Saturday, August 19, 2017

USANA Claims That Majority of Associates Join To Purchase Products at a Discount, Yet in Same Document State That Preferred Customers Receive Same Discount




According to USANA’s own statements:

- 58.01% of total United States Associates in 2016 received $0.00 in yearly compensation.

- The Majority of Associates join USANA to improve their health and purchase products at a discount. Consequently, many Associates never build a sales organization or earn compensation from sales by other Associates in their sales organization.
- As a USANA business owner, you set your own selling prices. USANA’s published retail prices suggest a 10% mark-up over the “Preferred Price” received by Associates and Preferred Customers. Associates (and Preferred Customers) receive an additional 10% discount off the Preferred Price for products purchased through our Auto Order program. With this additional discount, Associates can earn up to 18% profit on retail sales of USANA products (before shipping and tax)…

USANA misleads their shareholders, FTC, SEC, and the general public by trying to excuse the fact the majority of USANA associates received $0.00 commission by claiming they only joined to “improve their health and purchase products at a discount”. This is absolutely not true because USANA also states that Preferred Customers can get the product at the same discounted price as Associates do. Therefore the ONLY reason anyone would sign up to become a USANA associate is to make money, otherwise they would be a preferred customer.

However, it is almost impossible for more than 50% of the USANA associates to receive a commission anyway by the very nature of a binary compensation plan. In even the most favorable scenario for associates, which is a perfectly balanced binary tree several levels down, at least 50% of associates will ALWAYS have no downline associates. So no chance of commission for those at the bottom from any downline associates (You are the bottom, right).

So USANA says you can sign up Preferred Customers and make commission off them. Great, too bad you can’t get any profit margin from retail sales to them since they would buy the product at the same discounted price as the associate. So you need at least 2 preferred customers to purchase over 125 points for you each (about $150 each). That is worth a whopping $25 for selling $300 worth of supplements. Unfortunately, you cannot collect that $25 unless you personally purchase 100 points ($120) worth of product yourself every 4 weeks. OUCH! Oh, and USANA is not legally allowed to give you that commission unless you can show proof that you actually sold product to at least 5 customers! Double whammy. It’s no wonder the majority of associates lose money and quit.

“Don’t give up!” is what all USANA associates are told. Okay, there is a way to make money in USANA, but you have to first sell your soul to the devil, or something like that. You just need to sell the business opportunity instead. Don’t waste your time trying to push pills, potions, and lotions. Instead push the idea of becoming rich. Sell the dream. Simply recruit everyone you know and have each of them recruit everyone they know. If everyone personally purchases the product every 4 weeks, then almost half of everyone will at least receive a commission check. You and a lucky few at the top of the hierarchy who signed up first will receive the big bucks and actually make a profit! And get this, nobody has to actually sell anything! Why, because USANA actually pays commission based on PRODUCT PURCHASED by downline associates, not on product sold by downline associates. Besides, why bother trying to resell it, you already paid full price for the product anyway.

You see, distributors in legitimate companies actually get the product at a very low price. Customers are not able to get the product at the distributor’s price. And distributors are able to mark up the product by up to 100% in many cases. Imagine if you as a distributor could purchase the HealthPak100 for $72.15 rather than $117.86 that USANA charges for your “discounted price” today. That’s a heck of a lot better price, right? Now you as the distributor could resell it for 100% mark up is sell it at $144. That would be a heck of a profit margin, except most people would not buy it for that price. So drop your price all the way down to $117.86 and you still make $45.70 on the sale! 


Unfortunately for the USANA distributors, that is not how USANA operates. You see, in the above example USANA would still make THE SAME PROFIT they are receiving today except YOU get the product much cheaper and can sell it for a lot of money. However, USANA would rather operate a pyramid scheme to enrich a small percentage of select individuals who reside at the top of the distributor hierarchy by having 45% of the price you current pay for product to be used to pay commissions, which the majority of distributors NEVER RECEIVE (58% received $0.00). The money paid by those majority of distributors who participated in the business opportunity who never made a penny all went to enrich the distributors at the top of the pyramid scheme.

Thursday, August 17, 2017

USANA Appears to have a Couple Errors in Their 2016 10K SEC Filing

It appears USANA may have a couple errors in their 2016 10K SEC filing. See the following: 

USANA's 2016 10K SEC Filing may have some errors in it.

Americas and Europe:    The increase in constant currency net sales in this region continues to be driven primarily by growth in Mexico and Canada, where constant currency net sales increased 22.6% and 13.3%, respectively. This growth is reflective in the number of active Associates and Preferred Customers purchasing our products. Net Sales in the United States decreased $9.6 million or 6.9%, due to a decline in the number of active customers in this market

 


However, USANA's 2015 10K SEC Filing shows the following:




 

USANA used the wrong figures for the United States for the 2014 and 2015 year ending numbers. Also, what USANA should have stated in the 2016 10K SEC filing is the United States decreased $11.3 million or 8.0%. I cannot find any corrections released by USANA at the time this posting is written.

Number of USANA Distributors in the United States Declined by 30% from 2014 to 2016

Over the last several years, USANA's United States distributor numbers have decreased by 30%. This is not very clear if you tried to figure this out through USANA's SEC filings (10Q and 10K). However, it is revealed in their United States average distributor income charts.


Year United States Distributors Throughout Year
2014 61,400
2016 42,549

A 30% decrease in the number of USANA distributors in the United States.


 http://web.archive.org/web/20160729002739/https://usana.com/static/images/na/Training/ComplianceCorner/AveIncome-US-EN.pdf     https://usana.com/static/images/na/Training/ComplianceCorner/AveIncome-US-EN.pdf