express it’s required.
I’ve updated that section of the review to better reflect this.
No you don’t, your own purchases count in credits. But we didn’t claim otherwise in our A-Team bonus breakdown.
So why does the company then recommend every new affiliate immediately signup for autoship?
If the overpriced coffee is so great, why did Zinzino ditch it for the US?
In my opinion, Zinzino differs from most of the other MLM companies out there in the fact that it is a huge difference between customers and partners!
If you for example start as a customer, you cannot be a partner at that particular customer number, instead you have to register as a partner. And you as a customer remains customer with the original partner, unless you quit being a customer there.
A customer is never a partner, but you as a partner can of course sign yourself as a customer in order to get the products you need.
The purchases you do as a partner, on your partner position, never counts as a customer! It can go into the required revenue, but it can never go into the required customer points.
If you buy stuff for 20 credits for example, but you only have 2 customers, you are NOT recognized as an Active Partner.
Customers are on a 6 month subscription, partners are free to choose an autoship. The only requirement for autoship is in your first 60 days, if you want the Fast Start bonuses.
If you don’t bother about those FS bonuses, there’s no need for autoship and you can SKIP IT! So you are not obliged for autoship as a partner!
You claim there’s no need for customer acquisition in order to rank. Yes, there is. I copied this from the compensation plan:
When you need to have 25 customer points (one customer can have e.g. one subscription and one plus subscription and then count as, in this case, 2 customer points) in order to rank as President and up, there sure is a customer requirement! Not many MLM companies have that.
When it comes to knowing about whether leaders have started as Sales Rep or not, I do know. I can check our own organization in our BackOffice and if you know what to look for, you can tell if they have 1 or 3 income centers.
And there are leaders with only 1 income center in our fairly large organization.
Regarding the coffee, I have got the impression that Zinzino is not allowed from Malongo Rombouts to sell it elsewhere. Yet.
I’ll be happy to give further clarification if needed! 🙂
Why would you need to do that? Why not just order as an affiliate?
Am I understanding that Zinzino is full of bogus retail customer accounts that are actually affiliates not ordering through their affiliate account?
Yes you are. There is no way to participate fully in Zinzino’s compensation plan without signing up for autoship.
Forcing affiliates to qualify for commissions and bonuses by buying product is pay to play. Doesn’t matter if it’s one bonus/commission or the whole comp plan.
We provided this in our review, which you read right? You didn’t just come here to post a bunch of tone-deaf marketing spam…?
Where? From the Zinzino comp plan;
From the sounds of it my recruited affiliates on autoship are my retail customers through bogus customer accounts…
And this is why I question there’s any genuine retail activity going on in Zinzino.
A supermarket selling everything with a mandatory six-month subscription is going to go out of business pretty soon.
Zinzino’s six-month subscription model is certainly not retail-friendly and I can’t see anyone but affiliates signing up for products.
As I mentioned, Zinzino is full of customer getters with over 100 personal customers. Some of them don’t even have a team!
Zinzino is also full of partners who has never signed themselves up as a customer, don’t have an autoship and get paid from their external personal customers. And if they have a team they get paid from that as well.
“From the sounds of it my recruited affiliates on autoship are my retail customers through bogus customer accounts…”
Our family is a big family. Without the possibility to get Zinzinos products from our own customer subscriptions, we wouldn’t get enough and it would be more expensive for us. (A customer get better deals than a partner, for example when it comes to shipping, thanks to the subscription.)
Do you think that an A-Team partner has created 25 bogus customer accounts? And to clarify once again: our recruited affiliates are NOT our customers!
I have a friend that have been customer for 5 years now. Every month he pays the prize to get the oil, because it has helped him. He doesn’t want to quit and he doesn’t want to be partner.
We get paid from him every month and all I have to do is treat him like a friend.
Then we have more recent customers as well, but in Zinzino we don’t talk so much about retail, we talk about getting customers on subscription and keep them! (No, not affiliate on autoship – real customers that cannot get paid!)
Ok, I agree that you cannot participate FULLY without an autoship. But you still get paid on everything with the only exception being the Fast Start bonuses!
