Multi-level Marketing in Personal Care Products – New
Market Entrants & Channel Dynamics – 22 July 2021
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Specialist:
Title:
Moderator: Nyree Hinton (NH), Third Bridge Sector Analyst
Grant Gustafson (GG)
Former Project Manager at OnPrem Solution Partners LLC
Agenda:
1. New market entrants and competitive landscape
2. Cosmetic and personal care trends including CBD and coronavirus impacts
3. Channel dynamics – network marketing vs traditional advertising
4. Product sourcing and supply chain infrastructure
Contents
Q: Could you give an overview of the supplements, nutritional and personal care products industry and how
it has evolved over the years?
3
Q: Which players are winning consumers over in the personal care market? That can come from a CBD
perspective too, since it’s such a new growing market.
Q: Could you discuss the story you mentioned earlier about Charlotte’s Web?
Q: Could you discuss whether CBD is personal care or nutritional? Which sub-segment would you expect it
to be most active or adopted in? What other avenue or category do you think CBD is just taking off in?
4
4
5
Q: Could you discuss how multilevel marketing and the strategy plays into getting some of these products off
5
the ground and into people’s houses?
Q: Could you speak to some of the longer-lasting structural impacts coronavirus has had on the industry,
such as trying new things like CBD and getting over the stigma?
Q: How do you take advantage of the different trends and the different channels such as e-commerce in the
MLM [multi-level marketing] format or structure? How does someone who has a company or works for a
company like that get a significant presence and get to that logistical roadblock?
5
6
Q: What are consumers seeking in some of these products when deciding to take a chance on a brand? What
is the overall turnover and saturation in personal care and nutritional products? Every day something new
seems to pop up vs other industries where you can’t afford to always push out new products.
6
Q: How has the pricing environment been impacted? What is the overall challenge of getting these products
sold because of the higher price point?
7
Q: How do you think the structure of MLM is developing globally? Does this model struggle or outpace US
growth in any regions?
Q: Could you discuss any cycles in MLM as it relates to personal care products such as attracting and
retaining talent? How hard is it and how critical is it?
Q: How do you ensure product quality for a consumer? How does a manufacturer source the right
ingredients or chemicals for a product?
7
7
8
Q: How do you think some players are putting technology first and putting different systems in place so that
they can effectively market with a results-driven type of strategy?
8
Q: Could you discuss the risk in pushing for new product development as it relates to R&D, sourcing the
correct ingredients, having a strong supply chain and the regulatory environment?
9
Q: You mentioned the MLM industry in personal care has been a bit slow to adopt technology. Why do you
think, in an industry that needs every sale it can get, companies are not being more aggressive in tackling all
avenues and implement technology in a much more structural way?
9
Q: Have you noticed any trends in a specific demographic where you think the opportunity is the largest? 10
Q: How would you segment who the clients are and where the opportunity is for innovation to grab a new
segment of the market, whether it’s men or seniors?
10
Q: How has the MLM industry reacted to huge players such as Amazon? Retailers are rolling out their own
private label products, whether it’s in snacks, meat or personal care. How big of a threat is private label from
some of these big e-commerce websites or in-person retailers? Do you expect an issue there or do they not
have the capabilities to compete on quality?
11
Q: Have you experienced when products fail, either by quality or marketing? How easy or challenging is it to
repurpose or rebrand that product? Do you think the industry is very agile to quickly recognise when
something is not working vs other industries where a company has already spent 10 years developing a
product and trying to push it before they realise it doesn’t necessarily work?
11
Q: We talked about a significant amount of SKUs and brand-switching in the industry. Could you speak
more to why there are so many products? Is it because the barriers to entry become lower, or do you think
there’s a lot more investment and interest in the market that is funding all of this growth?
12
Q: You touched on the troubles in ingredient sourcing. Could you discuss the differences between companies
who outsource production and those that have in-house expertise? How significant is that as a factor in
potential growth?
12
Q: Is there anything you think is commonly overlooked in the MLM industry, whether it’s CBD or other
products or categories within personal care?
13
Multi-level Marketing in Personal Care Products – New
Market Entrants & Channel Dynamics
Transcription begins at 00:00:03 of the recorded material
NH: Welcome to Third Bridge Forum’s Interview entitled Multi-level Marketing in Personal Care Products –
New Market Entrants & Channel Dynamics. I am Nyree Hinton and I will be facilitating today’s Interview with
Mr Grant Gustafson, former Project Manager at OnPrem Solution Partners LLC.
Grant, before we get started today’s Interview please state I agree or I disagree to the following statement: You
understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any such information,
or any other information which is confidential, during this Interview.
GG: I agree.
NH: Thank you, Grant. Could you start by giving the audience an overview of your background and various
roles you’ve held in the industry?
GG: My name is Grant Gustafson, I have been a project manager and adviser for a variety of different
companies of different sizes. I’ve quite a lot of experience in the MLM space, actually recently helped launch a
large MLM company, also a lot of experience in the CBD space within the nutrition, supplement and personal
care industry, so I’ll be focusing on that a little bit in some of my questions, and just excited to talk to you all
today.
