Millions of Americans sell products – door to door, to friends, to family – on behalf of a company.
Those items include the time-tested, from Tupperware to skin-care creams to makeup. Also growing its audience are herbal and nutritional supplements, and not surprisingly, niche markets such as “toxin-free” toothpaste and “green” cleaning supplies.
With so much out there to be sold, the multibillion-dollar direct sales industry is benefiting from a resurgence brought on by the recession that began in late 2007.
Unemployment nationwide and in New Jersey is nearing 10 percent, and the desire – or need – to strike out on one’s own becomes stronger during a teetering economy that leaves people jobless or with a reduction in salary, according to the Direct Selling Association in Washington, D.C.
Since the recession of 2001, the number of people selling has grown an estimated 26 percent to 15.1 million Americans last year, the association said.
As is necessary in many of these multi-level marketing companies, sellers and their directors above them financially benefit when more products are being sold by more motivated people.
“There has been a very strong drive … to recruit, but really recruit quality because many direct sellers during these kinds of economic times will get just quantity in, and they’ll actually dumb down the sales force,” Tupperware Brands Corp. CEO Rick Goings told analysts last week during a conference call, “and you pay the price later.”
Logo from Tupperware