Building a smart international expansion strategy means looking for momentum-building markets with untapped growth potential. In 2024, that indisputably includes the Hispanic and Latino markets.

In Mexico alone, the direct selling market is projected to surge to $19.48 billion by 2028. That staggering number doesn’t include the more than 60 million Latinos living and working within the US, or the fact that direct selling is already a staple for the Latin American population, where a quarter of beauty and personal care sales take place through a direct selling relationship (compared to eight percent globally).

“Latinos in the United States represent a larger consumption market than the entire economy of nations like Italy, Canada or Russia,” shared Judith Sanchez Lopez, PM-International General Manager, Latin America. “If Latinos living in the United States were an independent country, the US Latino GDP would be the fifth largest GDP in the world, larger than the GDPs of India, the United Kingdom or France.”

There are a number of direct selling companies who have already captivated the Hispanic and Latino markets and are thriving. There are two distinct scenarios at play here: US-based companies that are dominating in Hispanic markets and foreign-based companies doing the same.

DSN 2023 Bravo Growth Award winner Princess House successfully serves this corner of the US market. Other examples include 4Life, Hy Cite, Immunotec and relative newcomer ACTIVZ. These companies are also strong in other Spanish-speaking markets.

Betterware de Mexico and Omnilife are based in Mexico and making huge strides in that market and throughout the region.

It could be tempting to assume that the same strategies and approaches that work for US customers would be a fit for the Hispanic population living within the US, or even the neighboring Latin American populations, but that assumption is a sure-fire way to fail. Ignoring the unique communication styles of each individual market is not only ineffective, it’s disrespectful. There are cultural sensitivities that should be honored; product preferences that need to be prioritized; and local talent that deserve to be elevated to leadership.

“Companies that want to be successful need to stop making Latin American countries an extension of their current market,” said Mauricio Domenzain, Immunotec Chief Executive Officer. “By that, I mean you really need to commit to the market. We can’t simply send one manager to Latin America now and then wait to see if it’s going to work or not. It’s a full commitment, not just the addition of another flag on your wall or your website. You have to truly become part of that market to understand the cultural needs.”

Copy and Paste Isn’t a Strategy

What works in the United States doesn’t automatically translate to success on a global scale. That goes for products, but it’s also a good rule to live by when it comes to communication, marketing materials and events. For companies founded in the US or who predominantly operate within the US, expanding to include Spanish-speaking consumers is not as simple as hiring a translator or relying on Google Translate. These translations are often choppy, with no regard for local idioms or speaking rhythms.

Solving for this pain point has been a game changer for brands like 4Life, who overhauled their communication process to treat Spanish as its own first language rather than relying entirely on English. The company now enlists two separate content creator teams, one who is primarily English-speaking and one who is primarily Spanish-speaking, to design materials. The end result prevents poor translations that damage credibility.

“If you go to our convention, we are 80-85 percent Hispanic,” said Brian Gill, 4Life Chief Marketing Officer. “Five years ago, out of respect, we stopped translating English to Spanish. It’s not enough to have great translators. A Hispanic whose primary language is Spanish should be the one creating our materials. It’s about empowering the affiliate to share the brand, and a poor translation is not a credible connection they are proud to share.”

Homogenous, hand-me-down resources communicate the message that international markets are inferior, less valuable and unappreciated. Conversely, when companies allocate the resources and staff necessary to maintain and develop a culturally relevant, localized brand with tools that take local language, lifestyle and history into consideration, customers and distributors take note. A successful entry into Hispanic and Latino markets is one that allows the population to embrace entrepreneurial opportunity while preserving its own cultural DNA.

“Entering the Hispanic market was not secondary or an afterthought; it was our primary thought,” said David Brown, ACTIVZ Chief Executive Officer. “Our Spanish-speaking distributors are constantly amazed that they get new products and materials first and that they weren’t translated from English. Everyone responds well to attention and responsiveness, and that’s probably the secret to our success.”

Honor Culture Past and Present

Family is a core value for the Hispanic and Latin American markets, and consumers in these demographics typically have great reverence for their parents and their tightly-knit communities. The US ethos of independent, self-made success doesn’t land the same within these cultures, so even well-intentioned corporate leaders commissioned from the company’s US headquarters could get off on the wrong foot without realizing it.

“It’s not only the language, but it’s also the culture that you need to understand,” explained Domenzain. “You need to have people on the ground—people directly from those markets—who understand and can serve that market the correct way.”

Leaders also need to consider how each new generation brings their own energy and inspiration to the foundational values of the Hispanic and Latin American cultures. From a corporate standpoint, that means being willing to adjust the speed and style of work. Omnilife addressed this generational evolution by implementing a shift from graphic design to a focus on social media, leaving behind big format printing in favor of video and digital formats and encouraging all of its departments to embrace the Gen Z style of work, which is quick to adapt to change.

“We are integrating younger generations into our corporate team, and that has helped make us relevant,” said Eduardo Ros, Omnilife Marketing Manager. “Our communications and packaging have become younger. We have received testimonies from people in Ecuador and Peru who tell us that working with second- and third-generation distributors who are younger has helped them see how best to take advantage of this opportunity and approach the business differently.”

Recognize the Uniqueness of Each Market

Each country and community has its own unique traditions and habits, and the Latin American market is no exception. There is no one-size-fits-all approach that would respectfully reach this vast audience, and it’s important to remember that there are distinctions among the adjectives often used to describe this diverse group of cultures within and outside of the US. The word Hispanic describes Spanish speakers, including those living within the US and Spain, while Latinos is reserved for those living within Latin America, including Brazil, where Portuguese is the official national language.

“Hispanics in the US are not a monolith,” Sanchez Lopez said. “They are a combination of countries, cultures, slang, levels of acculturation and generations. You need to decide who you want to target, understand what sets them apart and then ask yourself if your company is communicating and interacting in a way that respects their cultural differences and strongest drivers.”

For companies with a broad footprint across countries with similar but distinct cultures, discovering what makes each market tick is critical to securing healthy, welcomed growth among distributors and potential customers. Hy Cite, for example, courts Latinos in eight different countries, including the US and Brazil. Efficiency is incredibly important, so the company harmonizes its content, but it also takes care to modify even the smallest details to communicate that each individual market matters.

“The way we present our products changes depending on the audience,” said Paulo Moledo, Hy Cite President and Chief Executive Officer. “Our recipes used on social media, for instance, feature arepas in Colombia and tacos in Mexico. We also pay attention to our call center services. We learned the hard way that the agent accent speaking to customers from different markets is an important variable.”

Moledo also emphasizes the significance of making sure corporate expresses with actions that they value distributors’ wellbeing just as much as their earning opportunity. For Hy Cite, that means facilitating a close relationship between executives and top leaders; leaning into recognition; and designing ways for distributors and customers to voice their opinions and experiences.

“Latinos, more than most, need to feel heard,” Moledo said. “As fast as we could after the pandemic, we started having events, conventions and meetings with independent distributors, and the attendance has been outstanding. We invest more today in events than we did pre-pandemic, but the return on that personal, face-to-face touch is great.”

Operating with inclusion and respect as the highest priorities is non-negotiable. It’s imperative that companies take the extra steps to ensure the opportunity they are presenting is tailor-made for the audience receiving it, and that their presence improves the quality of life for the people who call that country home. When diversity of backgrounds and ways of doing business are treated with dignity and honor, executives who have successfully built bridges into the Latino and Hispanic cultures say there is a shared entrepreneurial spirit that transcends language barriers and countries of origin.

“It doesn’t matter what language you speak or what country you’re in, everyone is looking for the same thing,” Domenzain said. “To be a part of something bigger than yourself.”

From the November 2023 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post Hispanic Market is booming first appeared on Direct Selling News.

Princess House is celebrating 60 years in business with a richly celebrated Diamond Anniversary and a Bravo Impact Award. The Bravo Impact Award recognizes the achievements of companies that take a holistic, measured and incremental approach to growth, innovation and operational integrity and excellence. Their 60-year success story clearly reflects these qualities.

“The first 60 years were positioning us for the future,” said President and CEO Lynne Coté. “We want to stay focused on how this anniversary year will lead us to 60 more. This is a remarkable milestone for any company.”

Princess House is marking six decades of success with a fresh, new logo; anniversary incentive trip; and year-long promotion, “Share the Wonder.” And Coté promises other surprises throughout the year to mark the company’s past triumphs and successes yet to come.

She attributes Princess House’s staying power to its dedicated base of consultants, the majority of which are Latina.

“Our consultants have a strong loyalty factor to the products and the company,” Coté shared. “Our products are of exceptional quality, and consultants know they can trust that quality. The amount we have invested into this community has come back to Princess House tenfold.”

Pandemic Pivot

This investment includes leadership development so leaders can work smarter and be more effective for their teams. This commitment to leadership growth played a pivotal role when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March 2020.

Previously the Princess House sales model relied primarily on in-person parties. Under the leadership of Coté, who had joined the company just two months before the quarantine stopped typical American life in its tracks, Princess House quickly worked to acclimate consultants to a digital-first business.

“We embraced the chaos,” said Coté. “Consultants knew they could rely on us to guide them through. It gave them freedom to try.”

This ability to switch gears, think differently and take risks is something Coté brought to the table when she joined in January 2020.

“Before the pandemic, we were very concentrated in certain geographies,” Coté said. “Once consultants realized they could sell outside those immediate geographic areas, so many barriers went away. That is a huge shift.”

