Known as “Willagirls,” the teens and tweens host Tupperware like get-togethers at home, school or just about anywhere eight- to 13-year-olds hang out. Invites typically are extended via text message, since “nobody uses email anymore,” Ms. Messner says. So far Willagirl, which doesn’t disclose annual sales, has recruited 42 sellers in New York, Miami, New Jersey, California, Colorado and Maryland, among other states.
For Willagirl’s young sales reps, the company offers 25% of total sales, for a potential monthly income of $320 to $3,500, according to a pamphlet sellers distribute at their parties. Party hosts also receive 15% of retail sales from the party in free products, plus one half-price item if party sales exceed $400.
“There are all these hidden costs that are tied to brick-and-mortar retailing,” says Willagirl founder and chief executive Christy Prunier, “and besides, tween girls aren’t going to malls anymore.” The company, based in Riverside, is currently building out software, which by September will allow the girls to host “virtual” parties online, she adds.
Willagirl is one of a handful of startups that in the past few years have turned to business models combining e-commerce and social media with the traditional direct-sales tactics pioneered by Tupperware, Mary Kay and
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Experts Calls on SEC To Crack Down On MLM’s
by Tina Williams • • 0 Comments
The Securities and Exchange Commission should ratchet up its scrutiny of Herbalife and other multilevel marketing companies to ensure that their distributors aren’t violating anti-pyramid scheme laws, according to one top industry expert.
Bill Keep, the business dean of the College of New Jersey and a trial expert on pyramid schemes, urged SEC chief Mary Jo White to conduct ongoing reviews of the growing MLM industry and recommended that companies submit their enforcement policies to regulators every five years.
“I urge you to take serious the ongoing threat of unregulated behaviors by hundreds of thousands of MLM distributors affecting the lives of millions of Americans annually,” he wrote in the June 16 letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.
Keep fired off the letter in the wake of the recent appellate court decision upholding the Federal Trade Commission’s closure of pyramid scheme BurnLounge, saying it “reinforced the key issues of rewards primarily reliance on recruitment and the need for effective, enforced company policies.”
In his letter to White, Keep called out Herbalife, which is being probed by the SEC and other regulators over pyramid scheme allegations, for its “attempts to distance the company from distributor behaviors.”
The maker of protein shakes and other nutrition supplements