The term “including personal product orders” only means that IF you have an autoship, those credits count as well in your revenue.
When I look through your review, I see that you must have totally misunderstood the Team Commission! The number “11” under 150 credits doesn’t stand for number of recruits, it stands for pay points!!! (In Europe usually equal to 1 euro.)
You don’t need to recruit to get Team Commission! And the 150 credits do NOT come from the weaker leg, they come from every leg, but in balance 33-67%. In other words, you can have a balance from anything between those numbers, even 50/50.
How do you get paid from Team Commission if you don’t have a team? If your customers pay their products within the same Zinzino-week and if the credits are 150 up to 300 credits, you get 11 paypoints.
300 credits and up, you get 22 paypoints and so on. In addition to the A-Team/Pro-Team/TopTeam bonus.
I hope this has clarified further. Otherwise, feel free to question my comments on your review! 🙂
So Zinzino counts affiliates as retail customers because they have bogus retail customer accounts.
That’s not compliant. Affiliates and retail customers must be separated, as per the FTC’s Herbalife and Vemma settlements. There are no exceptions to the rule.
Probably not. But his or her recruited downline of 25 affiliates might have a dummy retail customer account each.
If you look at the table in “Team Commission” in the Zinzino compensation plan, to the left of the 11 and higher figures you can clearly say it states “Active Partner”.
The 150 points per side clarification seems correct though so thanks for that.
Appreciate the clarifications, Zinzino’s compensation plan seems to still be a nightmare. They really need to simplify it with an update.
Edit: Wait hang on, I never mentioned 150 credits having to come from the weaker leg, it’s 150 credits in total.
You’re getting just as confused reading our review. I think it took me 2-3 days to pull apart the compensation plan so I’ll give you a pass.
Edit2: There it is in the Bronze section, it was for commissions not counted volume. Fixed now.
I think you have an old compensation plan. Look at page 9 here: zzsouthcentraluswebb.blob.core.windows.net/filelibrary/CompensationPlan_SE.pdf
And once again: Customers are NOT affiliates in Zinzino. Our recruited affiliates/partners have NOTHING to do with our customers!
The customers are totally outside of the network, so in Zinzino we have a downline and we have customers. Those are NEVER mixed.
As I mentioned, the average is 15 customers per partner. I have never heard of an average of recruits, because that isn’t important in Zinzino. Many people don’t even have a downline, only customers (as I have said many times).
If you interpret my statement about me and my family having subcsriptions in order to get enough of the products as “So Zinzino counts affiliates as retail customers because they have bogus retail customer accounts.” seems to me that it’s like when the Devil reads the Bible; you see what you want to see.
Our own subscriptions do NOT count as affiliates anywhere in the compensation plan, they count as customers!
Of course they generate credits to the compensation, but since we need the products it isn’t bogus accounts! If we stop being partner, we still NEED the products, because they are essential to us. So why wouldn’t we have some subscriptions? And I mean some, not 25.
I think you should give up your attempt to make customers and affiliates the same in Zinzino, because they aren’t. Many Zinzino partners are only customer getters and never build a team.
As it should be in every sound network marketing/direct selling company.
I can give you an example on the customer compensation in Zinzino: In order to get Small CAB 200euro you need 500 credits on both sides, i.e. 1000 credits in balance 50/50. A customer is worth 14 credits for the startkit, which are doubled, 28 cr, when you have ECB.
So let’s say 28 cr. If you have a downline that gets 20 customers on the left side and 20 customers on the right side, thats 560 credits on each side (20 x 28 cr).
You have now earned 200 euros in CAB and also 100 euros in Team Commission – and not a single partner has come into the network and no partner has purchased anything!
To further illustrate, it could happen if 10 partners on each side in your downline get 2 customers. And that is often the case in Zinzino, that the customer stock is getting bigger without the partner rate increasing.
Just to clarify once again, the customers are NOT affiliates in Zinzino! The customers go outside of the downline/upline structure.
Don’t assume that Zinzino has the same structure as many other MLM companies, where you cannot be a customer without being an affiliate at the same time.
