Mary Kay: Home Business Opportunity or Flopportunity?

Selling Mary Kay cosmetics is promoted as "full-time pay for part-time work", and the recruiting literature implies (heck, it often blatantly claims) that you can make thousands of dollars selling makeup and skin care as an Independent Beauty Consultant. After a predator in pink stalked me, I decided to investigate whether the Mary Kay home business opportunity really provides the average woman with enough income as a Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant to replace an entry-level, minimum-wage, unskilled or semi-skilled job such as burger flipper, Wal-Mart greeter, or convenience store cashier.

The Data and the Assumptions

To avoid accusations of unfairness, I will use the data that directors made available, and use their methods to estimate the profits for the consultants. Dozens of active Mary Kay Directors of all ranks made retail sales data from their units available to me. The data contained 4 consecutive months of sales data from 7,912 IBCs across the USA, representing the potential sale of $2,503,720.85 in product.

I know, from reading the training material that the directors also made available to me, that directors put pressure on their downline unit members to keep inventory on hand. "You can't sell from an empty store" is a recurring phrase. The recruiting and training material also shows that consultants are encouraged to use their credit cards, take out small bank loans, borrow from relatives, beg from friends, borrow against their life insurance, and even pawn items in order to "stock the store" with several thousand dollars of inventory.

And I know, also from the training material, that part of the proceeds from sales should go to repaying these loans. But let's pretend that doesn't happen. Let's pretend that this is zero-inventory, just-in-time ordering, with customers who don't mind waiting. Therefore, I'll assume that every estimated retail sale makes an immediate profit for the IBC, because she has no money tied up in inventory and didn't borrow money.