MLM Blog – Network Marketing Blog

NewsChannel 5:

An appeals court has overturned a Texas statute outlawing sex toy sales.

The ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans leaves Alabama as the state with the strictest ban on such devices.

Tuesday's ruling says the Texas law making it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices -- violates the 14th Amendment on the right to privacy.

Companies that own Dreamer's and Le Rouge Boutique, which sell the devices in Austin, and retailer Adam & Eve, sued in 2004.

      They appealed after a judge dismissed the suit.

The Texas Attorney General's Office, which represented the Travis County district attorney, has not decided whether to appeal.

      In 2004, a woman in Burleson was arrested for selling two sex toys to undercover officers.

Passion Parties consultant Joanne Webb was charged with violating the state's obscenity law. A judge later dismissed her case.

This is less of a dip in sales than I expected but it is important to consider that there has been zero growth at Quixtar over the last 5 years...

ADA, Mich., Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Quixtar Inc. today announced fiscal 2007 sales of $1.072 billion, the fifth consecutive year in which the company surpassed the billion-dollar mark. The results represented a slight decline from the previous year's sales of $1.12 billion, which were the best in Quixtar's nine-year history.

Results were affected minimally by actions the company took to terminate the business of a few Independent Business Owners in August of 2007 after they refused to change unacceptable practices.

Quixtar Independent Business Owners (IBOs) earned $363 million in bonuses and other incentives for their business efforts in 2007, which also included $70.1 million in sales at Quixtar's Partner Stores.

In 2007, Quixtar launched a new line of nutritional snacks, juices and supplements for busy families under the Simply Nutrilite(TM) brand, as well as the new ARTISTRY(R) essentials line of skin care and cosmetics products. Quixtar.com was redesigned to improve usability and to better support IBO sales efforts, and Quixtar University was launched to provide online and aided sales and brand training to help IBOs build profitable businesses.

Since 1999, IBOs have earned nearly $2.6 billion based on total Quixtar sales of more than $7.86 billion and Partner Store sales of more than $577 million. Driven by its strong Health and Beauty brands, Quixtar again was ranked #1 in online Health and Beauty sales by Internet Retailer's "Top 500 Guide" in 2007, and 22nd overall in e-commerce.

"Our business is on the right path at the right time," said Jim Payne, Executive Vice President - Amway & Quixtar. "New leadership was brought in this year with Steve Lieberman, the new Managing Director for Quixtar who joined us in August. We also recently hired a new VP of Sales, Sandy Spielmaker, who will have a tremendous impact on our sales team."

Plans were announced in 2007 to change the business opportunity brand in North America to better leverage and align with Amway's $7 billion global business.

"We're working with IBOs to properly position our North American business within the context of the larger Amway global brand," said Lieberman. "To better support IBO efforts, we are focusing in particular on how consumers interact with our products and our brands."

"Our goal is to provide the best business opportunity in North America," said Lieberman. "From products and IBO compensation to sales training and marketing programs, everything we do in support of our IBOs is being examined to ensure we achieve that goal."

    ABOUT QUIXTAR

Based in Ada, Mich., Quixtar Inc. is part of the Alticor group of companies, founded by the DeVos and Van Andel families. Alticor is led by Steve Van Andel, Chairman, and Doug DeVos, President. Global sales for the Alticor group of companies, which include Amway, Access Business Group, Alticor Corporate Enterprises (ACE), and Quixtar, exceeded $7.1 billion in fiscal 2007.

Quixtar currently supports independent businesses in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, and various trust territories and independent island nations in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and Caribbean Sea. Quixtar Canada Corp. headquarters are located in London, Ont., Canada.

I pulled this from Orrin Woodward's Leadership Blog. Interesting commentary from Orrin on Internet Criticism (note the bold portion):

At first I took it personally, but then I realized I had to take it professionally.   I had the opportunity to go to an Atlanta Falcons football game with John Maxwell and asked him how he handled criticisms.  He told me, "Orrin always, always, always, take the high road!"  I will never forget that pearl of wisdom.  Some of the things stated had suggested motives for my behavior that were simply not true.  But I am thankful that it happened to me.  It was the first time I read the criticisms online with a spirit of confronting reality.  I asked myself, “What parts of the criticisms have an element of truth and what can we do to fix them?”   This was a humbling exercise, because I had to admit our business was not perfect and needed to be reformed in several areas.  The criticisms online were right in many areas.  I told Ken McDonald back in 2004, “It’s not the negative lies online that are killing us, but the negative truths.” He agreed and said we needed to fix them.

A court injunction doesn't allow Orrin Woodward to do anything for at least another 45 days, but it looks like Orrin will bring on MonaVie as one of his suppliers in the near future.

Just a guess, but I suspect that Orrin is thinking bigger than just MonaVie.

More commentary and analysis to come soon.  Off to my son's basketball game!

I sometimes say that Amway/Quixtar arguably has the worst reputation in the Network Marketing industry.  When I say that, I am generally speaking about companies that are still in business.