[00:01:16]
Q: Could you give an overview of the supplements, nutritional and personal care products industry and how it
has evolved over the years?
GG: These industries, supplements, nutrition, personal care products, all of those, they are all just rapidly
growing industries. Depending on the numbers you look at, for supplements alone, it’s 8-9% a year and that’s
just domestic. Internationally, these industries are growing even more quickly, especially in the Asian market.
Looking domestically, one thing that we’ve really seen recently, people really do care more and more about
their health and wellness than ever before, especially younger generations, but the one thing is, people are also
busier than ever and everyone’s really looking for that quick fix, that magic solution, “What can help me out
here?” People really do believe in alternative medicines a lot more and they’re going to look at supplements,
herbs, all of those things that are outside of your traditional norms of what you would see.
One of the major, major changes that have happened in recent years, and especially is relevant to younger
generations, is just the amount of information that is out there. Before, you might see an ad on TV or an ad in
a magazine for a product and not know a lot about that. Consumers today, they want to know where their
product is coming from, they want to know where it was grown, they want to know if it’s organic, if it was
tested on animals. All of those different components are a really big deal to the modern consumer. Now,
because of the amount of information out there, they can find that information right away. There are some
people that try to get things by consumers, if you will, but there’s just so much information out there that
people really care about what they’re taking. It’s growing but people are a lot more knowledgeable than ever
before about what they’re buying. With that, I said, again, if you want to dive into CBD-specific products, we
can dive into that more as that really touches on beauty, personal care, nutrition and supplements, or
wherever you guys want to head from there.
Private and confidential 3
[00:03:40]
Q: Which players are winning consumers over in the personal care market? That can come from a CBD
perspective too, since it’s such a new growing market.
GG: Yes, that’s what I was going to say, there are so many people in larger industry, some of the top players.
One thing is that people want a brand that really resonates with them. People have more brand attachment
than ever before. They want to know the story behind it, they want to know why they’re getting into this
product, that thing with that research. In the CBD space, for instance, one of the largest players out there is
called Charlotte’s Web. They’ve had huge profits over the past few years but they were started because of a
young child who had terminal illness and took CBD and it helped with that. Her name was Charlotte, that’s
why they named it Charlotte’s Web. Because of that compelling story, they saw huge sales and huge success.
Other top players in the CBD space, there’s Lord Jones, they focus on the luxury market. They sold, I want to
say around, USD 300m, that’s public information, in 2019. Since we’re talking about the MLM industry here
in a little bit, Kannaway was one of the first actors in the CBD MLM space. They did extremely well, I think
they did around USD 46m-47m in sales in 2020. There are a lot of big players and then the industry, all of a
sudden, there are a lot of acquisitions happening. There are a lot of small people who came along and are
being bought up by these larger companies.
[00:05:35]
Q: Could you discuss the story you mentioned earlier about Charlotte’s Web?
GG: Correct. Yes, her name was Charlotte and they named it after the book.
NH: That’s a compelling story, but as you assess the market overall and the benefits of CBD, could you speak
to how proven it is? You have noted the consumers are much more educated, but could you discuss some of
the positives and negatives about CBD?
GG: That’s actually a really great question. That is actually one of the tougher things. CBD has only been legal
at the federal level since 2018, with the passing of the Farm Bill that made it legal, but what’s interesting about
it, on a side note, is that it’s legal nationwide but some states, it’s technically still against the law. The research
is pretty new on CBD, more and more studies are coming out every month as people get really passionate
about it, but there isn’t a ton of scientific studies out there, to be quite honest with you. A lot of it is truly
anecdotal, people have the benefits of it, but we are seeing more and more proof. One thing that’s tricky about
it as an industry is when you’re talking to people about it or when you’re marketing it, you have to be very, very
careful about what you say and what you claim. A lot of companies out there get themselves in a lot of trouble
because they say, “This will cure depression,” “This will cure anxiety,” where that hasn’t been verified by the
FDA, there haven’t been enough studies done to prove that, so it’s a lot of, “This may aid with your occasional
anxiety,” or, “This could help with sore muscles and joints.” For a lot of these companies, they actually mix
these products with other ingredients, so, for instance, a muscle salve, which you can claim helps with sore
muscles, and they’ll add CBD to it. They can’t claim that the CBD is what is alleviating your muscle pain, it’s
rather the other ingredients in there. That’s certainly changing, like I said. More and more research is being
done on CBD and it’s potential benefits. In the future, there’ll be a lot more evidence that you can say, “There’s
this hard study that proves this.”
Another area where there’s a lot of growth happening in the larger universe of CBD are these other
cannabinoids, so in the hemp plant, there’s THC, which is the most famous one, and then CBD, but there are
hundreds of other cannabinoids in there that they are finding to have additional benefits. Research is really
early on, but those could become huge, huge players in the wellness and beauty and supplement industry, as
people find out those benefits. For instance, CBN, which is a cousin of CBD, has been shown to help people
with sleep, even much better than THC or CBD.