Taking a Leap of Faith

Risk taking has been a consistent theme throughout Princess House’s 60-year story. The company opened in 1963 by offering the highest quality home products and a unique business opportunity for women, whose career options were limited at the time. In the decades since, women’s role in society and business has changed drastically in a relatively short period of time, and Princess House has kept up.

“Our Founder, Charlie Collis, believed the American housewife had so much potential. He wanted those women to be treated like princesses,” Coté said.

Over the years, as the country, culture and society shifted—and as the Princess House demographics changed—the company evolved as well. But those early guiding principles remained.

Today, Princess House consultants share stories of the college educations they have been able to provide for their children. The company’s business opportunity has opened doors to realities some of these consultants had never imagined.

“Our Latina consultants can do business in their own language and grow and develop into leadership roles in their own time,” Stefani Shea, Vice President of Marketing, explained. “This is something they value far beyond any other business opportunity. Charlie saw it in 1963, and we see it now with this population. They are overcoming amazing obstacles to provide their families with that dream.”

While Princess House is turned toward the next 60 years, company leaders also know the importance of focusing on the present. Shea said this contributes to the company’s ability to stand out as a business. “You can become so fixated on trying to get the next customer that you lose sight of the customer you have today. We focus on supporting the businesses we have today, too,” Shea said.

Working Hand in Hand

There is no “us and them” between the home office and consultant base. Instead, Princess House has developed a series of councils where consultants serve to strengthen this partnership. These include a product council, a CEO council and a social media council.

As Princess House steps into the next 60 years of business, the company’s leaders look forward to expanding their product line, growing business in its new market of Mexico, and—with so many consultants having moved their business online in 2020—technology upgrades.

Most importantly, Princess House will continue to carry on Charlie Collis’ vision from 1963: to recognize consultants’ potential and giving them no limit on what they can accomplish.

“We are seeing our consultants rewrite the story of their own lives,” Shea said. “We still treat our consultants like Charlie told us to. We are PHamily.”

DSN is thrilled to honor Princess House with the Bravo Impact Award for 60 years of success and many more to come.

From the June 2023 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post Princess House / Future Focused after 60 Years first appeared on Direct Selling News.

Throughout its 60-year history, Princess House has been known for breaking down barriers. Originally geared towards offering business opportunities to women in the 1960s, the company has grown and evolved along with women’s rapidly changing roles in society in the decades since. And when a global pandemic presented unexpected changes to every part of the economy in the spring of 2020, Princess House continued to roll with the punches. The company not only survived the COVID-19 pandemic, it also experienced such tremendous year-over-year growth that it earned the Bravo Growth Award for product-based companies.

“It’s the ultimate award,” said Lynne Coté, the Princess House CEO who took the helm of the company in January 2020, just weeks before the U.S. began quarantine measures against the spread of COVID-19. “Ultimately, growth is our goal, so the Growth Award is just icing on the cake.”

Princess House, a market leader in kitchenware and home goods, grew 114% between 2019 and 2022.

Ready for Change

Coté attributes much of this growth to the company’s structure and vision. “We’ve created a strategic plan that we call a journey vision. We like to keep all arrows going in one direction. Even through all of the chaos of the day to day, we kept that laser focus on our strategic plan. I think that’s why we’ve been successful and why we continue to be successful.”

Pre-pandemic, the Princess House field still embraced a traditional way of working a direct selling, kitchen-product business: in-person demonstrations. Although this model worked well for years, it had become limiting over time. For example, focusing on in-person sales prevented the Princess House business from expanding geographically. Before the pandemic, the company mainly did business in California and Texas.

When pandemic safety measures brought in- person selling to an abrupt end, Princess House knew that to survive, the field would have to adopt a new strategy. For most consultants, this meant venturing into the unknown and perhaps the uncomfortable.

“We like to say out of chaos comes opportunity, and we had an attentive audience who were ready to learn,” Coté said. “They opened their attitude toward ‘we’re going to try.’”

Positive Attitude. Positive Results.

The right attitude can move mountains, and that’s what happened as Princess House consultants began moving their businesses from in-person to online. While the pandemic presented situations that could have hindered the growth of home-based business, the company figured out ways to turn those potential obstacles into solutions.

Because consultants’ children were at home during the pandemic, the company encouraged consultants to get their kids in on the action. Promoting business on social media requires dependence on technology, so tech-savvy kids and teens helped their consultant-parents make videos.

Before long, Princess House consultants working their businesses through social media realized they were making more money in less time. And the geographical boundaries in both selling and recruiting were eliminated.

“That really resonated with them,” Coté said. “They saw that they were working smarter and not harder, and that they could do business anywhere.”

As the world began to open up and quarantine measures were relaxed, Princess House consultants realized they could then balance their newly acquired social media marketing skills with a return to in-person strategies—growing their businesses even more.

Primed for the Future

Stefani Shea, Vice President of Marketing, said this “both-and” strategy creates an effective balance of the efficiency of social media with the personal touch of in-person interaction. She also said the growth at Princess House doesn’t have the company resting on its laurels.

“During the pandemic, the hotels weren’t full, so they renovated,” Shea shared. “It’s the same with Princess House. We were working on growth projects in the background. We were continuing to follow that strategic road map. We built technologies, and now those are coming online. Now we can leverage the momentum and continue that growth into the future.”

Princess House has been building on this momentum to open in Mexico, where Coté said the company is growing and thriving. “Through this process, we became a very dynamic organization. We look at data every day, and if we need to shift, we shift. Now we have a clear vision of what’s going to happen with cookware, for example, over the next two years. We are in the process of launching four journey visions in different departments. The momentum keeps moving us forward. It’s a process that works.”

Congratulations to the Princess House team on this prestigious award!

From the June 2023 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post Princess House / Growth from Chaos first appeared on Direct Selling News.

And—most importantly—companies across the industry continued to embrace and incorporate new methods of doing business to attract new people to the channel and to inspire current participants to expand their vision. There is much to celebrate.

And celebrate we did at the 14th DSN Global Celebration, a live hybrid event held on Tuesday, April 18, 2023 in Frisco, Texas. It was an exciting night hosted by DSN Chief Brand Officer Shelley Rojas and DSN Strategic Advisor Heather Chastain. Hundreds of people representing 53 companies from around the world attended in person. And thousands more watched the event via free livestream. Awards and honors were revealed in several categories, including a Lifetime Achievement Award, the Bravo Awards and the DSN Global 100 List.

Lifetime Achievement Award

For only the third time, DSN bestowed its Lifetime Achievement Award. This prestigious award was given to a true legend in direct selling, Rudy Revak.

Rudy is the craftsman behind multiple highly successful direct selling companies including Symmetry and Xyngular, which he founded in 1995 and 2009 respectively and was instrumental in the acquisition and rebranding of PUREhaven in 2016. He’s also the Chairman and Founder of Global Ventures Partners, an investment capital firm committed to creating opportunities for common people to achieve uncommon results.

Born in Germany and the son of a World War II refugee, he escaped to America when he was just five years old. He’s a living breathing example of the American Dream in its purest, most inspirational form.

When asked to reflect on his years in the industry and what it has meant to him, Rudy spoke eloquently of the impact direct selling has had on his life. “I’ve loved this industry for all these years. I’m still in it because I love it—not just for what it has done for me, but for what it continues to do for so many people. It provides the opportunity for people to reach their dreams. I would do it all over again, 100 percent.”

The two previous recipients, John Fleming and Stan Frederick, were on hand to warmly welcome Rudy into this illustrious club. To read more about Rudy’s enduring legacy, please see page 60.

The Bravo Awards

Each year the Bravo Awards panel recognizes companies for outstanding achievement and excellence in areas of leadership and the highest percentage of revenue growth. Specialty awards are also given to individuals and companies for their achievements in and service to the direct selling channel.

The Bravo Leadership Award is given to an individual, recognizing outstanding achievement and exceptional leadership of a direct selling executive. This year’s recipient was Rolf Sorg, Founder and CEO of PM-International in honor of his visionary leadership and strategic direction he has displayed throughout the 30-year history of the company. PM-International is now ranked #8 on the DSN Global 100 list with $2.55 billion in 2022 revenue and a presence in 45 countries.

The Bravo Global Good Award recognizes companies that take a proactive approach to environmental, philanthropic and social responsibility issues. This year the honor went to Arbonne. Arbonne is known for its passionate commitment to empowerment, transparency and sustainability. In 2022, Arbonne earned recertification for its B Corporation status. Among Arbonne’s recertification achievements are a reduction in water consumption globally by 60 percent; a 55 percent reduction in Scope I and II emissions since 2019; and a 42 percent decrease in electricity consumption since 2019.

DSN honored three companies with the Bravo Impact Award this year. The award recognizes the achievements of well-rounded companies that take a holistic, measured and incremental approach to growth, innovation and operational integrity and excellence. These companies positively impact their customers, distributors, staff, communities and the channel as a whole. They are helping to lead the way forward in shifting the public perception of direct selling.

The first award went to LegalShield. LegalShield has devoted the past 50 years to providing affordable assistance with everyday legal matters from wills and real estate to family law and consumer issues, as well as privacy management. LegalShield has served 4.5 million people and more than 140,000 businesses and taken over 50 million requests for legal services since its inception and has paid out over $1 billion in commissions over the past ten years.