If you are a Zinzino customer and wants to be a partner, you have to register on a whole new position as partner within the network. You cannot easily move from customer to partner, since the customers go outside of the network.
You said, and I quote;
And you reiterated it again here:
Which makes Zinzino sound like an affiliate-heavy company in which every affiliate has a dummy retail customer account.
Or as per the example you provided, signs up their entire family and purchases through those accounts. That’s not true retail.
If an affiliate creates a dummy retail customer account to purchase through, that’s an affiliate purchase and not retail.
I’m not stating those dummy retail accounts aren’t retail accounts, I’m stating that by being owned by Zinzino affiliates they are in effect affiliate purchases. You can’t cook the books.
So if I have a grocery shop (Ozedit: Non-MLM derail removed)
Once again: there are a lot of partners that DO NOT have a customer subscription and have e.g. 25 customers totally outside their family. If that isn’t retail then nothing is.
Is it “pay to play” in your opinion, to sign up yourself as a customer on a subscription, getting 4 or more referal customers and then get your own subscription for free?
I don’t understand why you’re so hung up with trying to prove that we don’t have actual customers in Zinzino. And that it is an affiliate-heavy company. It isn’t in any way. I give you some numbers from our BackOffice to prove it:
In our stronger leg we have right now 631 active partners. They have generated 10263 customers, which make an average of a little bit over 16 customers per partner. In my eyes that is customer-heavy.
I think you should correct the errors in your review of Zinzino, the errors that I’ve pointed out and some more that you see if you compare your old comp plan with the newest one that I linked to. You haven’t corrected the text about residual commission, for exampe.
No matter what your opinion is, you should at least give people the correct picture of Zinzino and not the image that you want them to have and that isn’t true.
The reason I’m hung up on the fake retail customers thing is because the only reason an MLM company has to cook the books with respect to retail sales, is if there aren’t enough.
Which ties back into the six-month subscription thing. It’s anti-consumer and I can’t see your average consumer going for it.
Who is buying nutritional supplements on a locked-in six months subscription when there’s a bazillion alternatives out there? Goes for any consumable really.
By all means offer an autoship but common-sense dictates you’d have a single-purchase option too.
And now that you’ve blown the lid on Zinzino’s practice of turning a blind eye to affiliates creating bogus retail customer accounts, how do you know that’s not 25 recruited affiliates with bogus retail accounts?
In MLM you have to keep your retail customers separate from your affiliates. Letting affiliates buy product through bogus retail customer accounts is not genuine retail activity.
And this is important, because as with Vemma and Herbalife any MLM company without significant genuine retail sales activity is operating as a pyramid scheme.
This is not opinion, this is fact.
Yes but what you can’t tell me is how much sales revenue was generated by the 631 affiliates and their bogus retail customer accounts, versus however many of the 10,263 retail customer accounts don’t belong to or are in no way tied to a Zinzino affiliate.
You can have an infinite number of retail customer accounts (sans bogus affiliate owned or “this is an account for my dog lulz” ones), but if company-wide revenue is still affiliate-heavy then that’s a regulatory compliance issue.
Again, not opinion – fact.
With respect to the compensation plan, that is the document this review was based on. Confusing and unnecessarily bloated as it is.
As of comment #9 I’ve been making edits as they’ve been pointed out. You didn’t respond to why the table clearly ties Active Partners to Team Commissions in the table provided.
25 customers is never 25 affiliate with bogus accounts. 25 customers are 25 customers. The affiliates are called partners. 1 partner, 25 customer.
If this 1 partner has 25 affiliates we’d call them 25 partners in Zinzino. And with 25 partners and no personal customers, you can’t make money at all in Zinzino. In my eyes it is you that mix them up, not me and not Zinzinos compensation plan.
About the residual commission, see page 9 in the comp plan I linked to. It says PAY POINTS. 11 paypoints.
Active partner just stand for if you’re an inactive partner you cannot get the paypoints, no matter how many credits your customers (and your team, if you have one, with their customers) generate. You have to have 4 customers in a total om 20 credits to be Active Partner.
Why have the work of getting customers every month instead of having the customers on subscriptions on products that people want to have? Compare it with magazines, that most of all want subscribers.