Private and confidential 4
[00:08:49]
Q: Could you discuss whether CBD is personal care or nutritional? Which sub-segment would you expect it to
be most active or adopted in? What other avenue or category do you think CBD is just taking off in?
GG: That’s a great question. It’s really interesting, that’s why it’s actually great to talk about CBD when talking
about supplements, nutrition and personal care, is because it really does fall into multiple buckets. People are
finding uses for it in a variety of ways. The two main buckets that we always say it falls into are ingestibles and
topicals. Ingestibles are the tinctures you see, the mints you see, you see CBD candies everywhere you go,
those are (inaudible 09.41), you’re ingesting those, it’s affecting your endocannabinoid system internally, but
then, at the same time, there are more and more beauty products that are adding CBD to it. There are a lot of
people who are claiming anti-ageing properties, anti-acne properties right now, this all-encompassing healing,
and people are finding different focuses for it but really it would come down to beauty, personal care and then
wellness supplements in terms of ingesting the CBD itself.
[00:10:17]
Q: Could you discuss how multilevel marketing and the strategy plays into getting some of these products off
the ground and into people’s houses?
GG: I would say, and, again, Kannaway is an example of a company that did extremely well with this, when
you look at CBD, there is a stigma associated with it. While THC is becoming more accepted across the
country, is legal in quite a few states now, there is still a stigma to a lot of people with THC. They don’t want to
get high, that’s the whole thing, and so CBD, the big selling point is there are all these benefits to it without
that narcotic effect that you have with THC. With that though, there’s a lot of education. In the CBD space,
when you go talk to people, the one thing you hear over and over again is, “We need to educate consumers, we
need to educate consumers. Let them know there are no adverse side effects, let them know they won’t get
high, let them know all these potential benefits.” Sure, you can do that with a TV ad or a magazine ad, there
are obviously articles left and right, but when you have your personal friend or your relative talking about the
benefits and saying, “Hey this works great for my ailment, I don’t have these side effects,” that’s really where
CBD sales happen and that’s really the basis of MLM. It is selling person-to-person, it is buying a product from
your friend, from your neighbour, from your relative, so MLM space actually fits pretty well for CBD and
getting the word out there and getting it into peoples’ hands. There’s that trust factor that people have from it
coming from someone they know vs just buying it on the shelf because they read an article about it.
[00:12:17]
Q: Could you speak to some of the longer-lasting structural impacts coronavirus has had on the industry, such
as trying new things like CBD and getting over the stigma?
GG: Actually, this ties in perfectly well with the MLM. The way that COVID has actually impacted it is that the
MLM space and these communications about COVID, it really was about in-person interactions. It was about
inviting someone into your living room, going to coffee with them, that personal interaction, handing someone
a sample of it, having your personal story of, “Here’s how this product has helped me.” Then in COVID times,
that was cut off. A lot of the MLM space had to move to Zoom calls for talking to people, which worked but it’s
not the same as meeting in someone’s living room and having that in-person connection. People say that CBD
sales as a whole are up because of COVID because people are more anxious, more stressed, they’re looking for
something to help them during this time of COVID, but in terms of the MLM component of it and that
personal relationship, that was definitely damaged with COVID.
Private and confidential 5
[00:13:51]
Q: How do you take advantage of the different trends and the different channels such as e-commerce in the
MLM [multi-level marketing] format or structure? How does someone who has a company or works for a
company like that get a significant presence and get to that logistical roadblock?
GG: One thing that is interesting about the MLM space is that your marketing budget is not spent like
traditional CPG companies, even though you’re selling a consumer product. You are not spending money
usually on TV ads or billboards or, in the more modern age, on Facebook ads or Instagram ads. You’re really
focused on building up your brand ambassadors and empowering them to sell to more people. I think the
younger people, especially, are taking much more advantage of social media, they’re much more accustomed
to social media. People will do live video streams where they’re talking about the product. They’ll post funny
stories on their Instagram about the product, get people engaged that way. There’s certainly that component to
it and, as I say, there are people who are taking advantage of Zoom and having Zoom meetings and are able to
talk to potential customers, potential brand partners who are in other parts of the country, where they might
not be able to do that in their living room. There is definitely an adaption in the industry, I would say the MLM
industry as a whole is a slow adapter when it comes to technology. There are certain things you can do with
data in the industry. You can track who’s buying your product, so we buy more of this, more of that, but you
don’t have that same sort of targeted marketing, the way you would have other methods of promoting and
selling consumer product goods.
[00:15:58]
Q: What are consumers seeking in some of these products when deciding to take a chance on a brand? What is
the overall turnover and saturation in personal care and nutritional products? Every day something new seems
to pop up vs other industries where you can’t afford to always push out new products.
GG: That is the thing, there always are new products coming out. There’s always some new, “This is the best,
this is our new secret ingredient,” and that is where it does get tricky. Even in CBD, we can see there are so
many players out there right now, so it is how do you stand out from the other competitors in the industry?