The second Impact award honoree was Princess House. Celebrating their 60th anniversary this year, Princess House is marking this milestone with an unprecedented period of growth. They credit this success to creating a true partnership with the field. Their field, comprised mostly of Latina women, have embraced a new digital approach that has greatly expanded their reach. A streamlined product offering and a philosophy of training up has increased their overall order size by 40 percent.

The final recipient of the Impact Award was LimeLife by Alcone. Plunging ahead into the unexpected and refusing to fit in is part of this company’s DNA. Having started in 1952 selling stage makeup to Broadway performers, Alcone eventually grew into a nationwide leader in professional makeup for the television, film and theatrical industries. The company’s commitment to quality, DEI-focused strategies and passion for female entrepreneurship is nothing short of inspirational!

Two Bravo Growth Awards were bestowed on domestic direct selling companies. This prestigious award celebrates the direct selling company with the highest year-over-year revenue growth on the Global 100 List. One is given to a product-based company, and another is given to a service-based company.

This year’s product-based Bravo Growth Award was given to Princess House. This market leader in kitchenware and home goods grew 114 percent between 2019 and 2022.

The service-based award was given to eXp Realty for the third year in a row. The company has well over 85,000 independent agents worldwide and continues to grow at an exponential rate. In fact, this publicly traded company grew from $3.8 billion in 2021 to $4.6 billion in 2022. An $800 million-dollar increase representing 21 percent in year-over-year growth.

Two Bravo International Growth Awards were also announced. These were also given to one product-based company and one service-based company.

The product-based winner was no stranger to the Global Celebration stage. Based in Luxembourg, PM-International has enjoyed 29 years of continuous growth. They are on quite a run, growing from $1.7 billion in 2020 to $2.38 billion in 2021 and achieving $2.55 billion in 2022.

Utility Warehouse won in the service-based category. This UK-based company ranked #10 on the Global 100 this year.

DSN added two new awards to the Bravo line up this year. The first, the Bravo Innovator Award, recognizes direct selling companies that embrace and deploy the emerging technologies and future-focused strategies that propel the company forward and serve as an inspiration of what’s possible. The inaugural Bravo Innovator Award was given to FASTer Way To Fat Loss.

The final award of the evening was the Bravo Excellence Award, another new award this year. This recognition is reserved for executives with a long history of leadership, excellence and integrity. These individuals are champions of the channel and positive mentors to all who serve it. The award was given to John Parker, Chief Sales Officer and Regional President West of Amway.

For more in-depth information of our Bravo Award winners, please see our expanded coverage starting on page 66.

The Global 100 List

One of the most eagerly anticipated announcements each year at the Global Celebration is the unveiling of the Global 100 list. This list determines the top direct selling companies in the world for 2022. Inclusion on the Global 100 has become a point of much-deserved pride.

The List offers a unique perspective on the global impact of the industry by recognizing companies’ revenue achievements. Recognition for each of these companies is the culmination of months of research and the cooperation of many individuals around the world.

This year’s DSN Global 100 list acknowledges 53 companies achieving more than $100 million in revenue for 2022. Full coverage of the list as well as analysis on important and emerging trends can be found starting on page 114.

Oh, What a Night!

The DSN Global Celebration is the industry awards event of the year—a night designed to celebrate, inspire and motivate! If you missed the broadcast, you can catch it on replay at DSNG100.com for a limited time. Gathering together in person creates an incredibly positive sense of community and energy within the room—the magic of those moments is definitely must-see viewing for supporters of the channel.

From the 53 thriving companies on the Global 100 List to the 11 Bravo Award winners and our Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Rudy Revak, DSN recognized the best of the best of the channel we all love and believe in.

Congratulations to the winners and thank you to the hundreds in the room and thousands of viewers worldwide. And a sincere thank you to all our Supporter Companies and Supplier Sponsors for helping DSN provide this night of celebration, recognition and camaraderie. 

From the June 2023 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post 2023 Global Celebration | Honoring the channel’s innovators, achievers & visionaries first appeared on Direct Selling News.

Direct selling executives need insight and fresh ideas now more than ever before. In one of the most challenging years in direct selling history, leaders faced continued lockdowns in certain markets, changing consumer behaviors, a tense regulatory environment and lingering supply chain issues.

To provide practical solutions, Direct Selling University enlisted more than 25 of the industry’s leading executives to share unique perspectives and new approaches regarding some of the most complex issues facing the channel today.

We kicked off DSU with the CEO Forum, one of our highest rated events, and had 75 executives in the room representing $43 billion in revenue,” said Stuart Johnson, Chief Executive Officer of Direct Selling News, Direct Selling Partners and NOW Tech. “We talked about omnichannel strategies, fighting field fatigue (our industry’s version of quiet quitting), attracting the next generation, industry reputation and the rise of affiliate models in the marketplace.”

Johnson cast vision for attendees, calling them to move beyond customer-centric thinking to becoming customer-obsessed. Following his lead, speakers provided tangible ways to improve customer conversion rates, improve salesforce morale, upgrade training systems, drive revenue and create authentic connection with customers.

“DSU gives leaders the chance to open their minds to a bigger picture,” Johnson said. “This event exists to share knowledge, future trends and success stories that inspire, challenge beliefs and spark change. I’m confident that every executive left the event with at least one game-changing idea or initiative to take back to their teams.”

Addressing Amazon

Amazon. The eCommerce goliath has been the elephant in the room for years, and for the first time, Direct Selling University tackled the challenge head-on. Without shying away from the complexities of the issue, DSU offered multiple opportunities for participants to listen and learn from experts about how to alter their approach to what is arguably the industry’s biggest competitor.

Blake Mallen, Author, President of Prüvit, delivered the most talked about speech of the event, as well as a break-out workshop session that drew more than 150 attendees, discussing his proven Amazon strategy.

“A lot of customers buying on Amazon assume they are buying from the company directly, and when they receive a damaged or expired product, they’ll either blow up the support team with their complaints or—worse—blast Amazon with negative reviews,” Mallen said. “This stuff can cause serious potential long-term damage to our brands. When you share the message that anyone can start today with the same opportunity to change their life, but when there are different prices for different people, it can erode the very heart of what our channel stands for.”

Continuing the event’s conversation about how to become customer-obsessed, Mallen explained the importance of setting an intentional Amazon game plan, telling attendees that winning the Amazon game begins with controlling their brand’s footprint on Amazon.

“This is not the future—this is the present,” Mallen said. “Amazon is a key part of the customer journey today, which means this cannot be ignored. This is something we as a channel need to do not only for our companies—but for our communities—and make the shift our industry really needs.”

Rudy Revak, Founder and Chairman, Xyngular, reminded leaders of the importance of taking care of new distributors and helping the sales force stay persistent and positive.

Shelley Rojas, Chief Brand Officer, Direct Selling News, and Heather Chastain, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Bridgehead Collective and Direct Selling News Strategic Advisor, announced a new social community platform for DSN Supporters, as well as a new entry-level of Support, the Advocate, that will enhance the user experience and open up becoming a part of Direct Selling News to many more companies.

Magnus Brännström, President & Chief Executive Officer, Oriflame, focused on the ways the pandemic impacted work trends and how Oriflame reorganized its brand experience structure to improve the product, customer, digital, social selling and employee culture experiences.

Lynne Coté, President and Chief Executive Officer, Princess House, and Laura Beitler, Chief Global Sales Officer, Rodan + Fields, in a conversation with Heather Chastain, discussed the importance of transparency in creating alignment between the home office and the field in the midst of change and challenges.

Dan Macuga, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer, USANA, illustrated the power of their “Start Something” campaign and offered a how-to for companies wanting to create similar initiatives that drive customer engagement, loyalty and connection.

Amber Snow, Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Amway, shared how executives can make DE&I more than just a buzzword in their companies by facing the fact that people of color make up only 14 percent of direct selling representatives and persuaded leaders to make a commitment to listen, learn and act.

Amanda Tress, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, FASTer Way to Fat Loss, shared the simplicity of her company’s one-tier micro-influencer marketing model, and why she believes it could be a powerful strategy for companies fearing FTC scrutiny and enhanced regulations.

Glenn Sanford, Founder, eXp Realty, Chief Executive Officer, eXp World Holdings and SUCCESS, in an interview with Stuart Johnson, discussed the strategy behind eXp Realty’s hypergrowth and why a focus on agent experience has built a collaborative culture that drives value.

Wayne Moorehead, Marketing and Branding Expert and Host of the Direct Approach Podcast, in an interview with Stuart Johnson, reflected on the hot topics and trends discussed during interviews with leaders from 30 different companies who represent $30 billion in revenue.

Russ Moorehead, Chief Marketing Officer, Nu Skin, exposed five myths direct selling companies often fall prey to, and why the latest shopping trends give direct-to-consumer companies a significant advantage.

Patrick Wright, Chief Executive Officer, AdvoCare, gave a behind-the-scenes look at the company’s 2019 FTC settlement and described how seeing limitations as opportunities has allowed AdvoCare to increase its customer conversion rate by 10x while better serving their affiliates.

Jesse McKinney, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Red Aspen, shared a sneak peek into the company’s 2023 strategy, including four pillars—sustainability, technology initiatives, Tik Tok-style training videos and a new Gen Z-focused product category—all inspired by her experience at DSU Spring 2022.

Nick Martinez, Top Distributor, Prüvit, encouraged industry leaders to embrace distributors who are building influence instead of recruiting and why consistently creating social media content can be the key to unlocking top earner potential.