Bill Gouldd's Equinox is a prime example of a company that might have a worse reputation than Amway/Quixtar partially because they were shut down by the FTC and partially because of the owner Bill Gouldd.

Now Bill Gouldd appears to be back and attacking his detractors.  This is probably good news for Amway/Quixtar because there is now someone else out there for people to talk about.

Check out Gouldd's new web site here (fur coat, f-bombs and all).

Update: I watched most of the Bill Gouldd video and really only heard one f-bomb, the rest of the video had to do with his current lifestyle, (apparently he has done well since the demise of Equinox) and some new thing that he is keeping secret but will make billions (not MLM).

I have also spoken with a handful of people that I greatly respect in the Network Marketing industry who are familiar with Gouldd.  They all say his training is top notch.

I am not an attorney, even though I think it would be fun to play one on Boston Legal, but I think this is pretty big...

It looks like the courts ruled Amway/Quixtar Arbitration "illusory and unenforceable".

In the recent past, if you sued Amway/Quixtar you went to arbitration and the arbiters were actually trained by Amway/Quixtar employees and high level distributor leaders, leaving little hope for a win against the company.

This ruling apparently tosses out arbitration.

More at AmQuix.info

I thought that the subject line for this post might get your attention.

I want to talk about exposure and not the type of exposure that some of you might be thinking about. I am talking about getting exposure on the web.

Here is something that I know for a fact.  Bloggers (in general) are always looking for topics to write about.

How would you like to use that little bit of knowledge to your advantage?

Let's say for example, you are building a Shaklee business. (I picked Shaklee because it was fresh in my mind from talking to a Shaklee rep. recently but any company would work).

Think about the biggest thing going for your company right now. When I think of Shaklee, I think of how well the company lines up with the current trends on global warming and thinking greener.

So let's do a Google search on "Global Warming Blog".

I found this site: http://www.realclimate.org/

On the "About" page for the Real Climate blog is a way to contact the author.

Here is the exact quote from the site:

"If you would like to contact us, suggest a topic to be covered, contribute a relevant commentary, or be part of this effort on a more permanent basis, please email RealClimate (replace -at- with @)."

You see? This site is asking for your help with topics and commentary.  I would bet that if you composed a well thought out article about how Shaklee is leading the way in making sure that what they produce has no impact on global warming and the environment, this blog would be interested in publishing it. (Shaklee actually plants trees for every box of products that they ship out of their company and no, I am not involved with Shaklee).

The article must provide valuable content and can not be a hype filled - pimp your deal advertisement. You would really need to take your time and write something special.

If you did write something and the site decided to publish it, you might be a very happy Shaklee rep.

I did a quick check on some stats about realclimate.org:

Google Page Rank: 7

Alexa Ranking: 129,512

The site is very powerful and if you can get them to link to your Shaklee site, you will likely see some great benefit.  The Google Page Rank of 7 is huge.  That means that Google really trusts what this site says and will likely index it quickly and rank articles on a subject very highly.

Again, this would work with any company.  Figure out the hottest trend with your company and capitalize on that trend by submitting an article about it to a blog on that subject.

That tip could net you tens of thousands of dollars in the next year if it was seriously applied.

This post was originally part of my newsletter, so those lucky subscribers have had this information for about three months.  If you found value in the post, you can subscribe to my newsletter here:  http://www.tytribble.com/newsletter

Ty Tribble
www.TyTribble.com

If you would like to partner with Ty in 2008, click here. 

Former Quixtar Leader and Founder of "The Team", Orrin Woodward has been blogging on a very regular basis at his site, Orrin Woodward Leadership Team. The posts are very good and I suggest you have a look.

In addition to the leadership and occasional political postings, Orrin has hinted that he will be able say a lot more on February 10th, once his gag order is over.

For those of you who are not familiar with Orrin, he was a high level Quixtar IBO who has left the company along with thousands of his TEAM members.

2007 Quixtar Sales Announced...

mLive:

Sales at Quixtar, its direct-selling arm in the United States, fell slightly but still topped $1 billion for the fifth consecutive year, according to the company.

Quixtar faced a major revolt among its distribution base in 2007 as the company tried to reform business practices and weed out distributors the company said would not agree to its new terms. The dust-up resulted in lawsuits and the resignation of more than 15,000 distributors.

Alticor reiterated its plan to do away with the Quixtar name, saying it would transition back to using the Amway brand by the end of 2009.

The company said 70 percent of its Amway affiliate markets -- 39 of 55 -- posted sales increases during 2007. Alticor said such growth shows it can grow in established as well as emerging markets.

The company said sales were robust in Asia, especially China, where the government has settled regulatory uncertainties and Amway sells through 180 retail stores.

Network Marketing industry trainer, Dani Johnson was recently on Donny Deutsch's Big Idea on CNBC.  Check it out here. (Best viewed with Internet Explorer - I had trouble with Firefox)

Dani has had a nice run with the media recently, also being featured on Benny Hinn's Christian TV Show. In case you don't know who Benny Hinn is...here is a little video: