More and more women are choosing makeup and cosmetics sales as a secondary career, or second stream of income, after the recession has beaten and battered so many people savings, retirement accounts and job security. Some women have actually made it their full time career, hoping that if someone doesn’t hire them, well then at least they can bust their butt and make money based on the level of effort they put into something. That’s exactly what cosmetic tier sales like Mary Kay and Avon offer, is pay based on performance, or a commission based job.
They don’t get a base salary, but instead they get pure commissions, so that their pay is exactly commensurate to their level of effort, which is something that is appealing to a lot of people right now in the midst of companies randomly laying off thousands of employees, whether they’ve been there a long time or are hard workers or not unfortunately. Mary Kay has a system where you buy their makeup at cost and then mark it up, usually to double price, and I believe you pocket the rest as your profit/pay. I think they leave it up to you as to whether you can offer special incentives or discounts, it’s just less money that you pocket if you do, which is actually quite an ingenious business model.
I’ve used some Mary Kay products, and they’re actually pretty good cosmetics think. They are made with a better quality than something that you’d get at a drugstore in my opinion. I remember wishing that they had a little more modern color palettes when I’d attended the parties when I was younger, and that the prices were a little more reasonable. I felt that, at the time (keeping in mind I was pretty broke back then), their cosmetics would be a little more fairly priced but at that time I didn’t really know about how their sales and commission structure worked either.
Avon I know works on a much more modest commission structure, and some of their reps complain that the commissions aren’t enough. But when you think about it, Avon’s products are so reasonably priced that it would be hard to actually make a full time living as a rep, unless you concentrated on marketing their higher end anti aging and wrinkle products or things like their cellulite treatments and body care that are a little more of a high ticket item.