Noah Westerlund, Executive Vice President, NOW Tech, in a conversation with Wayne Moorehead, discussed the importance of Quick Commerce and long-form landing pages to increase conversion rates.

Michele Gay, Co-Founder & Chairwoman, LimeLife by Alcone, described the toll the pandemic took on women especially, and how the Three Laws of Performance helped her sales field and staff overcome the fixed mindsets and patterns of excuses that two years of living in a socially distanced world had created.

Ben Riley, President, Young Living, reminded participants of the importance of disruption and how direct selling leaders can leverage small-scale innovation and strategic change management to outsmart gig economy competitors.

Brandy Huyser, Director of XS Energy and Next Gen Strategy, Amway/XS, reflected on 20 years of adventure as the XS Energy brand built momentum by upending business-as-usual at Amway, staying focused on the field, controlling the supply chain through local manufacturing and creation and designing a youth-driven culture.

Jason Dorsey, President, Center for Generational Kinetics, Speaker and Researcher, offered a sneak peek at the first-ever generational research study conducted in direct selling that he will be leading for Direct Selling News to uncover how to quickly connect with, build trust and drive influence across generations.

Gina Ghura, Chief Marketing Officer, MONAT, offered advice for building consumer love through relationship building, personalized customer experiences, distinctive product offerings and a compensation plan that rewards customer acquisition and retention.

Rajneesh Chopra, Chief Commercial Officer, Immunotec, shared how the company invested in technology and opened new markets and manufacturing facilities during the pandemic, resulting in tremendous growth that is moving them forward in the midst of a cooling economy.

Garrett McGrath, President, ANMP, talked about the power of tiny gains and how improving by one percent every day in the areas of customer retention, community building and compensation strategies can build unstoppable momentum.

Dana Roefer, Author, Entrepreneur and Direct Selling Strategist, highlighted takeaways from her book Shopping Social and shared how education is crucial for helping consumers understand how social shopping can connect them with products that support their best life.

Darnell Self, Executive Vice President of Network and Business Development, PPLSI, shared his insights as both a field leader and industry executive, shining a light on the undervalued priorities of effective communication and a healthy team culture.

Gordon Hester, General Manager Sales, North America, PM-International AG, explained how culture is the biggest differentiator in business, and why focusing on revenue drivers and profitability can prevent feelings of entitlement and division within the field.

Must-See (In-Person) Events

The energy of this DSU—the first in-person fall version ever held—was inspiring, and the feedback received was overwhelmingly positive—making this Direct Selling University one of the most successful to date.

Planning for the next DSU event in April of 2023 in Frisco, Texas is underway, and the momentum and excitement is already building.

From the December 2022 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post DSU Fall 2022: Lessons for an Evolving channel first appeared on Direct Selling News.

Founded / 1963

Headquarters / Taunton, MA

Top Executives / Lynne Coté

Products / Home Goods

The events of 2020 forced every company, both within the direct sales industry and outside of it, to adapt to meet the new-overnight-needs of their pandemic-impacted customers. For Princess House, the 2020 chaos was the perfect atmosphere to rethink, restructure and reorient the company, shifting course from several years of declining sales and scattered focus. This clean slate breathed new life into Princess House, inspiring a new generation of consultants to create a healthier and more beautiful future.

An Aligned Vision

When Lynne Coté was asked by Princess House owner Ray Chambers to join a consulting team formed to advise on new strategies for the company, she saw the frustrating financials and alignment challenges that everyone else could clearly see. But she saw something more.

“I didn’t know anything about kitchenware. My whole background has always been fashion,” she shares. “But when I stepped in for those couple of weeks, it was pretty apparent to me that there was a strategy to be had here. [I felt] if we get all of our arrows aligned and get the field aligned with us, I felt like there was a huge opportunity.”

Lynne officially joined Princess House as Chief Executive Officer in January 2020 and hit the ground running, knocking down long-standing silos and dreaming up a complete reorganization that would better serve the company. In a two-day offsite, Lynne walked leaders through a “journey vision” that both honored the company’s legacy and history while charting a course for the future. Together they decided the principles they wanted to stay true to, which new paths to consider and took a critical look at the mission of the company.

“We looked at what our mission is, and then we had to decide if that mission is still appropriate for today,” she explains. “We changed our mission to, ‘The mission of Princess House is to make life healthier and more beautiful,’ because one thing that has always been true about Princess House products is that they’re beautiful, yet just as important is our continued evolution of supporting healthier lifestyles.”

With a new company structure, better communication and a clear roadmap for Princess House’s next act, Lynne and her team were aligned and ready steer the company in a fresh direction. They had no idea they would end up clinging to this new plan as 2020 shifted course as well.

“Lynne had a laser focus on business strategy when she joined the company,” says Stefani Shea, Associate Vice President, Marketing and Communications. “We’d been going down a road of trying too many new things without the alignment needed to make any of them a likely success. With her leadership, we took a long hard look at these various projects and decided which paths to continue pursuing. She elevated the importance of communication and partnership with our field, and that turned out to be a critical factor in our ability to navigate so successfully through the pandemic.”

Out of Chaos, Opportunity

The challenges of 2020 only sped up the plans Lynne and her team had created together.

“Fortunately, under Lynne’s guidance, our Executive Team had already created a strategic blueprint for the company, and we stayed true to those priorities throughout the pandemic,” shares Kelly Harte, Vice President, Strategic Sales. “On a tactical level, Lynne empowered us to make decisions quickly to ease the concerns of our field and allow them to focus on learning new virtual ways of doing business. We introduced the field to the concept of ‘crisis creates chaos, but out of chaos comes opportunity.’ When the field saw our optimism combined with the tangible actions we were taking to partner with them, they became more confident and willing to go well beyond their previous comfort zones, particularly in the use of technology.”

Princess House has long been known for beautiful housewares, ranging from cookware to dinnerware, small appliances, home décor and more, typically sold at in-home presentations and cooking shows. The pandemic changed all of that, shifting to virtual parties, and the field was ready—not simply ready to learn how to function in a new virtual business model, but ready to embrace all the changes Lynne and her team were rolling out just before the pandemic hit.

“This was an opportunity where they were going to be more open-minded to learn technology,” says Lynne. “We started getting thousands and thousands of people on these Zoom calls teaching them how to do social media, how to sell this way, how to get their families who were home, their kids, to help them learn technology, make it a family thing. And we started getting double-digit gains in week four. The regional sales managers who used to be on airplanes all the time were now reaching thousands more people. And they had a willingness to learn and to do it.”

The field doubled in 2020 from 14,000 to 28,000 consultants, expanding geographically to areas the company hadn’t reached before.

“We’re seeing the map of the U.S. fill in more than it had in many years,” says Stefani. “Our field’s adoption of social selling, something they’d previously had little interest in, removed the boundaries of geography from their recruiting efforts. Where they’d struggled to find new people in their own backyards, they were now comfortable recruiting and training across the country and using digital tools to make those efforts succeed.”

Transparency and Trust

The field felt empowered by their newfound virtual selling skills but also felt supported throughout the challenges of 2020, as a key component of Lynne’s strategic plan was improved transparency and communication across every aspect of the business. This new level of transparency was quickly put to the test as Princess House endured shipping delays and inventory challenges.

“I think the pandemic helped us to get them to say, ‘I’m going to follow you. I trust you,’ explains Lynne. “We’ve been really transparent because one of the challenges of growing this fast is your lead times are nine months. And you don’t all of a sudden have double the amount of inventory in your warehouse. We had to explain that to them and say, ‘We are going to go on back order and here’s why.’ They felt like information is power because they can manage that as long as they know. That’s how we really built up trust.”

Today, consultants in the field are not only supported but also heard. Lynne and her team launched working committees to involve consultants in various areas, such as product development, field incentives and leadership.

“Every decision is looked at from the perspective of our Field,” explains Kelly. “We have a CEO Advisory Council plus multiple Field Working Committees advising us and supporting company decisions. We have many employees and field members who have been affiliated with Princess House for decades — and we share both personal and business successes and challenges.”

Tomorrow at Princess House

As Princess House and the rest of the world emerge in an incredibly unpredictable time, Lynne and her team are optimistic about all the future holds. The company is eager to introduce a number of technology enhancements this year, including a new online learning platform, improved back office for consultants and an updated e-commerce platform. Leadership has plans to expand in new markets, both here in the U.S. and possibly abroad. And this June, leadership hosted over 1,500 consultants and their guests on the company’s first incentive trip since 2019.

But with all the exciting developments Princess House has on the horizon, Lynne is most excited about the growth, commitment and resiliency of the field.

“The consultants in the field could have become our opponents. Instead, they became our partners,” she says. “I now feel we’re at this point where we can conquer anything together. They have become a culture of figuring things out; they’ve become very innovative. I think unleashing that power can bring us to do and try anything we want to try.”

From the September 2021 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post Princess House: A New Roadmap for a Legacy Organization first appeared on Direct Selling News.

C-suite strategic planning, course corrections, realignment of corporate spending, new compensation structures, and the like were underway throughout the industry when pandemic struck in early 2020. COVID-19 could have compounded lingering 2019 circumstances, but that is not what happened for these seven direct selling companies.

With the benefit of time and distance, 2020 sales numbers and some hindsight, these industry leaders take a short, retrospective look inside their companies during a year like no other. In so doing, they help the direct selling industry re-think crises while telling the stories of how their teams met disruptive challenges and leveraged 2020’s new business reality to create a renewal that re-energized their field organizations and helped solidify their growth trajectories for 2021 and beyond.