Why? Because subscribers is customers as long as they are happy with the product. I don’t see why you think that is a bad idea.
Sorry but you don’t get to speak for the entire Zinzino affiliate-base.
You opened the “Zinzino affiliates have bogus retail customer accounts they buy through” Pandora’s box. So I’m putting it to you that if most Zinzino affiliates have created bogus retail accounts, which makes going on about affiliates having 25 customers meaningless.
They recruit 25 affiliates, each creates a bogus retail account to buy through and yes, technically the affiliate has 25 retail customers under them. But a regulatory audit would show those aren’t legitimate retail customer accounts.
Again I’ll point out that I’m not claiming the bogus retail accounts themselves aren’t retail customer accounts. They’re bogus because they’re owned by affiliates (same goes for bogus family accounts affiliates are purchasing through).
You can’t cook your books, either you have genuine non-affiliate retail customers or you don’t. The only reason Zinzino would tolerate affiliates creating bogus retail customer accounts to purchase through is if they don’t have significant retail activity to begin with.
It’s not hard to understand.
Here’s the official Zinzino website: zinzino.com/site/US/en-US/partnerweb/page/Opportunity/Compensation-Plan
Then click “Download Compensation Plan”: zzsouthcentraluswebb.blob.core.windows.net/uploads/2017/COMPENSATION_PLAN%20_USA%20_Nov_2017doc.pdf
Here’s what Team Commission looks like on page 9:
That’s the official Zinzino compensation plan on the official Zinzino website. If the website changes, feel free to let me know.
Because if your product isn’t crap your customers will continue to buy every month. Forcing retail customers onto six-month preorder isn’t typical retail customer behavior.
Nutritional supplements aren’t magazines. And in any case magazines are widely available both single-purchase (newsagent) and subscription (publisher).
Zinzino should be doing everything they can to make their products retail friendly. Mandatory retail customer six-month subscriptions is the opposite of that.
zinzinowebstorage.blob.core.windows.net/filelibrary/CompensationPlanUS_US.pdf
I don’t know how to publish an image of the Team Commission here, so I can’t show it visually.
If this happens in Zinzino, you have 25 partners with 1 customer each (bogus or not), not 25 customers. Technically the affiliate (the partner) in this case DO NOT has 25 retail customers under him/her!
Technically this partner have a team but no customers what so ever. 25 customers have NOTHING to do with recruiting.
Once again: there are many partners/affiliates in Zinzino THAT HAVEN’T RECRUITED A SINGLE PERSON (partner/affiliate) INTO THE COMPANY but make money from their own CUSTOMERS! THEY HAVE NO TEAM, no affiliates, no partners, ONLY CUSTOMERS!
It’s not mandatory to get on a subscription, it’s an option. Customers don’t have to subscribe, but they get the best price if they do. There are regular options too.
I don’t know where that comp plan has come from but it’s not the official one provided on the Zinzino website.
Not if they’re all using their own bogus retail customer accounts. And technically if this happens the affiliate has no retail customers under them, because they are bogus accounts.
There is no excuse or justification for Zinzino cooking their retail sales books. This needs to go.
If you want to participate in the complete Zinzino MLM opportunity, you are required to be on autoship.
As for customers, the only option provided on the Zinzino website are the six month subscriptions.
The link to the compensation plan comes from our BackOffice. Why do you prefer using an old compensation plan when I sent you the new one? That doesn’t make sense if you claim to tell people the truth…
It seems to me that you WANT to misunderstand what I’m trying to say: Partners are partners, customers are customers. A partner can NEVER be seen as a customer at the same time. The partner has a partner-ID and the customer has a customer number. Those numbers are NEVER the same, never mixed!
I tried, however, to explain that a partner (with a certain ID-number) can be a customer as well – but then with a totally different number! You chose to misunderstand this and take that as the base for your whole interpretation of all my comments.
I have tried to explain this huge difference between customers and partners over and over again, but you seem to not want to understand this difference in Zinzino. You seem to assume that Zinzino in this case is the same as many other MLMs. They aren’t.