When CBD first launched, it was truly the Wild West, there were a million people, not a million but so many
people hoping to make a quick buck, looking to white-label products. A lot of those, though, ended up failing
because they were white-labelled, people knew that they were just getting a white-label product that a lot of
times they were mislabelled or had poisons in them. There are all these things that went wrong. People really
are looking for that trust factor, so what they’re going to buy, product that is just off the shelf, like I said
before, it’s all about the research, it’s all about making sure. Of course, there is going to be some person who
just walks into GNC and says, “I need,” whatever, and they walk out, but for a lot of people, they really are
engaged and informed consumers.
That’s, again, where the MLM or the direct sales model can be very effective though, is that, like I said, it adds
that trust factor, it adds that, “This person that’s telling me about it is reliable, it’s someone I know.” It’s
something, there has to be a story behind it, and so when these brand partners are talking to people and trying
to sell whatever product it is, whether it’s CBD or whether it’s a protein shake or a supplement, whatever it
might be, is being able to talk to them about why that product is different, what is special about it, what sets it
apart, the quality that goes into it. Quite honestly, in the MLM space, the margins are much, much, much,
much higher. Typically, in the MLM space, about 45% of your retail price goes to commissions and incentives,
so you have to have much larger mark-ups. A lot of times it’s 7-9 times what the actual cost of the good is, so
you really do have to make that compelling case to customers of why this product is (1) different and (2) why
it’s worth spending that extra money when you can find it cheaper somewhere else.
Private and confidential 6
[00:19:03]
Q: How has the pricing environment been impacted? What is the overall challenge of getting these products
sold because of the higher price point?
GG: That’s a great question. It is absolutely a challenge, because, like I said, there are such high mark-ups.
You look at CBD in the MLM space and it’s a very common question where someone says, “Okay, I see your,”
let’s use an example of, “CBD-infused face lotion is USD 110, but then I go and I can go to my local mall and
get a CBD face lotion for USD 20.” It’s really, again, about that, what is the story, what makes this special,
what are the additional ingredients, why is this price point worth it? Consumers, though, will pay that higher
price. Even if you go to a Sephora and you look at all the different products there, CBD or not, there are all
kinds of prices and people are willing to often pay that higher price because in their mind there’s something
about that quality, there’s something special in there. There’s something about it that to them they say, “This is
worth paying that higher price,” but I won’t lie to you that it is a challenge sometimes to make that case. To
really get through that story to consumers of why they should pay that higher dollar. Again, that goes to the
personal relationships in the MLM space certainly help with that, and then it is not just being a CBD company
but being a CBD company that has also this additional X factor to it. You have to have that these days.
[00:20:57]
Q: How do you think the structure of MLM is developing globally? Does this model struggle or outpace
US growth in any regions?
GG: That’s a great question. First, let’s talk about the US, for example. In the US, there are only so many
people who want to get involved in the MLM space. There are, unfortunately, stigmas associated with it,
stories of pyramids schemes, all of that. There are a lot of laws in the books and a lot of good actors, but there
is a stigma to it. There are more and more people open to it, but there is still a cap on the number of people
who want to get involved in this industry. Right now, there are so many different MLM companies in the
United States. You could sell almost anything. There’s make-up, which is obviously we’re talking about today,
but there’s Tupperware. There are so many things that could be sold, and the US market, quite honestly, it is
pretty saturated right now. If somebody comes in with a great product, a lot of what they’re doing is poaching
people from other MLM companies, people who have had success in other MLM companies. Sure, you get new
people, you get younger people coming up, but there is only a certain number of people want to do that.
The international market is where a lot of MLM companies are really looking right now. There is a lot of
potential growth in eastern Europe. Western Europe is a little bit trickier, but in eastern Europe, there’s a lot
of potential growth there. South Asian markets, there’s a lot of potential. Some companies that have gone over
there so far have seen amazing, amazing success in the MLM space. Obviously, you sometimes have to have
different approaches, different price points depending on the country, but there, a lot of the companies that
were US-focused originally are really looking to move to those other markets because they see that the US
market is starting to get saturated and they want to find that growth elsewhere.
[00:23:16]
Q: Could you discuss any cycles in MLM as it relates to personal care products such as attracting and retaining
talent? How hard is it and how critical is it?
GG: Yes, that’s what I was going to say. I would say that the most difficult part of the MLM industry is
attracting people and then retaining people. Because, quite honestly, to be blunt, you have to do so much
hand-holding in this industry. If you think about it, if you’re a traditional CPG company and you have a
marketing budget, you go to a marketing agency, you trust them to do their job. You have a contract, they’re
professionals, you’ve vetted different companies. There might be some issues along the way, but you trust
what they’re going to do and deliver and then sales will hopefully come from that.