COVID-19 could have compounded lingering 2019 circumstances, but that is not what happened for these seven direct selling companies.

These industry leaders take a short, retrospective look inside their companies during a year like no other.

Herbalife Nutrition

Founded / 1980

Top Executive / John Agwunobi, Chairman & CEO

Products / Personal Care & Wellness, Food & Beverage, Cosmetics

Herbalife Nutrition plotted a strategy more than three years ago to continue the development of high-quality, science-based products that leverage global consumer trends and local preferences. Simultaneously, they’ve provided their distributors with the tools and tech necessary to efficiently run their businesses, all while focusing on world-class training and education that creates the Herbalife “distributor difference” in terms of organizational leadership and customer service.

Herbalife headed down this familiar and fortuitous path as they rang in 2020. When the challenges and opportunities of the next 12 months were behind them, theirs was an unprecedented year.

“2020 was our best year ever. Our full-year 2020 results of 14 percent net sales growth exceeded our pre-pandemic expectations,” John Agwunobi, chairman and CEO, says.

Demand for Herbalife’s nutrition products, combined with the entrepreneurial spirit and tenacity of its field of distributors, led to 2020’s record sales. But the strength of this distributor base is not new. In fact, they delivered year-over-year net sales growth in nine of the company’s top 10 countries during Q4 2019.

“One thing that is truly special about Herbalife Nutrition is the way our staff and distributors come together in the face of a challenge,” Agwunobi says.

That was, perhaps, never clearer than during 2020.

It didn’t take long for Herbalife to shift their thinking in a pandemic-driven world. A series of quick decisions required employees to work from home where it was feasible, instituted safety measures at factories and distribution centers, partnered them with suppliers to ensure continued production, and leveraged relationships with technology providers to increase capacity so they could stay connected with each other and with distributors around the world.

“Once we addressed the critical short-term situation, we began to think more long-term. We shifted to a completely virtual environment for our distributor events around the world, considered how we might leverage those events to motivate and inspire distributors who may not otherwise have been able to attend and continued to focus on our proven strategy,” Agwunobi says.

Every decision they made had the health and safety of their distributors and employees at the forefront. Virtual meetings and trainings of all sorts replaced in-person gatherings, online ordering and take-out replaced in-person nutrition club consumptions, and online workouts with distributors and experts replaced exercising in fit clubs and other locations.

But the largest virtual undertaking was their annual Honors event for 5,000 top distributor leaders. In a matter of weeks, during the early days of the pandemic, Herbalife engaged a production company to help them take the event virtual, and they set about leveraging the potential tied to this new digital business reality.

In the end, Agwunobi says, “We have been able to reach approximately two and a half times the number of distributors with our virtual events than we did when we held them in person.”

Keeping up with product demand as sales soared, however, did present its challenges. But Agwunobi says Herbalife’s second-to-none operations team continued to supply distributors with products with little or no disruption.

The events of the past year have confirmed several things for Herbalife, not the least of which is the dedication, passion, and innovative spirit of its distributors and employees, who offered up flexibility, resiliency and can-do attitudes throughout 2020.

“During this most challenging time, our employees and distributors came together to support their communities and each other. Whether it was providing good nutrition to frontline workers, donating products and resources to feed those in need, or simply checking in on fellow teammates, our care for others was at the forefront of our response. I’m extremely proud to say that helping others is the hallmark of our company,” Agwunobi says.

Now, they also more thoroughly understand the important role Herbalife plays in the daily lives of millions of people. They were reminded over and over in 2020 that providing quality nutrition products to help people become healthier and offering a business opportunity that can generate supplemental or full-time income for those wanting to create their own businesses changes lives and improves communities all around the world.

“We have always thought of ourselves as leaders in the industry. Throughout 2020, I think we have proven that is true,” Agwunobi says.

And based on Herbalife’s 2020 results, it is clear their strategy to focus on compelling products, powerful technology and enhanced distributor education is working. No doubt, they will continue to execute against this strategy throughout 2021.

Le-Vel

Founded / 2012

Top Executives / Jason Camper & Paul Gravette, Co-Owners & Co-CEOs

Products / Nutritional Health & Wellness

Created on a cloud-based platform, Le-Vel’s virtual nature is something its field has passionately touted since 2012. But in 2019, Le-Vel felt they were missing the essence of direct sales—the human element. Had they gone too virtual?

“It’s kind of funny, the irony of it all, but going into 2020, we were actually hyper-focused on more meetings and getting more of the human element involved,” says Jason Camper, Co-CEO/Founder.

So, when 2,000 of Le-Vel’s field gathered for an incentive trip in February 2020 at Riviera Maya, Mexico—just weeks before the pandemic—they huddled up 150-200 top performers and talked tough love about getting back to the human element in their business.

Coronavirus had other plans, however, and forced Le-Vel into a true 100 percent virtual environment. But Camper says, “That kind of round table—had we not had that in February—I’m not quite sure how the following month would have transpired.”

However, between March and the end of May, Camper says, “We saw our monthly revenue grow by $10 million. That’s pretty substantial. It hasn’t stayed there. We’ve seen a little of that subside, but overall, year-over-year, month-over-month, we’re still greater than where we were.”

But Camper’s not quick to assume that the pandemic was unequivocally the reason for any company’s growth or lack thereof. “I can say it had something to do with it, but I can’t say fully it was pandemic related. We’ve seen upcycles and downcycles in our business—where we do drop by this, and we do jump by that—since we started the company,” he says.

Skyrocketing sales may have happened for Le-Vel because people had more time to talk about and sell products during quarantine, health consciousness increased, or economic factors came into play. But Camper believes most meaningful was that February meeting. “We were ready to execute on the company whether there was a pandemic or not because everybody was hyper-focused.”

Duplication 101 is having everybody on the same page and beating the same drum, so the field is able to do what it needs to. They scrapped the human element plan and expanded their existing virtual model adding massive Zooming and online training.

Camper and co-founder Paul Gravette tried to do everything they could to check all the boxes for their field. “I was very visual and accessible through Zooms. I was saying no to nothing. Yes. Yes. Yes.” Camper remembers.

As much as Camper hates to admit it now because the world is “Zoomed out,” the video aspect of letting people see him and the rest of the corporate team as much as they could, even though it was virtual, was very meaningful. It built trust and laid a foundation that would not have otherwise been possible.

But Le-Vel’s 2020 success wasn’t as simple as executing a virtual business model. Sure, it played a part, but Camper points to leadership that’s committed to going to the next level, year over year over year despite a pandemic, despite virtual events or live events—is their secret sauce.

“You get people together who are inspired and empowered to go do something, and that’s how you move the needle. That’s how we started moving the needle in 2020,” Camper says.

There’s an almost “euphoric feeling” when everybody’s fired up about increased sales. “I like it more, what I see what it’s doing for the morale in the field versus what it’s doing for the company’s financials,” Camper says. Their top line grew as they discovered better ways to lead, teach and train.

But 2020 was chock full of distribution challenges, as a spring e-commerce boom and shuttered retail shops caused carrier overload and fulfillment bottlenecks.

“That in itself was bar none the biggest challenge of 2020 for us. If you had given me the option going into 2020, grow sales by $10 million a month or experience these types of shipping issues. I would have said, ‘I don’t want the growth. Just let me flawlessly execute shipping because I’m not going to potentially lose a consumer base that I’ve worked so hard to build up,’” Camper says.

With fulfillment time frames finally normalizing, Le-Vel is working to make it up to affected customers. They are also looking for ways to foster a strong human element while still being pinned into a virtual model by the pandemic.

“Once the vaccines and people in the world deem it okay to get back to events, we are absolutely going to go bonkers!” Camper says.

Meanwhile, they did gather this February in Cabo San Lucas to celebrate 2020 and renew their commitment to Le-Vel. “We gambled and had no idea how it was going to turn out. But the Hard Rock Hotel let us put on an incentive trip there. We had 2,000 people and the local testing laboratories. We tested 2,000 people and were able to put on an event,” Camper says.

Nature’s Sunshine

Founded / 1972

Top Executive / Terrence Moorehead, CEO

Products / Personal Care, Wellness, Cosmetics

With a worldwide listening tour, think-tank sessions and executive committee analysis behind them, Nature’s Sunshine embarked on a fast-track relaunch in 2019. By spring, CEO Terrence Moorehead says a new five-point global strategy was taking shape, and they spent the closing quarters that year filling in details.

Doubling distributors’ businesses—that was the premise underlying Nature’s Sunshine’s relaunch. They knew it would take brand work, work on the overall distributor and consumer experience, as well as building out digital capabilities and extending an already extensive lead in manufacturing and quality.

They didn’t want to choke on everything they were trying to accomplish, Moorehead remembers. But they implemented what they could early on, laying the building blocks for the rest of the strategy. They got the economics of the business right, made sure the P and L and balance sheets were moving in the right direction and slotted the right people in the right jobs at the right time doing the right things with the right motivations.

By their own design, Nature’s Sunshine was poised for renewal in 2020, but Moorehead says, “What we didn’t know about, of course, was COVID-19. That threw a wrench in a lot of different markets. It made us hesitate as to whether or not to pull the trigger on something like a new business model.”

