Direct Selling, according to experts, may be one of the fastest growing industries in the world, based on a legacy that began in the U.S. with companies like Avon, which initiated its first opportunity for representatives in 1886. After Avon, Stanley Home Products helped to kick off the canonical “party plan” for selling in 1930, establishing the model Tupperware entered in 1951 and Mary Kay Cosmetics joined in 1963.
But change affects us all. After peaking in 2013 at $140.1B, the global market for direct selling declined for two consecutive years, to $130.6B in 2015 and then rebounded, according to CoreSight Research. In 2017, according to Statista, global direct selling generated $189.6B in U.S. dollars, with 34 percent of this revenue now coming from wellness products.
The U.S. is the top region in the world for direct selling, but China is not far behind and may even surpass the U.S. within the next several years according to the Statista research. What does this mean for today’s independent marketers?
Remaining Challenges:
While the industry for wellness and vitality is growing and the “cut out the middleman” advantages of the direct selling model are great, it’s a sector that has a few challenges, too, such as:
Reputation issues.
Through