Private and confidential 7
Where this, this is all personal relationships. It starts with somebody in the very beginning finding a few
people to join the team, and then them growing it. You usually have what are called beaters who come into an
MLM company at the beginning who have proven records in other companies. They have teams that they’ve
had before and they bring those in, but you have to keep people excited and motivated. Talking about 45% of
the retail price goes to commissions, quote, unquote, it’s not really all commissions. That is big events, that is
awards, people love to be recognised in this industry. People want to be made to feel special. “Do this many
sales and you get a car,” or, “You get a cruise,” people get so excited about that, so you really have to focus on
that motivation and retention. It can be a slog for these people who are calling their friends and family. They
don’t want to bug people any more, they’re getting rejected, and you have to motivate them. Part of it is, at the
corporate level, you can only motivate your top people. After that, it’s the people down the line who need to be
motivating each other. There are definitely a lot of people who drop out, a lot of people who quit, there are
people who will start in one company and then move to another company, so keeping your people happy once
they’ve signed on is the most important thing you can do at the corporate level. There are a lot of things that go
into that on the product and what you do, but that is absolutely key.
[00:25:49]
Q: How do you ensure product quality for a consumer? How does a manufacturer source the right ingredients
or chemicals for a product?
GG: That’s a great question. Let’s do the first part, which is just the importance of the quality?
GG: The importance of the quality, great, thank you, that really ties into that personal relationship and people.
Even the slightest misstep in MLM does so much more damage than it does with a traditional consumer
products company. I get the wrong delivery from Amazon, I say, “Whatever, Amazon is a large company, they
mess up, I’m going to get this returned. It’s Amazon.” With the MLM space, if someone buys a product from
me and it doesn’t show up on time, or it’s damaged, or it’s not what they expected, they’re not calling the
headquarters for the MLM company, they’re calling me on my cellphone saying, “Hey, you sold me this
product and it’s not what I expected.” It is of the utmost importance to make sure that your products are
quality, that they are what people expect, that they exceed expectations, quite honestly, because that’s what
people want. When someone is acting as a salesperson, or ambassador, whatever you want to call it, they’re
really putting their reputation on the line by selling this product and they don’t want to do that if they don’t
believe in the product, so you really have to ensure that the product is quality. Then that also ties into what I
said before about in the MLM space, you’re charging so much more than other companies and other similar
products, so that quality does have to be good. When someone says, “Okay, I could have bought this for USD
20 on Amazon, but I’m paying USD 80 today,” when they see that packaging, when they feel that product, they
have to know or at least they have to believe that they got their money’s worth of paying extra and that they
want to continue to pay that extra dollar. Then I think your second point was on sourcing.
[00:28:15]
Q: How do you think some players are putting technology first and putting different systems in place so that
they can effectively market with a results-driven type of strategy?
GG: I think again, for the companies to sell this result, it’s a lot of stories and anecdotes. Again, going back to
Charlotte’s Web, there’s this compelling story of this terminally ill child, so that resonates with people. There’s
the anecdotal part, but what a lot of companies are doing, and the companies that, especially in the CBD space
in the beginning, there were a lot of people buying white-label products. They did a study initially, which
scared a lot of people, that around 70% of all CBD products on the market were mislabelled when the industry
at first was taking off. Now it’s around about 50%, but that’s still 50% of the products that are mislabelled.
Either they have THC or don’t have CBD, or they have harsh chemicals in them. What some of the leaders are
doing is they are doing very, very, very thorough third-party testing at all stages in the production process, and
then they are proudly placing that front and centre on their website. There’s one company, Hulsa, that they
Private and confidential 8
have QR codes on every single box that you can scan and it takes you to those third-party testing results. That’s
a way of alleviating that fear of, “What am I getting here? Is this going to be quality? Is this what I expect?”
Third-party testing is really the one hard and fast thing you can do right now. Then, as I said before, a lot of
money is being invested right now into research into CBD just because people know that there is so much
potential there. I believe as an industry, there are already some studies but we’re going to see so many more
studies coming out that’ll really help, hopefully, make it an even more appealing product to people.
[00:30:50]
Q: Could you discuss the risk in pushing for new product development as it relates to R&D, sourcing the
correct ingredients, having a strong supply chain and the regulatory environment?
GG: I can tell you without getting into too much detail about me, from a personal level, I’ve had several,
several headaches related to supply chain and the sourcing of materials, quite honestly. Especially when you
want to stay everything that is in the United States, and that goes back, again, to I know there were a lot of
people in the beginning, and this happens in any industry, where they just want to white-label something.
White-labelling is common, it’s common across the beauty industry and the nutrition industry, but especially
with CBD where it was a very unregulated market in the beginning, a lot of these white-label products didn’t
have what they said and those companies failed.
Then where we saw successes, but there were stresses, are the companies that had their own unique formulas.