Whatever their apprehensions, the major tenets of Nature’s Sunshine’s new strategy were both urgent and important. So, they muscled through, despite shattered plans for face-to-face experiences and an underlying wish they’d begun a decade sooner.

“Everyone believed in the strategy. Everyone knew what we had to do, and there was really no need to stop or put the brakes on. As a matter of fact, you could make an argument that we needed to try to accelerate things,” Moorehead says.

“We’d spent so much time on that, when the pandemic hit, and everyone had to start working remotely, instead of people being lost, everybody knew what their role was,” Moorehead said.

Forethought in management operations processes, as well as the previous year’s investment in a global, virtual communications platform, kept Nature’s Sunshine on track and allowed them to even move call centers to remote work.

“We felt confident. When you have the best team in the world and you have the best practitioners, we put out there what we believed they could handle,” Moorehead says.

Their effective communications strategies re-ignited awareness and long-dormant relationships. Knowing newness and change is absorbed at different rates, they recalibrated how best to bring everyone along, in some instances shifting to accommodate but not to compromise. Those efforts “elevated the level of activation across the board,” Moorehead says.

Their only path forward, thanks to the pandemic, was a virtual one. They used every tool available—Zoom calls, Zoom webinars, texts, emails, one-on-one phone calls, pre-recorded training modules, even animated training modules—to come at people frequently and in multiple dimensions.

Moorehead thinks in some ways, the circumstances of 2020 opened up people’s minds in the field and rise to the relaunch challenges. But the management team “would’ve walked through fire to make sure that our distributors were taken care of and that the company would be relaunched effectively,” he says.

“We certainly didn’t imagine that the results would be as positive as quickly,” Moorehead says.

After 20 years of declining sales, the company bested their record when Q4 2020 net sales increased 11 percent to a total of $101.7million, up from $91.7 million in 2019.

“It put us on this new trend line and new trajectory, where people really are taking a new interest in the brand and a new interest in their businesses, unlike we’ve ever seen before,” Moorehead says.

Relaunch is never a straight line to success, a message Nature’s Sunshine broadcasts widely to its sales field. Large-scale business changes create winners and losers, as well as emotional responses, while a company learns and fine-tunes the functionality of its creations.

“The brilliance of the North American management team was managing the change day-to-day. That required a lead-up, sometimes daily meetings, weekly field meetings, partnering with distributors and consultants on idea generation, what’s working and what’s not working. But then the same level of intensity had to occur after the launch as well,” Moorehead says.

Change management and touch management augments what they believe is a groundbreaking business model and an industry-leading go-to-market approach. They have shifted messaging from relaunch training to aspirational business growth education, and along the way, picked up a lot of new people who are excited about what Nature’s Sunshine is all about in this new era.

Nearly 50 years encapsulating herbs in America, Nature’s Sunshine differentiates itself through its commitment to science, manufacturing, quality, testing and third-party accreditations that surpass industry leaders and norms, as well as its unique, omnichannel distribution network of herbalists, dieticians, homeopathic healers, and herbal retailers.

Moorehead says the company always maintains a growth posture and a certain level of optimism. It’s a growing market and more people are engaged in taking care of their health than ever before.

“We want to make sure that we are there to be a lead option for those consumers who are really serious about their health and want a product they can believe in, trust and know it’s going to deliver results for them,” Moorehead says.

Princess House

Founded / 1963

Top Executive / Lynne Coté, President & CEO

Products / Home Décor, Kitchenware, Food & Beverage, Wellness

In 2019, Princess House sales were in decline for the third year, and the company’s programs and communications strategies struggled to motivate or induce growth. Still, their discouraged field leaders remained loyal, and when three-months of evaluation wrapped at year’s end, Lynne Coté—part of the Board’s review—joined Princess House as president/CEO in January 2020.

Coté was at the helm for only eight weeks when the pandemic came calling, but it had been an introspective and constructive couple of months. Leadership re-organization began with clarification of roles and responsibilities, and they identified company strengths, weaknesses, current challenges and anticipated future ones. (The pandemic was not on their list.)

After redefining their mission and values, they got to work on strategy and tactics—tech enhancements, an innovative framework, improved training and tools, experiential opportunities, as well as leadership development, cultural connectivity and market expansion.

Then spring hit hard with lockdowns, transitioning to work from home and plummeting sales in the first weeks of the pandemic. Soon Princess House measured a first-quarter decline of 7 percent compared to 2019.

“Our discussions at the executive level were all about ACTION. What could we do that would encourage the field to try different things and to pivot to a digital environment?” Coté remembers.

Fortunately, that deep dive Princess House took just months prior proved invaluable to creating opportunity through chaos. “In fact, that became our rally cry to the field that the time was NOW. Because we had the products people needed during the crisis, it was up to us to create the opportunity,” she says.

A shift to Zoom extended the reach of grounded Regional Sales Managers to train the field, let Coté get to know Boston area staff from her home in North Carolina, and opened a first-ever transparent line of communication with the field. They created deep discount promotions for April that utilized inventory. They stopped demotions, extended payment terms, and lengthened incentive selling periods.

“Our goal was to let the field know we had their backs, and together we were going to help each other continue and even grow our business. By the middle of April, we saw our sales begin to increase double digits,” Coté says.

Even as sales began to pivot in April, recruitment was nil. So, Princess House offered a limited time only, discounted entry fee in May, which grew their consultant base 50 percent. With the existing field selling well, the challenge became on-boarding a lot of people fast.

Coté says a good portion of the recruiting was done at the consultant level rather than the leader level. So, they made it simple for consultants to onboard new team members with a one-page document. It worked.

“We saw the activity rate of new consultants in May, and we knew that we were going to far exceed our expectations for 2020,” Coté says.

Laser-focused, Princess House doubled their business every single month from April forward, but Coté says, “The huge growth in our business was not easy on us or the field. We just did not have the inventory to support this growth.”

With 120-day lead times out of China, feeding inventory became their biggest challenge and was further complicated by the inability of UPS to support increased levels of service needed, especially on the West Coast. This reduced level of service put Princess House behind 12 weeks in shipping. “We were very nimble though in setting up FedEx, USPS, and even a private delivery carrier. We even set up a pop-up will-call center for leaders to come and pick up their customers’ orders,” Coté says.

Princess House’s trajectory continues upward in 2021 following a 2020 renewal that Coté says “completely changed the company.” Inventory purchase levels are up, and warehousing has expanded by 200,000 square feet. While the L.A. port situation and lack of trucking carriers still make logistics difficult, Princess House products remain relevant in the marketplace. “The trend to home cooking is not going away any time soon,” Coté says.

Looking back now, Coté believes the key to their renewal was the combination of supporting the field with tools they could use, transparent communication that made them feel like partners, and a leadership team that almost immediately became a high-performance executive team equipped to create opportunity out of chaos.

“I firmly believe the company has a renewed sense of purpose after recent years of declining results. I heard when I was consulting in December that there was no more growth to be had in the current market—I do not believe that is the thought now,” Coté says.

Prüvit

Founded / 2015

Top Executive / Brian Underwood, Founder & CEO

Products / Health & Wellness

Events—live, in-person events—create the heartbeat and culture of Prüvit. So, it was only logical that pre-planning for 2020 contained a huge dose of events, as the company’s excitement grew about expanding into more international markets; then, the world slammed shut in March.

“We were locked down, and the struggle came from uncertainty of knowing if or when things would reopen,” CEO Brian Underwood says.

Because Prüvit offers a premium product, they had to ask themselves a tough question. “What if people’s fear causes them to come off of autoship because they think it’s just a luxury in their lives?”

Despite their firm belief that their product is a necessity in the lives of their customers, due diligence dictated that Prüvit’s C-suite float all sorts of potential worst-case scenarios last spring; then, they prepped for them.

“We immediately took precautions and looked at how we could create a down-sell if needed,” Underwood says.

But they never had to use it.

Instead, they dealt with a brand-new reality and came out shining.

“One of the greatest things about our company is that our core philosophy is all about being truly adaptable. Once the pandemic hit, we were used to being a speedboat in the water anyway. Even in just our marketing feel, we would shift course very quickly,” Underwood says.

As their internal team transitioned to remote work, they kept the same harried pace that was their norm and morphed this new coronavirus reality into a huge opportunity.

They stepped up, swallowed hard and did what they had to do—canceled all in-person events. “We just wrote it off really early and leaned heavily into virtual settings,” Underwood says.

They carried forward strengths from 2019, like consistent outcomes and a focus on creating similar feelings of connection with the community and re-anchoring people to Prüvit’s vision and mission.

“Getting that emotional connection involved is really important,” Underwood says.

With great pleasure, they watched Prüvit’s volume rise thanks to the amount of education the company created. They shifted to high-production virtual events delivered at increased frequencies and introduced new products, which also increased the frequency of new experiences for consumers.

“Our field outperformed themselves. We did a lot more of what we were already doing, which included driving experiences and creating events for them—whether it was new flavor drops, sales or training,” Underwood says.

“The surprise for us was that our 2020 sales grew tremendously in the domestic U.S., simply because people had an urgency to find a plan B, and we leaned into that,” Underwood says.

Of course, there were disappointments like the inability to meet international growth projections, but stagnation had everything to do with the pandemic.

“As we were opening up new international markets, we met challenges by increasing communication with the international leaders who had already created the demand in those markets. Fortunately, we were able to create some stability in those sales, even in the pre-pre-launch stage. Our leadership got resourceful to maintain the market and use it to their advantage,” Underwood says.

