Nu Skin Enterprises
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Fathom Profile Nu Skin Enterprises July 2014 Table of contents Executive summary ............................................................................................................................... 3 Source list ................................................................................................................................................ 4 Background ............................................................................................................................................ 5 By the numbers .................................................................................................................................... 10 Punishment ........................................................................................................................................... 12 Back to business .................................................................................................................................. 14 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 19 July 2014 / Fathom Profile: Nu Skin 2 Executive summary Nu Skin Enterprises Ownership Private Listing date 1996 Stock symbol NUS Market capitalization US$3.7 bn Revenue generator Skin care products Chairman Steven Lund Headquarters Provo, Utah Clients Consumers Main competitors Amway, Herbalife Auditor EY Contact +86-10-59288915 Web site http://www.gome.com.hk Source: Fathom China research Skin-care company Nu Skin Enterprises (“Nu Skin”) saw its China sales quadruple in 2013 and contribute one-third of total revenue – and then disaster Nu Skin seems to struck. In January 2014, Chinese media accused Nu Skin of running a pyramid have evaded a scheme. Nu Skin sells through a distribution process called multi-level marketing worst-case outcome (“MLM”) that is illegal in China but not in most other countries. Highly motivated salespeople create networks of face-to-face sellers, and commissions flow upward through a pyramid structure. Many multinational companies in China practice MLM, including Amway, Avon and Herbalife. Yet just when Nu Skin’s operations in China appeared doomed, a government investigation resulted in small fines. The question now is whether Nu Skin can return to business as usual. Available evidence says yes. This report assesses Nu Skin’s prospects in light of these points: § Back to MLM. Despite Nu Skin’s denials, the company pays sales bonuses based on an MLM model in which commissions flow upward through a pyramid-shaped structure. § Illegal in China. MLM-style commissions paid by Nu Skin and others violate Chinese laws. § Reluctant regulator. Chinese media articles have attacked Nu Skin in January 2014 as a pyramid scheme, but Nu Skin’s regulator seems reluctant to punish the company. § Cosmetic changes. Available evidence suggests that recent cosmetic changes in Nu Skin’s practices are sufficient to protect its business license in China. § Pyramid scheme? Whether Nu Skin and companies like it operate true pyramid schemes is a hotly debated topic inside and outside China, and is beyond the scope of this report. July 2014 / Fathom Profile: Nu Skin 3 Source list Fathom China conducted key interviews with the following people: Source One – Scott Warren, partner at the California-based law firm Wellman and Warren, which represents multi-level marketing companies. Source Two – a former China-based Nu Skin executive who now works for another firm with a direct-selling business license. Source Three – a China-based lawyer who represents many multi-level marketing companies. Source Four – an “Elite” level Nu Skin salesperson. Source Five – a China-based consultant who advises multi-level marketing companies. Source Six – an entry-level Nu Ski salesperson. Source Seven – an entry-level Nu Skin salesperson. Source Eight – an entry-level Nu Skin salesperson. In addition, Fathom China interviewed several more Nu Skin sellers, and several employees of local Administrations of Industry and Commerce, which regulates Nu Skin and other companies with its selling structure. July 2014 / Fathom Profile: Nu Skin 4 Background Nu Skin’s problems in China reached their zenith on Jan 15, 2014. On that day, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, ran the first of three devastating front-page investigative stories. The accusations lodged in the normally boring party mouthpiece made Nu Skin look like a mixture of profiteers, mad scientists and religious kooks. The articles Pyramid schemes, accuse Nu Skin of using “brainwashing techniques” to lure people into “pyramid brainwashing and schemes”; selling unlicensed products that “reset genes” to “reverse aging”; and resetting genes inventing positive reports about itself and attributing them to a Chinese state-run televisions station, Stanford University and international statesmen. That night’s news broadcasts showed hidden-camera footage of Nu Skin sales meetings with 20,000 attendees who had grown “hooked” on selling the product. The shocking article seemed to catch government regulators flat-footed. The cabinet-level State Administration of Industry and Commerce (“AIC”), which regulates most businesses in China, immediately declared that it would investigate. Nu Skin’s operations in China effectively stopped – a painful turn of events for a company that derives one-third of its revenue from China. The company ceased holding sales meetings and stopped recruiting new salespeople. Authorities “investigate suspicions that Nu Skin is pyramid scheme” www.cntv.cn Nu Skin and companies like it engage around the world in a sales practice called “multi-level marketing” that bears many hallmarks of a pyramid scheme. The first well-known company to engage in multi-level marketing was Tupperware, which encouraged 1950s era American housewives to sell plastic kitchen storage containers to their friends at “Tupperware parties.” Entrepreneurial stay-at-home July 2014 / Fathom Profile: Nu Skin 5 moms would recruit networks of salespeople and collect income based on all sales in the network. Current practitioners in China include Nu Skin, Amway, Herbalife, Melaleuca and many Asian companies. The recruitment aspect of multi-level marketing ensures that even legitimate businesses bear a resemblance to pyramid schemes. In a classic pyramid scheme, Even legitimate paying participants each recruit two more paying participants, and returns are MLM shares traits distributed to early participants with money contributed by later ones. Eventually, of pyramid the base of new recruits becomes too small to support the growing tower of schemes payments, and the pyramid collapses. “Ponzi schemes” are a similar variant. The most spectacular recent pyramid-style fraud, perpetuated by New York financier Bernie Madoff, collapsed in 2008 and cost investors US$18 bn. Nu Skin sells youth, riches and V-shaped faces Nu Skin The similarity between pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing extends to several areas. Multi-level sellers build an expanding network of new sellers, then receive commissions from sales made by everyone below them. Multi-level sellers often pay a sum of money up-front, usually by purchasing a predetermined amount of product. Peer pressure enters the picture as salespeople are urged to attend motivational meetings – many web sites describe the meetings as “cult- like.” And multi-level sellers generally hold out the promise of easy riches. When a pyramid scheme collapses, its illegal structure is laid bare. Before the collapse, however, differentiating a pyramid scheme from a Tupperware-style network of commission-sharing salespeople is not at all easy. According to the US Bureau of Consumer Protection, what sets pyramid-scheme alarm bells ringing is too much emphasis on recruiting: 1 In multilevel or network marketing, individuals sell products to the public — often by word of mouth and direct sales. Typically, distributors earn commissions, not only for their own sales, but also for sales made by the people they recruit. 1 www.business.ftc.gov/documents/inv08-bottom-line-about-multi-level-marketing-plans July 2014 / Fathom Profile: Nu Skin 6 Not all multilevel marketing plans are legitimate. If the money you make is based on your sales to the public, it may be a legitimate multilevel marketing plan. If the money you make is based on the number of people you recruit and your sales to them, it’s not. It’s a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are illegal, and the vast majority of participants lose money. Just ask American hedge-fund manager Bill Ackerman how hard it is to prove a pyramid scheme. As this report goes to publication, he had built a billion-dollar short position on the premise that Herbalife, a New York-listed seller of nutritional supplements, is a pyramid scheme. Mr. Ackerman has spent lavishly on anti-Herbalife publicity campaigns and to lobby US regulators to investigate Herbalife’s practices. And even in the US, where business is comparatively transparent and most facts necessary to determine Herbalife’s status are open to view, opinions remain divided. 2 The Chinese government has long been wary of multi-level marketing companies. Pyramids flourished in the early 1990s, when get-rich-quick entrepreneurs built Crackdowns in the networks that sold weird overpriced items like home foot-massage contraptions 1990s that cost US$2,000. Such high-priced items were a thin cover for the empty fees paid in a classic, productless pyramid scheme. As those pyramids