With that, you are procuring hemp extract from farmers domestically. You have to find all these different
ingredients. It takes a long time to formulate a new product, a face lotion or a body lotion. You have to do so
many rounds of testing and making sure that it’s what people want that it’s unique. One hurdle with that is
that it makes your product better, when launched, because it’s unique, you can tell people that, but, especially
in the CBD space, there were a lot of people who didn’t launch until a year, year-and-a-half after their
competitors because they did do this full R&D process, they sourced their own materials. Then, of course, with
COVID, you mentioned COVID earlier, there are major supply chain issues. There are always supply chain
risk, especially when you’re working with natural ingredients, but especially in these COVID times there’s
much risk here, but if you do it right and create the right product, the reward for doing it can definitely be
worth that time and stress.
[00:33:19]
Q: You mentioned the MLM industry in personal care has been a bit slow to adopt technology. Why do you
think, in an industry that needs every sale it can get, companies are not being more aggressive in tackling all
avenues and implement technology in a much more structural way?
GG: That’s a great question. I honestly think it’s because a lot of the people who are more senior in the
industries there are more old-fashioned, if you will. There are new players, a lot of people with new and
exciting ideas but it’s not the same as you’re in Silicon Valley or you’re in technology where all these people are
looking to innovate and adapt. It’s a lot of people who have seen tried and true processes in the past, and
especially when they’re in the leadership position and what I’m coming to, what’ll happen in a lot of times is a
new MLM company will start and they’ll pull people who have been successful at other companies to be part of
the management team, but these are a lot of people who have done direct sales or MLM in the older fashion,
which was all about, as I said before, that personal connection, that one-on-one relationship with people.
There are certainly people, and I said before, who are younger, who are finding more interesting and dynamic
ways. You asked for names. There’s a company, LuLaRoe, which does clothing for women, and they’re all
about younger millennial mums and women, and they really do a great job of selling products online, they do
live video streams. They’re taking advantage of that, where other companies are not. There are some MLM
companies that social media profile are barely even there because they’re so stuck in the past, whereas there
are others who are seeing the advantage of that and, especially in attracting a younger generation, have to do
that.
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Then, like I said, there are some technologies that aren’t as necessarily relevant in this space. One thing that’s
interesting is that as an MLM company, where you get in the most trouble, historically where companies have
failed, is when the MLM company tries to also sell products alongside their brand partners. Where they start
to do their own advertising, where they start to send out their own e-mails that are almost feel like competition
to the current brand partners, and they say, “Why am I competing against my own company? This company is
supposed to be supporting me.” That’s oftentimes when they leave. A lot of areas where CBD companies find
success, using big data, tracking clicks of their users, seeing what they’re doing on the website, sending those
follow-up e-mails, the empty shopping cart e-mails, all of that, those technologies aren’t as valuable or aren’t
really even used in the industry right now because of that impact that it would have on the brand partners.
Like I was saying, I keep mentioning this huge 45% which you think of as your marketing budget, but barely
any of that is spent in a lot of technologies. The marketing that is done is really as a support to your brand
partners. Anything you’re posting on social media as a company, it’s there so that when your brand partners
show their potential customers your brand, they see an exciting social media page, but it’s not the same data-
driven world that so many other companies live in. Sorry to discount it a little bit though, obviously, you do
want to track, “Okay, X product is doing extremely well with these groups. Y product is doing extremely well in
these groups. Maybe we push this product a little more to brand partners in this part of the country and this
product to people who are targeting this demographic.” It’s still data, but it’s not the big data that people get so
excited about.
[00:37:35]
Q: Have you noticed any trends in a specific demographic where you think the opportunity is the largest?
GG: I’m trying to remember the exact number off the top of my head, but it’s about 70% of people in the MLM
space are women. It skews even more so when you get into beauty and supplements, obviously. It’s women,
you see a lot of mums, quite honestly, who might not work full-time but they still want to make an income
from home. One thing that you did see in COVID times, interestingly enough, are people whose current
employment situation may have been impacted by COVID looking for a new source of income. Especially when
you talk about right now you see a lot about labour shortages and all of that, people want to be their own boss,
people want to be in control. You’re seeing that shift to people who may not have been interested in the
industry moving to the industry. I’m trying to think what else. Yes, it’s always changing, like you see people
who are, just like I said, there are a lot of people who are sick of their current nine-to-five job or they want to
add on to it. You see a lot of people who have a lower-paying job, maybe not minimum wage but a lower-
paying job, and they think, “Okay, I have this extra time, how can I make extra money?” and the MLM space
really does help them with that.
[00:39:25]
Q: How would you segment who the clients are and where the opportunity is for innovation to grab a new
segment of the market, whether it’s men or seniors?
GG: That’s what’s interesting when we talk about customers in the MLM space, because for our brand
partners, we always want to call the person selling the product, there are two different groups that they’re
really going after. There’s one, just that friend who they know is going to buy one or two products, the friend,
they want to support their friend, or this is a product my friend might like, they’re going to buy one or two
products. There, I think that that audience is all over the board. I don’t have specifics in front of me, but that
could be all genders, all ages, just the different people they know who might be interested in that product.
