Arbonne was founded in 1975 by Petter Morck. In November 2004, Harvest Partners, a private equity firm, acquired Arbonne in partnership with management providing strong financial backing for future growth. They are currently open in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
What is Arbonne Selling?
Arbonne started out offering high-end skincare systems to customers that are pure, safe and beneficial to you (they recently added a weight loss program as well) The skincare industry is a largely unregulated market that often produces products that are toxic to the end-user. Arbonne provides a lineup that is aware that your skin is your largest organ, and whatever you put on your skin gets absorbed.
There is bound to be some price resistance from the products, however, as with the high-quality lineup that Arbonne offers, there is a cost. Since the “value” of the product is best-demonstrated face to face – people just don’t know how toxic the product the put on their skin really is – network marketing distribution is an ideal fit.
Experience has shown the price push back does not decrease the market size significantly, just the effort to do a proper presentation. Since both main niches are hitting the baby boomers, the market size will be growing for the next ten years, the prospects continue to be strong.
What is the Growth Potential?
The traffic analysis of the Arbonne website is not indicative of their overall business growth since they have a strict policy of not allowing independent consultants to market their business online. The offer a replicated website that can be used to direct potential customers and business partners, but it is very limited in scope, and not set up to do the selling or recruiting for you… just a transactional site.
How is Money Made in Arbonne?
The Arbonne compensation plan is at its core a uni-level plan that pays on up to six generations of your organization depending on qualifications. Since a generation is based on rank in the plan, it appears to pay much deeper than these six potential levels.
Like every legitimate network marketing company, there is a significant retail commission available to independent consultants, on the order of 20% to 35%. Not bad, but that’s not where the leveraged income comes from. The multi-level compensation income that comes from building a team of consultants.
A full 49% payout is presented in the pay plan document, which is a healthy number for MLM companies that have a real product. Watch out if the company you’re looking for has more than about 60% or less than about 20% payout!
My Arbonne Analysis
The skincare niche is an interesting one in that it does well even in a bad economy, especially in the United States. Seriously, many women would go without eating before going out in public without their makeup on. The product line up is high quality but making sales to the consumer in this market is a very high touch, belly to belly process, best done with home parties. Arbonne doesn’t allow any online marketing both to protect their brand and because of the high touch product sell, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build an Arbonne business online.
Building an Arbonne organization online will need to be done by using an attraction marketing system, which allows you to build a relationship with an ever-growing base of prospects by offering them exceptional training. To get to the point of becoming a full-time entrepreneur as quickly as you can, you should have a solid cash flow program as well.