In my opinion all the MLMs that make it voluntary to have customers are the ones you should go after, not a company like Zinzino where over 70% of the turnover comes from customer purchases and where it is mandatory to have customers (otherwise you won’t get paid).
This review of yours about Zinzino is partly untrue, almost at the edge of libel, and I think that is not good manners from a website like yours.
Which I don’t have access to and can’t verify.
And in any event I shouldn’t have to. Why is Zinzino providing the public with an allegedly outdated compensation plan?
I know firsthand it takes all of five seconds to update a website so why hasn’t Zinzino updated their website?
You can’t possibly expect me to take some random website link over what Zinzino provide on their official website.
Having a “different number” doesn’t make the retail account any less bogus. On their own the issue isn’t whether the bogus retail accounts are legitimate in and of themselves.
The issue, from a compliance perspective, is that these accounts are owned by affiliates. I.e. they’re not genuine retail customers and products purchased through the accounts are in fact affiliate purchases (internal consumption).
That’s what makes the affiliate-created/owned retail accounts bogus. Which for all your “explaining”, you refuse to acknowledge.
If the FTC was to investigate Zinzino, a retail-customer base full of bogus accounts created by affiliates wouldn’t pass an audit. Zinzino would then be facing the same problems as Herbalife and Vemma.
And this ties into the six month subscriptions. It in no way encourages geniune retail activity, because nobody is buying nutritional supplements six months at a time without having tried the product.
It’s not standard industry behavior, leaving a big question mark over just how many actual retail customers Zinzino has. Versus of course how many bogus retail customer accounts owned by affiliates they’re turning a blind eye to.
Well this certainly is the first MLM company I’ve come across where affiliates have openly admitted compliance fraud. I’ll give Zinzino that.
Most of which, by your own admission, are bogus retail customer accounts owned by affiliates. Which isn’t true retail.
70% customer turnover is meaningless if it doesn’t differentiate between money affiliates are spending (through affiliate accounts and bogus retail accounts they’ve created) and actual retail customer accounts.
Also please provide citation for your 70% claim. If you can’t I’m going to remove reference to it going forward.
Anecdotal analysis of your personal downline is not necessarily representative of Zinzino as a company.
Labeling legitimate discussion as libel? Not a good look for you or Zinzino.
If you go to Zinzino.com and choose for example Norway and Norwegian as language, they have the compensation plan I provided. I don’t know why they have done it that way.
You can also look at the financial reports here
zinzino.com/site/US/en-US/partnerweb/page/About/Corporate-Info/Financial-Reports
Yeah if I’m in the US I’m not visiting the Norwegian website. This review is based on the US compensation plan, as provided on the Zinzino website.
And there’s nothing about retail sales versus affiliate purchase revenue in those financial reports. They’re published for shareholders, not regulatory compliance.
I see no point in arguing with you further. I still think that your review is untrue and that you try to make Zinzino look like Herbalife and Vemma, based on misunderstandings. And I still think that you should strive for more than reviews based on misunderstandings or old facts on this website.
Apparently we see things differently, you and I. I see a company that differs from others, especially in the customer rate, where you see a company like everyone else.
That gives me on the other hand more energy to prove my point, that Zinzino is different. But I don’t going to waste that energy on this discussion, since I think we’ve got to the end now.
Good luck with your website. I hope you will make a more truthful review of Zinzino in the future.
There’s no argument. You revealed that Zinzino is full of affiliates purchasing product each month through bogus retail customer accounts.
That puts Zinzino’s business model into context and make some sense. Otherwise six months subscriptions are anti-consumer and make for an unattractive retail offering.
From a regulatory standpoint an MLM company full of affiliates purchasing product through bogus retail customer accounts they’ve set up is a pyramid scheme.
All you’ve offered up to counter your own information regarding the bogus customer accounts is, despite the widespread practice of affiliates buying product through bogus customer accounts, that 70% of company-wide revenue is generated via legitimate retail sales.
When pressed for supporting evidence beyond anecdotal extrapolation from your personal downline however, you were unable to provide any.
How you see the facts is irrelevant.
Ok, I answer this.
I didn’t reveal that Zinzino is full of affiliates purchasing products each months, I just was honest and said that of course there are affiliates who wants the products and purchase.
