Disclaimer: All posts are the opinion of the author and not to be taken in place of professional financial or professional legal advice.
What is Juice Plus+? Chances are, you heard about Juice Plus+ on social media or in a mommy group. There are two components to this business: the product and the direct selling side.
About Juice Plus+ Products
The products are positioned as healthy alternatives to fresh fruits and vegetables.
It’s really hard for me to resist the urge to be snarky, here. Because if we’re being honest, there’s nothing easier than eating an apple, peeling a banana, taking a bite of a strawberry, slicing up a cucumber – you get the idea. Eating fruits and vegetables? Easy.
Creating a powdered mix of fruits and vegetables? Messy and kind of gross. Who wants powdered broccoli? Yuck. But whatever floats your boat.
All things considered, the Juice Plus+ products are standard powdered health supplements.
Selling Juice Plus+
The reason you’ve heard about Juice Plus+ is likely not because it’s healthy or easy. It’s because people are incentivized to tell you about it. How are they incentivized? Well, they’re selling Juice Plus+.
People who sell Juice Plus+ believe they own a “virtual franchise”
Here’s how Juice Plus+ positions the opportunity:
Sounds like a pretty good deal, right? You set up a Virtual Franchise for a known product, and people order directly through you.
Here’s the issue: When you want something from Walmart online, you go to Walmart’s website. The extra added step of having to order from someone who sells Walmart products sounds good in theory, but it makes for a bad user experience. Why would a company want to add extra steps to the sales process? Simple: The Juice Plus+ Virtual Franchisees are actually the prime Juice Plus+ customer.
The Direct Sales Model (Not Just Juice Plus+)
Direct Sales companies pitch the idea that they’re helping people – usually women – make an income from home by providing an opportunity to sell the product. But what ends up happening is that the people who sell the product become the company’s prime customer.
Think of it this way: If you buy a Starter Kit or Virtual Franchise, you’ve become a customer of the company. The company has made money from you investing in “your business.” Although you may earnestly believe that you are building your business, what’s really happening is you are becoming the company’s primary customer.
And this is where things become dangerous for consultants / “business owners.” In most cases, in order to earn the best commissions, you need to buy the most expensive starter kit or move a significant amount of product.
While all the official literature will tell you that you shouldn’t buy the product yourself and that you should build your franchise on sales to customers, what really happens is a different story.
LuLaRoe consultants know this all too well. You’ll frequently see these former consultants selling off tons of inventory.
I thought you didn’t need inventory with a virtual franchise?
Yes, that’s what you’re officially told. However, you’re encouraged to have product on hand for people to sample and for you to sell “instantly” in person.
And we’ve seen this happen time and time again with direct sales companies. Just think of your friends who sell Mary Kay or Tupperware and seem to have an endless supply of those products.
How much money can you make selling Juice Plus+?
It appears that at first, you can only make 6% in commission until you reach the Virtual Franchisee level.
Let’s assume that you make 6%, then, for the purpose of these calculations.
Federal minimum wage is currently $7.25/hour. We’ll assume you’d want to replace the equivalent of a full-time, minimum wage job. 37.5 hours * $7.25/hour = $271.87/week before taxes.
Using our Direct Sales Calculator, we found that you’d need to sell 665.58 products costing $30.75 each to earn the equivalent of minimum wage in one month. On each $30.75 product you sell, you’d earn $1.85.
We found out there’s a $50 application fee to become a Virtual Franchisee, so we factored that in. And we chose the Berry Blend Chewables vitamin ($30.75) as the example product since it’s the one we see sold most in mommy groups.
But if I sell that much, won’t I be a Virtual Franchisee?
Sure. Let’s go with that.
Even at 14% commission, you need to move a lot of product. On each $30.75 product, you’d earn $4.31. And you’d need to sell 285 in order to earn the equivalent of minimum wage.
Is Juice Plus+ a Scam?
Legally, no. You can sell the product and you can make money from it.
The isn’t whether the company is a scam or not. What you need to ask yourself before getting involved with any sales opportunity is what is the probability that you will earn an income. Is it likely that you will turn a profit?
This is a question you can answer for yourself. Here’s some food for thought:
- Have you ever sold products in the past?
- How many people do you know who would be interested in purchasing products from you?
- How many hours per day are you going to dedicate to trying to sell the product?
If you’re honest with yourself about the questions above, you may realize that this is not an easy, get-rich-quick project. And, a lot of companies will actually be honest about this. They’ll tell you it takes work. But what they won’t be upfront about is the fact that most people never make money, and it’s not your fault – it won’t be because of your lack of effort – that you will not succeed. It will be because the amount of money you can make is limited by commission rates and access to the market.
What about Tower Gardens?
Tower Gardens are a Juice Plus+ company product that operate under the same Direct Sales method as Juice Plus+. But we’ll do a specific post about Tower Gardens soon.
TL;DR – Should I sell Juice Plus+?
Look, we can’t tell you what to do. We can show you the calculations we did (above) and let you play with the Direct Sales Calculator to do your own math.
We can also tell you that you can buy vitamins from Amazon for much less than $30. So the choice is really up to you.
Got something to say? Let it out.