Does Pink Stink or is Mary Kay O.K.?

What do you think?

Visit the Mary Kay Cosmetics website and you can read about an inspiring company and an empowering business opportunity for women. Here is how Mary Kay describes itself:

Achievement. Success. The realization of dreams. Mary Kay Inc. was created from one woman’s desire to enrich women’s lives. She began by offering quality products to enhance a woman’s image and a perfect business opportunity to help women earn extra money, enjoy more flexibility and grow as independent business owners. The result is a company that, more than 40 years later, still embodies the core philosophies of its founder: to use the Golden Rule as a business guide and to help women live a balanced life by placing God first, family second and career third.

Visit the Pink Truth website (formerly MaryKaySucks.Com), published by CPA MBA & CFE Tracy Coenen, and you’ll get a different view:

…Mary Kay is a product-based pyramid scheme. This means that many at the bottom of the pyramid must buy significant amounts of products so that those at the top can get the big commission checks, “win” the cars, and go on the fancy trips. This is common with multi-level marketing (MLM) companies such as Mary Kay. They depend upon an endless recruitment of new people who purchase inventory packages….

…multi-level marketing companies like Mary Kay are abusive systems that create negative consequences for the vast majority of participants. Because of that, there is no such thing as the “right way” to be involved in an MLM. The system itself damages the vast majority of participants…

On her post at the Fraud Files Blog, Coenen adds:

…The amount of time required to earn an income is generally downplayed. Recruiters brag about the 50% profit that can be earned on the sale of the cosmetics, but never mention that most products are sold at a discount and therefore that 50% will never be realized. (That’s if they can actually find anyone to buy the products.) New recruits are encouraged to buy large inventories without any sales experience or a customer base to support the inventory.

IS MARY KAY COSMETICS AN INSPIRATIONAL OPPORTUNITY THAT IS EMPOWERING WOMEN AND GLORIFYING GOD… OR A PYRAMID SCHEME POWERED BY BRAINWASHED CULT MEMBERS WITH GREAT MAKEUP?

Leave a comment. Share your opinion.

More Mary Kay discussion links:

The Pinking Shears Mary Kay Survivor’s log, forum, cope group

Cult Education Forum

Wikipedia Page on Mary Kay

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