Underwood thinks that’s the most exciting element to 2021—picking back up that international expansion and running with it.

For Prüvit, 2020 brought a renewal of sales growth, as well as added perspective because it forced everyone to slow down a bit, whether they wanted to or not.

“It gave everyone an opportunity to reset and refresh and also look at long-term effects of how to create more efficiency. I think we will see that industry-wide,” Underwood says.

Virtual events, for example—he doesn’t see them going away anytime soon. “If done right, you can get just as much impact. The challenge moving forward is to maintain those efficiencies while also replicating the feel of live experiences and human connection as well,” Underwood says.

Total Life Changes

Founded / 2003

Top Executives / Jack Fallon, CVO & John Licari, COO

Products / Health & Wellness

“We were already experiencing quick momentum in quarters three and four in 2019, which carried over into 2020. We were very optimistic that we would see 2020 sales increase by 20 to 30 percent or even higher than the previous year,” recalls John Licari, Total Life Changes, chief operating officer.

What TLC didn’t expect was the lightning speed at which those numbers would arrive in 2020.

Essentially, TLC planning for 2020 called for more of the same—aligning and expanding goals to continue training and educating new and existing Life Changers on the benefits of following one duplicatable system that the masses could understand and implement quickly.

TLC intended to continue monthly events throughout 2020 in the USA, Europe, FSU, and Latin America that focused on sampling products, follow-up, and conversions that leveraged their 10-5-2 onboarding system and strengthened their duplication model.

Already in place was a “retail-to-recruit” sales system aimed at generating brand-new customers, and 2020’s plan to develop four samples in four languages would enhance face-to-face sampling and bring convenient, sampling order/delivery to those using TLC’s mobile app.

There was no real predicting what sales and business would look like for 2020 after the pandemic overtook normality, but Licari says TLC was pleasantly surprised as they continued their positive momentum.

“We were not aware that this was going to happen so quickly. We realized that what we were going through was an opportunity, but at the same time, we faced significant challenges. We were not prepared to handle the massive call volume, the increase in orders, and the incredible interest in joining TLC as an independent representative,” Licari says.

To cope with the pandemic changes, TLC shifted to daily, consistent communication with the sales field via social media channels to provide updates and hope, improved their onboarding process and upgraded their phone system to include more robust callback options and self-help features aimed at efficiency.

And as they rapidly overshot pre-pandemic sales projections for the year, every department from the top down worked side-by-side to keep customer service and warehouse processing running smoothly despite increased volumes of orders.

Adding warehouse space, scaling warehouse staff, accommodating packaging changes necessary for vendor product replacements, and implementing daily pickups from their main warehouses so orders could be shipped ASAP—all this was key to ensuring TLC’s performance went beyond expectations.

It took people to get it all done—the internal support from TLC’s executive team and reaching out to local communities for new employees. They created a formal Human Resources department for the first time as they hired more and more people.

Field numbers were simultaneously escalating, and Licari says, “Our biggest challenge was onboarding a ton of new people and continuing to serve the existing people at the high level that they were used to. We had to stay fired up and committed to supporting everything that was happening, and never giving up and staying positive.”

Thinking back on the rapidly accelerated growth of 2020, Licari says, “Whatever percentage we were set up to accept, we went above and beyond to make sure we could process even more than that because we knew this was an opportunity that we may never get again.”

TLC is taking steps now to sustain that growth and continue 2020’s renewal twofold. “We have not slowed down on improving our technology; we are currently being onboarded with Salesforce and new retail e-commerce and back-office experiences,” Licari says. They’ve also committed to a more rigorous schedule of communication, broadcasts, social media engagement and training.

Licari believes that TLC cemented its place in the health and wellness market by working harder during the past year and observing consumer behavior to maximize reach and continue to keep the positive momentum. They beat the odds and proved that there isn’t anything they can’t do with loyal and committed staff. And they grew to appreciate, on an even greater scale, what Licari identifies as the company’s greatest asset—their culture.

“And when that was taken away from us [due to the pandemic restrictions], that was a challenge because we were used to being this close-knit family that shared a lot of time. We learned that our culture here is very special, and when we can’t be together, it’s hard for many of us to deal with that,” Licari says.

USANA

Founded / 1992

Top Executive / Kevin Guest, CEO

Products / Health & Wellness, Personal Care, Cosmetics

As USANA moved into 2020, the year started strong. A surprise, 100-day nutritional supplement review by the Chinese government had slowed their business in 2019. Still, they realigned their operational spend, invested in IT infrastructure, devised a new road map focusing on new categories, and started building momentum in their non-China markets.

By late 2019, business was normalizing and in the first-quarter 2020, CEO Kevin Guest leap-frogged internationally—China, Korea, Mexico, The Philippines, Italy and Romania.

“I was actually in China when news of the pandemic there began to break, and our team began to contingency plan in late January and early February for this [COVID] to have a more wide-ranging impact,” Guest says.

Guest found himself one step ahead of country lockdowns amid pandemic and in a race to get back to the U.S.

They were fortunate to learn from their China and Korea operations early in 2020, which helped the U.S. team act more swiftly once the health threat arrived. “Still, I don’t think anyone could have predicted the magnitude or speed of what we’d face here and in each of our markets around the world,” Guest says.

USANA maintained a crisis communications and action plan, so that’s where they started. They didn’t overanalyze, instead they got to work and created global COVID task forces with authority to move forward, bypassing bureaucracy. Daily shifts and changes in-country could be life and death. USANA had to be a very nimble global organization.

“The COVID task force approach helped us get away from the silos and helped the efficiency of our decision-making processes tremendously,” Guest says. “I delegated a lot of the decision making to other officers in the company and other general managers around the world, so that they could feel empowered to make these huge decisions and follow through on them. And I’m so glad that I did.”

Prioritizing employee and customer safety, USANA immediately purchased employee laptops and kicked into a work-from-home environment. They even set firm dates to revisit the policy, which gave employees clarity and security about planning for childcare.

Supply chain concerns mounted as demand for health products grew. They increased inventory load to assure continued manufacturing and sought contingency suppliers of raw materials and ingredients. They found sources equal in quality and less expensive.

“This time last year was all-hands-on-deck, and we always seemed to be a few steps ahead of what was going on, fortunately,” Guest says.

“What happened for us in 2020—because of where we were in 2019—accelerated our strategic objectives versus disrupting them, which was very, very helpful for us as a company,” Guest says.

With a whole host of predictive analytics at their disposal, USANA knew momentum was on their side as early as Q4 2019. Trends indicated markets outside China were strengthening too. When Q1 2020 hit—before the full effect of the pandemic—they knew where they were headed from a sales/momentum perspective. After Q2 2020, USANA felt more confident, and the publicly-traded company raised its financial outlook to the street.

“From that point on, momentum continued to build, our sales results accelerated, and we ultimately delivered $1.135 billion in sales for the year, or 7 percent sales growth compared to 2019, which to me is an unbelievable year, especially given the continued challenges from the pandemic,” Guest says.

There were curveballs, like the effects of the U.S. banning the WeChat platform used so widely in China, and the necessity to shift 19 remote in-person training centers in China to 100 percent online. And some pandemic related challenges linger—as ships still languish offshore due to customs slowdowns in some ports.

But the pandemic highlighted USANA’s strengths and has driven positive change. They launched and accelerated many global digital initiatives in 2020, including an improved mobile platform, expanded payment options, quick and simple product education, ways to capture and respond to consumer voices, improved SEO, and easier ways to share USANA experiences with others.

The ability of USANA’s field to utilize these tools and move to more social media-focused selling, to take advantage of additional company-sponsored promotions and incentives did a lot to drive the company’s results.

“For us, we, fortunately, have a very strong business with a lot of customers that love our products, and we had that base—regardless of what happened at the beginning of 2019—that carried us through this unprecedented year of 2020,” Guest says.

Sustaining a growth trajectory in 2021 will include production and launch of a new health drink line, as well as looking at international expansion as a continued growth strategy. But meeting new challenges, like even more intense cybersecurity and normalizing an in-person and digital hybrid event management strategy, is vital too.

Looking back, Guest is grateful for USANA’s culture and the core values of its employees that had, in the normal course of business, intuitively created systems that served them so well in crisis. That culture, he says, is too valuable to lose and with more than 100 new employees, who have never come to work in USANA’s world headquarters and he has never met or seen personally, Guest worries.

“I’m glad we had this great culture which got us through really, really potentially challenging times, but my worry now going into 2021 is, ‘How do I, as the CEO of the company, how do I maintain that culture on a global basis that took us 28 years to create?’ ” Guest asks.

He, like so many other CEOs, is not alone in this worry. 

From the May 2021 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post Re-energizing Growth, By Re-thinking Crises first appeared on Direct Selling News.

Something not altogether good was brewing in direct selling in late 2019. The Direct Selling Association reported flat-line global sales performance of $35.2 billion, down slightly from 2018. China’s 100-day reviews of nutritional products halted companies from selling in China, surprising everyone. Continued compliance pressures in China clearly stressed sales in the channel. The domestic regulatory environment brought new challenges as well. And for many companies, sales just weren’t where they needed to be for continued market expansion. Pressure everywhere was building, but no one could foresee what was around the corner.

C-suite strategic planning, course corrections, realignment of corporate spending, new compensation structures, and the like were underway throughout the industry when pandemic struck in early 2020. COVID-19 could have compounded lingering 2019 circumstances, but that is not what happened for these seven direct selling companies.

