Is Nu Skin a Scam?
Is Nu Skin a scam? Learn insider information about this and other MLMs.
Is Nu Skin a Scam?
Nu Skin is a multi-level marketing (MLM) company founded in 1984 in Provo, Utah that produces a range of skincare and other beauty products. The company trades across 50+ markets worldwide, but they don’t sell products in the traditional way: instead, they have a network of 800,000 to a million independent distributors.
Nu Skin is a multi-level marketing company. I’ve been anti-MLM for a long time and wanted to write this article and delve into how these companies operate. Maybe someone who is thinking of signing up might come across this article and realize that they need to stay as far away from these companies as possible.
So is Nu Skin a scam? Not in the technical sense, but they engage in highly unfair business practices. If you’re thinking of joining this company or any other MLM, then please read and reconsider.
How Much Does It Cost to Join Nu Skin?
Unlike most MLMs, you don’t have to pay a joining fee to join. Nu Skin and its representatives like to point this out as much as possible to potential new recruits. The thing is, upon joining, you don’t get any products to sell. Instead, you have two choices:
Introductory Product Package: Instead of paying a joining fee, you buy an introductory product package that costs £404 (about $400 US). They offer this because by law, MLMs cannot take investments from new recruits of more than £200 in the first seven days. They’re essentially treading a fine line between what’s legal and what isn’t on this. It appears to me that what they’re doing is illegal.
Automatic Delivery Rewards (ADR): They do have another option called ADR (Automatic Delivery Rewards), which is four of their products for £152.65 (about $180 US). Yes, you read that right. Four products for a whopping £152. However, this isn’t just a one-off payment. You’re signing up for a monthly charge of £152 for these products. And if you want to cancel, you have to provide 14 days' written notice in advance.
If all that sounds a little confusing, it’s because it is confusing. This is all clearly written and designed to confuse you about the reality of what they’re doing.
How Much Can You Earn as a Nu Skin Rep?
It is just as confusing to figure out how much you can get paid. On their website, they use non-industry-standard terminology, words like “blocks” instead of pounds or dollars. I assume they do this on purpose to try and confuse you.
I was, however, able to find a table of average commissions for each of the levels you can reach. The Brand Affiliate (Non-Brand Representative) has a monthly average income of $37—but that’s without expenses. In fact, when I average the annual commissions of the nine levels you can reach, it comes to $1,806. Which is less than $35 a week. This is the information on their own website.
What makes it worse is that only 15% of sellers actually earn any commission at all, and only 1% earn an actual living wage. So just to make it clear: 85% of sellers don’t make any money from selling Nu Skin products. If you think you can make a living wage from this, think again.
Nu Skin's Claims vs. Word of Mouth
I’ve also seen a lot of Nu Skin sellers claim that the company creates a millionaire every week. When you look at the number on their own website, that doesn’t add up. Below is a quote from Reddit member hyrle:
Hi. I'm a former employee of that company. (Was not a salesperson - I worked in a corporate analyst gig.) Only approximately 8,000 out of their 2 million current distributors take home $100/mo in commissions or more. Million-dollar lifetime earners are rather rare, I think the company had approximately 700 when I last checked. When you're talking about a company that's been around 30 years, it's not exactly churning out tons of millionaires. If a rep sells a $30 bottle of pills, they'll see around $10 in commission, if they can manage to sell it without offering any discounts (which come out of their pay).
With this in mind, I'd say to people that are thinking of joining: Do you really think you're going to be in the top 1%? I mean, statistically speaking, it's highly unlikely. You'd be better off gambling in Las Vegas as a profession.
I guess this shows how convincing their recruitment techniques are. Below, you'll read about the lengths some people will go to in order to make you believe they're making thousands when in reality, they aren't. It's an age-old sales technique. A good salesman always turns up in a posh car. I mean, if you turn up in a Mercedes, you clearly know what you're talking about, right?
Cult-Like Behaviour
Former sellers claim that bullying is rife within the company. They start with a welcoming supporting vibe, bombarding you with supportive talk, using words like “hun” and “boss babe.” They make it seem like a supportive community at first, but if you don't sell enough products, they can turn nasty. You’re told you don’t work hard enough or that you haven’t followed the training plan, despite the fact that you were told you could work around your own schedule to hours that suit you. Eventually, they’ll cast you out.
The bullying doesn’t stop there, either. A friend of mine who quit Nu Skin was harassed by former teammates. She said, “I had to delete my social media accounts. They collectively reported my accounts and sent me tens of messages a day calling me all sorts of names because I left and criticised the company.”
This is cult-like behaviour, but a quick Google search will show you that this type of behaviour is rife in the MLM industry.
The Lies
One thing I did get to witness with my own eyes is the level of deceit they encourage from sellers. My friend received an invitation to one of their training seminars, where they encourage you to lie on social media. If you go on holiday, they recommend sharing pictures on Facebook with captions like “All this paid for by Nu Skin.” If you’re sick from work and have to stay home, they suggest you take photos for Facebook and thank Nu Skin for making it possible for you to work from home and look after your kids. I was shocked at the dishonesty they encouraged in new recruits in order to sell the lifestyle, which in turn helps recruit even more (vulnerable) people.
The last straw for me was when my friend went to a Land Rover showroom with the sole intention of taking a selfie with a high-end car to claim that she was purchasing it with the (non-existent) profits from selling Nu Skin products. I began to distance myself from her at this point. Faking a level of success to lure people into signing up is enough for me to speak out.
It was sad to see this. In the end—as with most people who get involved with an MLM—she got herself (and her husband) into a lot of debt trying to fake the lifestyle, and now she works in retail. How someone can go from claiming to be making six figures to working minimum wage in under a year is something I still haven’t figured out.
And the saddest thing of all? These MLM companies and their reps are so well-versed in tricking people into believing the hype that she started up with a whole new MLM. I guess some people are so desperate to get out of debt that they leave all common sense behind.
How to Spot an MLM or Pyramid Scheme
I'll leave you with this information: There are five red flags for identifying exploitative product-based pyramid schemes, according to the website MLM-TheTruth. So this is what you should be looking out for when you are offered an opportunity to work from home.
- Recruitment of participants is unlimited in an endless chain of empowered and motivated recruiters recruiting recruiters.
- Advancement in a hierarchy of multiple levels of participants is achieved by recruitment rather than by appointment.
- There are significant requirements that participants “pay to play” the game via product purchases. Thus, new recruits are the primary customers.
- An MLM company pays commissions and/or bonuses to at least five levels of participants, creating great “leverage” at the top. Nu Skin uses a breakaway compensation system, with six levels of whole groups of participants, making it a mega-pyramid with one of the most extreme or highly leveraged compensation plans in existence. This is great for those at the top, but it's the pits for hundreds of thousands beneath them who become its victims.
- Most of the payout goes to the upline rather than to the person selling products, creating an excessive incentive to recruit and inadequate incentive to sell products (except to new recruits)—and an extreme concentration of income at the top of a hierarchy (pyramid) of participants.
My advice is you should avoid Nu Skin and any other MLM like the plague.
This content reflects the personal opinions of the author. It is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and should not be substituted for impartial fact or advice in legal, political, or personal matters.