Then they’re also, at the same, looking to get more brand ambassadors. The way that you truly make money in
the network marketing industry is by building a team underneath yourself who’s also selling the product. For
there, I think a lot of people tend to try to recruit people similar to themselves, it’s easier to relate to them, but
I think if you give people the right coaching tools and give the right encouragement, they might expand their
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horizon a little bit of who they’re talking to about that. That’s ultimately what they’re trying to do, is get people
underneath them.
Then in terms of innovation, that’s a great question in terms of opening up more markets. I think a lot of it is,
this is my personal opinion, of course, there is this stigma in the industry, there is, for a lot of people, this is
just a stereotype, it’s not real, but, “MLM is what a stay-at-home wife does. She’s doing this in a job, she’s
selling Tupperware, she’s an Avon lady, that’s a second job.” There is that trying to make it seem like this is
more any gender, any age can do this. Also removing that stigma that it’s a, for want of a better term, a
smarmy industry. There have been a lot of bad actors in the past, people hear about pyramid schemes, and it’s
really educating people that there are companies out there that you can legitimately make good money on, that
there are honest actors, that they’re not going to screw you, that you can make good money. It’s just tapping
more audiences and also just, I’d say, removing the stigma to it that could really help a lot of people. I know
personally a lot of people, as soon as you mention MLM, they freeze up and don’t want to touch it, but then
once they get to understand it and once they get involved, they realise, “This is a really great industry.” That’s
where, almost an earlier point, it gets, when I was talking about the two different types of sales channels, the
person and then the product, the rule is that you cannot spend more of your effort as a company recruiting
people. It has to be focused on selling product. When you’re only recruiting people and not focused on the
product, that’s where you start to get in legal trouble.
[00:43:13]
Q: How has the MLM industry reacted to huge players such as Amazon? Retailers are rolling out their own
private label products, whether it’s in snacks, meat or personal care. How big of a threat is private label from
some of these big e-commerce websites or in-person retailers? Do you expect an issue there or do they not
have the capabilities to compete on quality?
GG: I think the quality, they have the ability. They have huge R&D teams, these large companies, they can
create their own products. They can probably create a product that’s better than what some of these MLM
companies are selling. Again, that is a major threat I would say to the MLM industry. Same thing I was saying.
For instance, CBD, a great example, there’s a company selling a body lotion and then a gel cap, and the gel cap
only has CBD in it. CBD is CBD is CBD. They look at the price point from their MLM salesperson vs private
label on Amazon that’s a third of the price and they say, “What is the difference here? Why am I paying so
much more for yours?” That’s a harder sell to make when it’s just a gel cap, that’s all it is, it’s CBD in a gel cap.
Whereas with the other products, with a face lotion, and as I’ve been saying, the a multibillion-dollar cosmetic
and beauty industry that it is, you can make the case of, “Okay, sure, yes, there’s CBD in this but we also have
all these other amazing ingredients that complement the CBD that truly make it unique. That’s what makes it
worth paying more than what you get at Walmart.” You can talk to a lot of people in the cosmetic industry and
they’ll tell you pretty much most of the ingredients are the same every product you buy, but you see huge price
differences in the beauty industry because people are convinced, for one reason or another, that this other
product has that value proposition. That’s really what you need to do in this space, and then that all ties back
to MLM and that personal relationship, and you, as a brand partner, being able to tell your friends and family,
“This is what makes this product different. This is why you shouldn’t go buy the product from Amazon that is
much less expensive.”
[00:45:46]
Q: Have you experienced when products fail, either by quality or marketing? How easy or challenging is it to
repurpose or rebrand that product? Do you think the industry is very agile to quickly recognise when
something is not working vs other industries where a company has already spent 10 years developing a
product and trying to push it before they realise it doesn’t necessarily work?
GG: I’d say a lot of the products sold in the MLM space are products that it’s already known that there’s some
demand for them. If you think about Tupperware sales, people always need Tupperware, or LuLaRoe, I always
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use them as an example because they’re a great example, they sell women’s clothing, there’s always going to be
a demand for women’s clothing. These MLM supplement companies, there’s already been a demand for
supplements. You don’t see a lot of people coming up with a completely new gadget that’s never been on the
market and trying the MLM route initially. It’s usually something that there’s a known market for, but then
you’re innovating it and making something special about it that people want to spend the extra money on.
In terms of individual products, one thing that is, I’d say, a very tricky thing in the MLM industry, especially
when you’re creating your own new, unique product, even tying back to the supply chain, one thing that’s often
talked about in the industry is the hockey-shaped rate of growth. If you think if you’re looking at a growth
curve, for most companies it’s a whatever degree line, maybe a little bit of a curve, continual growth, it’s easy
to project. You have a good sense of, “Okay, we need to buy more.” What happens in the MLM industry quite
often is there’s slow growth, slow growth, slow growth, slow growth, and then all of a sudden it just takes off
and it grows exponentially. This is one thing I’ve heard over and over again, is you need to have a pretty good
amount of product on hand in a warehouse somewhere so that when it that’s hockey stick, because if you don’t
have enough supply for your demand, they’re just going to go somewhere else.
