Do you have experience as a rep for products sold at parties (Tupperware, Pampered Chef, PartyLite, etc.)? How did it work for you?

I never was good at that social small talk stuff. It was an abysmal failure when I tried to do Tupperware. Now I do Doterra Essential Oils, and although I have given plenty away (I love the stuff) I have never sold any. That’s OK because I am a distributor for the discount. That alone makes it worth it.
I wish I could sell it though. I just don’t like making people feel uncomfortable or pressured.

This sort of program (Mary Kay, Tupperware, Candles, etc) has a real potential to be a money pit if you’re not careful. The ones who profit most from your work are basically having you do the work for them. I am not a fan.

When KatawaGrey was an infant I tried to do direct sales for Discovery Toys. The product was good, the target demographic was a group I related to well, but the amount of work required to really pull it together was just too much for me as sole parent of a young baby. If she had been older, maybe I could have done it, but as it was I just about broke even. I was however, delighted with the kit Your kids are older, you could probably devote the kind of attention to it if you’re so inclined…

@SuperMouse I’ve read several articles on this. Most of the women involved in this type of small biz make less than if they took on a part time job. Average profits for the year are in the range of $2500 to $5K per year. To make that amount most women work every weekend and at least a night a week.

I took on one of these years ago…I’ve found selling stuff on eBay to be much less time consuming and much more profitable for the niche I wanted to fill.

@JilltheTooth My MIL also sold Discovery Toys. She had three boys and was a substitute teacher at the time. It didn’t profit for her well. She wound up with a lot of stock. A lot of it she used as gifts…which is what I did with stock from my past ventures.

If I can find an article or two I’ll come back and post a link. I’m going to be off-line for a bit

Here’s one older article on Mary Kay
32 hours a week @ minimum wage = $600 a month take-home pay. To make that in MK sales, you have to consistently sell $1800 a month. How many do that? Only 142 of the 7,912 consultants (1.8%) are selling enough to equal or exceed the take-home pay of someone who works 3 days a week as a minimum-wage Wal-Mart greeter.

I can only tell you from my end of it, but unless you work really hard and love to sell and are really gregarious and have a very wide circle of friends, family and neighbors who are not as curmudgeonly as I am, they will run from you like the plague. I used to get a lot of invitations to these “parties,” and to be honest, I’m sure there are some people who like these these things, but I really started to resent all the invitations. I felt bad about not attending, because because they were my friends and neighbors, but I didn’t like feeling pressured to buy things, but selling and buying just happens to be what these things are all about.

What I don’t like about the products is that they’re often overpriced (to me, and I’m an avid shopper so I have a pretty good idea of prices). I’ve been to a Candle Lite party and a Mary Kay party, and the prices were way out of line with what you would find at a store. Not that you’d find those brands at the store, but similar products in a store are way cheaper. Plus in a store there’s no pressure to buy, whereas at the parties I felt obligated.

I also went to a sex toy party, of course I had to buy a few things!

My mom sold Tastefully Simple. She had trouble with selling/parties and wound up with a huge stock of items she couldn’t get rid of because they were a bit overpriced. Luckily, she was able to sell off her stuff and get out of a jam by convincing her corporate boss to buy a bunch of gift baskets for an event.

My mom-in-law does the Pampered Chef thing. I don’t have the heart to tell her I hate cooking. She hasn’t really made a lot of money doing it, but for her, it’s a side thing to socialize and get discounts for her own stuff.