That is NOT the same as saying that a partner (affiliate in your words) with e.g. 25 customers – or 100 customers – has 25 (or 100) own customer accounts (which is what you claim).
It’s so common to have over 25 customers in Zinzino that you can’t logically believe that every A-Team partner only has themselves as 25 customers, can you?
I you had done your research, you would have discovered that the 6 month subscription comes from the blood tests that you take before the products and after (at least) 120 days.
The other products on subscription is based on this model. The customer gets the best price on subscription, how is that not customer friendly?
I’m not a person with insight into Zinzino’s books. I’m just a partner that see a company that has taken customer acquisition as something mandatory, not voluntary – something that every MLM company out there should do.
In every company there should be a requirement to get customers, not an option. In Zinzino there is requirements for 4, 10 and 25 customers.
In many other companies there are only requirements for purchasing, which often leads to just purchasing, not selling. In Zinzino we are customer getters, not product buyers.
Thank you for your honesty. The fact that affiliates are buying products through bogus retail accounts and Zinzino is turning a blind eye to the practice however remains.
In a legitimate MLM company affiliates buy product through their own accounts and retail customers through retail accounts. There should be no crossover (cooking the books).
Of course not, that was never the case. 25 downline affiliates with 25 bogus retail customer accounts can satisfy the requirement though.
Where it comes from is irrelevant. Typical retail customers aren’t first-purchase buying supplements on a six-month subscription.
If six-month subscriptions were the norm for the supplement industry there’d be no issue. But it’s not and so there’s a big question of retail viability within Zinzino.
Glad we agree. Now all Zinzino needs to do is prohibit affiliates from creating bogus retail customer accounts to buy through.
It feels like I have said this so many times, but you don’t seem to get it: 25 downline affiliates with 25 retail customer accounts (bogus or not) is NOT 25 customers!
25 downline affiliates (with customers or not) can NEVER meet the requirement for customers in Zinzino!
25 downline affiliates can not meet ANY requirements in Zinzino, no matter if they have customers or not! The customers need to be your own and has nothing to do with affiliates.
The only products that a partner can get for free (Zinzino4Free) are the autoship. If a partner buys products through their affiliate account outside the autoship, they have to pay for it.
Other options they can get for free. Your idea of affiliate purchases would really be a “pay to play” scheme in Zinzino, compared to Zinzino4Free.
Why not, you said it yourself: the only difference between the bogus affiliate retail customer accounts and actual customer accounts is that affiliate’s own the bogus ones.
As far as Zinzino is concerned they are all counted as retail customer accounts.
Recruit 25 affiliates who each create a bogus retail customer account to buy through (you need less if they create multiple bogus accounts each).
If that isn’t happening, then awesome. But it was you, supposedly within a large Zinzino downline, who introduced this concept into the discussion.
Once again:
If this happens
they are NOT ANYONES’S CUSTOMERS in Zinzino!!! These 25 affiliates make no difference in a partners customer requirements.
Recruiting 25 affiliates (no matter if THEY get customers or not) HAS NOTHING TO DO with getting customers yourself. If you are a partner and recruit 25 affiliates/partners WITH their own customers, you have 0 (zero, nada) customers of your own in Zinzino!
There’s no way to have a sincere discussion if you chooose to keep misunderstanding this fact.
If I recruit a new Zinzino affiliate and tell them everyone creates bogus retail customer accounts for purchasing to qualify for commissions, and my recruited affiliate creates one or more bogus customer accounts, why aren’t those accounts, along with the bogus retail customer accounts I created for my partner, my pet dog and my car counted as my retail customers?
My recruited affiliates create bogus retail customer accounts using my ref link and they then recruit affiliates who create bogus retail customer accounts under them.
The bogus customer accounts are registered the same as legitimate ones, the only thing that makes them bogus is Zinzino affiliates have created them to purchase through.
I don’t know if I exactly understand what you’re ranting about (English is not my native language) but I try to explain.
1. A recruited affiliate is NOT the same as a customer. Affiliates and customers are two totally different things in Zinzino.
