A handful of Herbalife’s Internet distributors are rebelling against the company’s move to corral them and exert greater control over their sales and marketing.
The weight-loss products company started earlier this month requiring distributors to move their far-flung retail sites to a new corporate-controlled hub, goherbalife.com.
Herbalife portrayed the policy, which went into effect Nov. 15, as an effort to curb bad behavior and prevent independent distributors from making false product claims.
But a few holdouts, including shoptoshape.com, herbal5.co.uk, and herbalhappy.com, had yet to move to the new destination and were still operating stand-alone sites as of Friday.
Some operators of these sites believe Herbalife’s real aim is to keep them from selling products at discounts, which undercuts the company’s recruiting efforts, sources said.
The retailers, which only sell discounted products and do not recruit, have been allowed by Herbalife to sell through their own Web sites and advertising for 15 years, sources said.
The change is just the latest of several that have made it difficult for them to compete, causing the number of independent sites to decline from about 300 in 2012 to about 40 earlier this year, according to sources.
Typically, independent sites advertise Herbalife products at anywhere from 25 percent to 45 percent