Again, with this industry, people turn so quickly, so you need to have that supply. There’s a big upfront
investment in that, and then to repurposing, there’s a risk there because, for whatever reason, one product
doesn’t sell, you have to think to yourself, “Okay, can I repurpose this somehow? Can I shift the narrative on
this? Can it be repurposed to something else?” Some products you can, some products just you’re stuck with
them in a warehouse and you start making concessions on price, try and push those out the door and then get
more of the more successful products. You will see, with these companies, just like with any company or any
industry, if there’s a product that’s not selling, while you might have to get through your current supply, you’re
not going to re-up on that. You’re going to cancel that line altogether or make a new version of that line. It is
adaptable and it is agile, but it doesn’t change just like that.
[00:49:26]
Q: We talked about a significant amount of SKUs and brand-switching in the industry. Could you speak more
to why there are so many products? Is it because the barriers to entry become lower, or do you think there’s a
lot more investment and interest in the market that is funding all of this growth?
GG: I think it would be a really combination of both. Barriers to entry are not near as high as other industries.
Nowadays, it is actually a lot easier for anyone to launch a product, because you can get your own Amazon
page, you could start marketing online. With MLM, there are upfront costs of ordering product and everything
like that, but compared to a lot of other big corporations, you don’t have to build a brick-and-mortar store, you
don’t have to build multiple locations, you don’t have to hire a bunch of employees. All your people are earning
commission. Your marketing budget is coming out of sales that are made vs a big multimillion-dollar splashy
launch with a celebrity, whatever it might be. It is not as expensive to enter the MLM space. Also, you see a lot
of people trying to get into it because they see that the companies that succeed do extremely well. There’s a lot
of ability to make a lot of money, and also like I was saying with that hockey stick growth you can make a lot of
money really quickly. A lot of these companies in the MLM space, when you see their YoY projections, when
you first look at them, I looked at them before and thought, “There’s no way a CPG company could be having
this extreme rate of YoY growth,” but then they show you other companies where the companies that have
been successful because of the nature of the industry. It really does take off, and so there’s a lot of people who,
honestly, they’re not looking to build a company that’s going to last 15-20 years, they want to build a company
that’s going to grow rapidly in 3-5 years and then they’re going to sell it to another player, a company that
gobbles up these other MLM companies.
[00:52:03]
Q: You touched on the troubles in ingredient sourcing. Could you discuss the differences between companies
who outsource production and those that have in-house expertise? How significant is that as a factor in
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potential growth?
GG: In terms of potential growth it just really comes down to how much does that relate to the customer and
how much does your customer care? I said a lot of customers, consumers these days are more and more
concerned about where products come from, where their products are sourced. People want to know that their
products were sourced and made and formulated here in the United States, where other international markets,
especially, don’t really care about that near as much. We talked a lot about MLM companies moving into South
Asian markets, and they’re obviously going to make their products there, the products are going to be cheaper
to make there. It causes headaches, I’d say, to have it done in-house, but if you can sell the story, but, again,
you’d have to be explaining to your customers the reasoning behind that and the value add of that. If you were
just spending all that extra money and stress to do it in-house and not have someone else to do it and aren’t
selling that story, that’s really a waste of time and effort.
[00:53:45]
Q: Is there anything you think is commonly overlooked in the MLM industry, whether it’s CBD or other
products or categories within personal care?
GG: That’s a great question. Maybe one thing that might be overlooked is that I think it might be easy
sometimes to look at supplements, nutrition, wellness as one bucket industry where you need to really look at
trends for different products. For instance, CBD, and I know we’ve talked about it but it’s a perfect example,
where that has, because of its unique nature, become its own bucket and its own industry, and people get
excited about CBD investments and all that. A lot of other people might think, “This is just a nutrition and
wellness company,” but while the industry as a whole is growing, there are certain products and supplements
that are going out of style or there are new health risks associated with them or whatever it might be. A
company you’re looking at, you don’t want to just think of them as a supplement company, even though they
might have a bunch of different SKUs, you want to look at what those SKUs are and how those SKUs are
headed, if they’re looking to new types of product, if they’re relying on just old tried and true products. I would
think that’s a big one. Just really seeing, breaking it down a little further, if you will.
In terms of, again, what is the outlook for that company in the international market, I’d say while the nutrition
supplements are growing in the United States and will continue to grow, there are a lot of players here, so it’s
those companies that have their eyes set on the international markets. Especially as more and more countries
have a growing middle class who have more leisure time, who do have more focus on health and wellness,
that’s where you’re really going to see a lot of growth, and so those companies that are making those early
inroads, those initial investment in those areas, I think those are going to be the ones that really see a lot of
success.
[00:56:27]
NH: I think that’s a good place to leave it there. We will now end the Interview. Let me close by saying thank
you, Grant, for your input, really good Interview. We touched on a lot of topics, and thank you, clients, for
joining Third Bridge Forum’s Interview today. Have a good one.
GG: I really appreciate, thank you, everyone. Bye.
Transcription ends at 00:56:45 of the recorded material
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