(Ozedit: Snip, see below)
Yep, you’re clearly not understanding.
You let the Zinzino affiliates generate fake bogus retail customer accounts to purchase through and now you’re refusing to acknowledge it again.
Let’s just leave it at Zinzino is not competitive when it comes to retail, and there’s a good chance a lot of its recorded revenue is just affiliates purchasing through retail customer accounts they’ve created.
The fact that you apparently don’t want to show my attempt to explain what you repeatedly choose to misunderstand, says to me that it is you that don’t want a sincere discussion. I think it’s rude to delete arguments.
(Ozedit: derail removed)
There is literally nothing left for you to explain. We’ve been stuck in the same loop for over a week now.
Zinzino affiliates create bogus retail customer accounts to purchase product through.
Wait hangon, they do? That’s a compliance issue because it’s not true retail. An MLM company without genuine retail sales is operating as a pyramid scheme.
Buuuuuuut Oz, at Zinzino we retail accounts are separate from affiliate accounts.
Yeah I get that, but the retail accounts are still bogus if created by an affiliate to purchase through. Affiliate purchases are affiliate purchases, regardless of whether they’re made through bogus retail accounts or the actual affiliate acounts.
Buuuuuuut Oz, at Zinzino retail accounts are separate from affiliate accounts.
Yeah I get that, but the retail accounts are still bogus if created by an affiliate to purchase through. An MLM company needs genuine retail sales to be legitimate. Zinzino’s six month subscription is not consumer friendly, so no wonder affiliates are creating bogus retail accounts.
Buuuuuuut Oz, at Zinzino retail accounts and seperate from affiliate accounts.
Yeah I get that…
I mean c’mon, there’s only so much stupidity a guy can take. It’s like talking to a brick wall.
You don’t seem to appreciate the implication of Zinzino affiliates creating bogus retail customer accounts to purchase through. Which I’ll remind you is something you introduced into the discussion – it wasn’t part of our initial review.
Hello Oz,
ZinZino claim to be launching in the UK next year, and there is a suggestion on their website of 20,000 Euro earned based on 100 customers, then goes onto talk about being based on 25 months as a VIP customer.
Spurious claim/earnings projection (see below) in my view and I suspect goes against DSA rules.
*This earnings statement is based on accumulating and keeping 100 Premier customers that purchases for an average of 30 Euro per month for a period of 25 months.
The income is derived from Cash Bonus 1275 Euro, Top-Team bonus 7500 Euro, One time bonus 10000 Euro and team commission 2000 Euro for a net total of 20775 Euro.
How many Zinzino affiliates are realistically going to achieve this? 1 in 10,000?
Making an income claim on a clearly unobtainable scenario is misleading income claim territory. Shame nobody in the UK will do anything about it though.
And that 1 only makes it by claiming to the 9,999 dupes that they can!
Yes, a lot of partners actually do make 100+ costumers with Zinzino.
In may 2017 I achieved 100 personal costumers and got the bonus check on 10.000 € (paid over a period of 25 months if retaining the 100 costumers). I still have more than 100 personal costumers, buying every month on subscription.
3 of those 100 subscriptions are products I buy for myself. And they are all for free, because of the costumer referral program. And yes, I have a partner autoship to – that’s also for free!
The authorities in Denmark have strict rules regarding what you can deduct in your taxes when you run a business. You can deduct the products that you use for samples or tasting (my autoship), but you are not allowed to deduct the products that you consume yourself.
Thats why I separate things and buy my personal products in my own store with my private credit card.
3 months ago, I made an overview on my personal costumers during the last 6 years.
48% has been a costumer for at least 2 years.
15% has been a costumer for at least 4 years.
12% has been a costumer for at least 6 years.
They are all on subscriptions, and they are all very happy costumers.
At the last event I Denmark we were 550 partners and around 40 of those were at the stage, getting recognition for 100 personal costumers.
In our team the average number of personal costumers per partner is 26. I think the average in all of Zinzino is about 22.
And notice, that all costumers has subscriptions. (Premier costumer). Because Premier costumers get the products at a discounted price.
I guess Zinzino works 😉
If Zinzino affiliates had all these customers, why did the coffee business collapse?