With the benefit of time and distance, 2020 sales numbers and some hindsight, these industry leaders take a short, retrospective look inside their companies during a year like no other. In so doing, they help the direct selling industry re-think crises while telling the stories of how their teams met disruptive challenges and leveraged 2020’s new business reality to create a renewal that re-energized their field organizations and helped solidify their growth trajectories for 2021 and beyond.

COVID-19 could have compounded lingering 2019 circumstances, but that is not what happened for these seven direct selling companies.

This industry leader takes a short, retrospective look inside Princess House during a year like no other.

Princess House

Founded / 1963

Top Executive / Lynne Coté, President & CEO

Products / Home Décor, Kitchenware, Food & Beverage, Wellness

In 2019, Princess House sales were in decline for the third year, and the company’s programs and communications strategies struggled to motivate or induce growth. Still, their discouraged field leaders remained loyal, and when three-months of evaluation wrapped at year’s end, Lynne Coté—part of the Board’s review—joined Princess House as president/CEO in January 2020.

Coté was at the helm for only eight weeks when the pandemic came calling, but it had been an introspective and constructive couple of months. Leadership re-organization began with clarification of roles and responsibilities, and they identified company strengths, weaknesses, current challenges and anticipated future ones. (The pandemic was not on their list.)

After redefining their mission and values, they got to work on strategy and tactics—tech enhancements, an innovative framework, improved training and tools, experiential opportunities, as well as leadership development, cultural connectivity and market expansion.

Then spring hit hard with lockdowns, transitioning to work from home and plummeting sales in the first weeks of the pandemic. Soon Princess House measured a first-quarter decline of 7 percent compared to 2019.

“Our discussions at the executive level were all about ACTION. What could we do that would encourage the field to try different things and to pivot to a digital environment?” Coté remembers.

Fortunately, that deep dive Princess House took just months prior proved invaluable to creating opportunity through chaos. “In fact, that became our rally cry to the field that the time was NOW. Because we had the products people needed during the crisis, it was up to us to create the opportunity,” she says.

A shift to Zoom extended the reach of grounded Regional Sales Managers to train the field, let Coté get to know Boston area staff from her home in North Carolina, and opened a first-ever transparent line of communication with the field. They created deep discount promotions for April that utilized inventory. They stopped demotions, extended payment terms, and lengthened incentive selling periods.

“Our goal was to let the field know we had their backs, and together we were going to help each other continue and even grow our business. By the middle of April, we saw our sales begin to increase double digits,” Coté says.

Even as sales began to pivot in April, recruitment was nil. So, Princess House offered a limited time only, discounted entry fee in May, which grew their consultant base 50 percent. With the existing field selling well, the challenge became on-boarding a lot of people fast.

Coté says a good portion of the recruiting was done at the consultant level rather than the leader level. So, they made it simple for consultants to onboard new team members with a one-page document. It worked.

“We saw the activity rate of new consultants in May, and we knew that we were going to far exceed our expectations for 2020,” Coté says.

Laser-focused, Princess House doubled their business every single month from April forward, but Coté says, “The huge growth in our business was not easy on us or the field. We just did not have the inventory to support this growth.”

With 120-day lead times out of China, feeding inventory became their biggest challenge and was further complicated by the inability of UPS to support increased levels of service needed, especially on the West Coast. This reduced level of service put Princess House behind 12 weeks in shipping. “We were very nimble though in setting up FedEx, USPS, and even a private delivery carrier. We even set up a pop-up will-call center for leaders to come and pick up their customers’ orders,” Coté says.

Princess House’s trajectory continues upward in 2021 following a 2020 renewal that Coté says “completely changed the company.” Inventory purchase levels are up, and warehousing has expanded by 200,000 square feet. While the L.A. port situation and lack of trucking carriers still make logistics difficult, Princess House products remain relevant in the marketplace. “The trend to home cooking is not going away any time soon,” Coté says.

Looking back now, Coté believes the key to their renewal was the combination of supporting the field with tools they could use, transparent communication that made them feel like partners, and a leadership team that almost immediately became a high-performance executive team equipped to create opportunity out of chaos.

“I firmly believe the company has a renewed sense of purpose after recent years of declining results. I heard when I was consulting in December that there was no more growth to be had in the current market—I do not believe that is the thought now,” Coté says.

Excerpt from the Direct Selling News May 2021 Cover Story: “Renewal, Re-energizing Growth, By Re-thinking Crises.”

The post Princess House: Renewal first appeared on Direct Selling News.

January’s publication received significant international attention, and we are very excited to announce that we are expanding our social media tracking globally.  Next month’s issue will include the March’s Digital Momentum Index will contain both US Domestic and Global International rankings!

Feedback thus far has been overwhelmingly positive, and we had dozens of great conversations about the rankings and the Industry’s use of social media in general. We are excited to expand the report globally and look forward to continued learning with industry experts.

February’s Top 50 Momentum Rankings are:

This is for the left hand side

What the Ranking Means

It is worth repeating that the Digital Momentum Index only compares single period/monthly changes (vs. year-to-date or a trailing month timeline), and so it is not uncommon to see a single member company make leaps or appear/disappear each month. A company who achieved +25 percent growth last month would have to continue growth atop that to maintain their rank. The index is intended to be a measure of “who saw significant social media growth in the last 30 days” rather than a long time leaderboard.

Our Efforts for Continuous Improvement & Accuracy

The amount of data available on Social Media and SOE / Web Traffic is both vast and ever changing, and we’re learning more about it every month. We launched the Rankings in Q4 2020 with intent to learn and collect feedback for a stable method in 2021, and we continue to learn and collect feedback. February rankings were calculated with the same data and weighting as January 2021 and December 2020, and we will make and announce any adjustments to the methodology quarterly.

Components

The list represents months of analysis across the three core pillars of social media marketing: web traffic & SEO analysis, Facebook activity, and Instagram activity.

Eligibility

A company is included in the Transformation Capital Direct Selling Momentum ranking when it has an active website, at least one active social media account, and at least 50,000 followers or fans for a single account (Facebook or Instagram).

As noted, our initial ranking methodology focuses exclusively on three primary drivers of online presence: web traffic, Facebook activity, and Instagram activity. We’ve aggregated roughly a dozen metrics from these three sources and assessed their change over the last thirty days in an attempt to measure the growth in a company’s online audience, or momentum.

A brief explanation of our proprietary methodology follows:

Web Traffic & SEO

We analyze basic web traffic statistics as a measure of general interest. These statistics seek to measure the number of individuals searching for, visiting, and clicking on links that direct them to the company’s domain. This domain includes the corporate website and (in most cases) the company hosted web pages for individual distributors. Additionally we analyze the number of third party sources referring internet users to the company website, as well as the number of associated keywords, branded phrases, or marketing jargon (hashtags, slogans, etc.) that are popular across the web. Assessing the change in these metrics over time creates an estimated increase or decrease in demand for the company across the web.

Facebook Activity

We gather a collection of metrics intended to measure thirty-day changes in both volume (count) and quality (engagement & communication with) of followers. Assessing the change in behavior on Facebook, we believe, is a valuable tool in determining improvements (or declines) of a brand’s social value.

Instagram Activity

As with Facebook, we focus on the thirty-day change of our metrics as a measure of social attention, or momentum, assuming a significant change in attention indicates changes in social interest and brand awareness.

A Note on Facebook vs. Instagram

Given varying target markets and consumer profiles, companies seem to often focus on Facebook or Instagram, rather than both. To ensure appropriate credit is given to the correct outlet, our metric analysis and momentum calculation consider which platform appears to be the primary for each company. As an example, if a company has 20,000 Instagram followers and 80,000 Facebook fans, all Facebook-related metrics will be weighted at 80 percent(80/100) of the total weighted social media metric score. Similarly, all Instagram-related metrics will be weighted 20 percent. Few companies do not have an active official Instagram account, and so their social media metric is based 100 percent on Facebook performance and changes. There are no companies in the list for which an official Facebook profile does not exist.

The post FEBRUARY DIRECT SELLING MOMENTUM INDEX first appeared on Direct Selling News.

The facility distributes to the eastern United States; Midwest and the Rocky Mountain states for Princess House, a direct seller of cookware, glassware, flatware and cutlery. The company has used the 200,000 sq. ft. facility in Rural Hall since 1989 for distribution, warehousing and returns processing.

Rep. Foxx toured the facility and saw all aspects of business including receiving, processing, picking and shipping. She also met with the employees and learned more about how the facility supports thousands of Princess House Consultants across the country, as well as local vendors.

“It was great to meet with folks at Princess House in Rural Hall.  Princess House plays a big role in the direct selling industry that provides many North Carolinians opportunities to earn their own income and start small businesses. Supporting opportunities for more jobs and cutting red tape is key to expanding our thriving economy. In Washington, I’m working to support these job creators and entrepreneurs with policies that provide them greater freedom and flexibility to operate independently,” stated U.S. Congresswoman Virginia Foxx.

“It was a pleasure to host Rep. Foxx at our facility and showcase our operation.  We are very appreciative of Rep. Foxx meeting with our team and taking a direct interest in them.  We thank her for supporting the Direct Selling industry and our independent consultants,” said Russ Whittle, vice president of operational excellence, Princess House and Direct Selling Association member.

The post U.S. Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) Visits Direct Selling Association Member Princess House’s Distribution Center first appeared on Direct Selling News.