They’re still selling coffee in some countries, Denmark being one of them.
Based on the information for Denmark, it’s easy to see why nobody in their right mind would ever want to buy their coffee.
In fact, the level of overpricing seems to have increased since it was brought up in the 2013 review.
A first strange aspect is that they only sell it in pods.
Most sites I see say that ‘pods’ and ‘pads’ are the same thing. Although there are also sites that say ‘pods’ is used as a synonym for ‘capsules’, which are a different thing to pads. (It’s all rather confusing to someone who makes coffee the proper way, starting from beans.)
The Zinzino documentation nowhere seems to have a list of which machines theirs are compatible with. But it means they’re already severely restricting their potential market, to only people who have the right machine for their product (and who have been able to find out if it does).
Why would any company want to do that? Unless, perhaps, it’s not really about selling coffee, but about recruiting affiliates.
But even if you have such a machine, the price problem remains.
They are quite open about the fact that their pods come from the Belgian company Rombouts. That’s not a niche brand or anything, it’s a ubiquitous, mass-market brand in Belgium.
So let’s compare their price to the price for Rombouts pods sold under their own name.
Zinzino sells a box of 16 pods for just over €15 (116 kr). I looked at supermarket prices for the same size box in Belgium, Rombouts’ home base, and deliberately looked at a supermarket chain which isn’t known for low pricing.
They sell something labelled ‘pads’ at €2.29 per 16, and something labelled ‘pods’ at €4.45 per 16.
Note that in both cases this puts Rombouts at the very top of the price range for all brands, even some supposed ‘premium’ brands are cheaper, and only one is just slightly more expensive. (And of course generally, this is already an expensive way of buying coffee, because of all the superfluous added packaging.)
So even the most expensive Rombouts pods/pads, which are in turn just about the most expensive ones in that supermarket’s very broad range, only cost one third of what Zinzino wants for them, and the cheaper kind costs less than one sixth. (Zinzino’s so-called ‘Premier’ discount, which according to Helle everyone gets, only boils down to 10%, if you take into account the discount everyone with a loyalty card gets in that supermarket, so it doesn’t materially change the comparison.)
And it’s hardly likely Rombouts is putting much cheaper, inferior coffee in pods they sell under their own name, in the country where their brand is best-known, and where they can market themselves as suppliers to the King, than in ones they make as a white-label product.
It’s clear they’re taking a similar approach to the prices for their other products. Who the hell is paying these ridiculous prices?
I love our coffee, but Its the test based nutrition that sells. Only 4 of my 109 costumers are coffee costumers. And I guess coffee only stands for about 3% of the sales in Zinzino.
Zinzino is listed on Nasdaq, you can find all the information about the company there!
And by the way, you don’t need an autoship to be part of the compensation plan – you need 4 personal costumers. I can remove my autoship anytime, but that would be pretty stupid, since its for free…….
There is nothing “test based” about anything you sell. One of the products you sell is a “test”.
I put it between quotes, because the advice you will get after paying for that ridiculously overpriced, perfectly standard test is already known, it’s given on the Zinzino website (www.zinzinotest.com):
That’s what the test if for, to “recommend” buying Zinzino products. Unless you’re expecting us to believe anyone ever gets the recommendation that their diet is perfectly OK, and that they don’t need to buy any of Zinzino’s products.
(That’s actually the advice the vast majority of people should get – and if somebody really does have dietary deficiencies, a very rare thing in the developed world, they should go see a doctor, not eat expensive “supplements”.)
Let alone that anyone will get the advice that all the things you sell are easily available, much more cheaply, from a multitude of sources – just like your scandalously overpriced Rombouts coffee.
BTW:
(1) Zinzino is listed on Nasdaq Nordic, not Nasdaq.
(2) So what? Why do MLMers believe that the fact a company has shares which can be traded on an exchange means anything at all?
Enron was much too big for Nasdaq, and listed on both the NYSE and the London Stock Exchange.
Bernie Madoff was Nasdaq’s chairman for a while. That all worked out well, didn’t it?
Fish oil and plastic bottle is bad combination.