Arbonne, a health and beauty company that offers customers a business opportunity, one that is supposed to change your life, and be a source of unlimited wealth.
But, is that true?
I believe you are here because you’re looking for more information about Arbonne. Lucky for you, I have done the research and compiled my findings into this in-depth Arbonne review. The goal here is to create a review so thorough that there would not be a need for you to ever look at another Arbonne review.
In this review, we’ll focus more on the “business opportunity” part of Arbonne. For those of you who have been following my website, you’ll know that I always go deep below the surface to get you everything you need to know about any online money-making opportunity.
Honest, unbiased reviews – that is what you will find here.
And if you’d like to see an alternative, honest, and legitimate platform to start earning money online, then please click here.
Arbonne Summary
Product Name: Arbonne
Website: arbonne.com
Founder: Petter Mørck
Product Type: Health and beauty MLM
Price: $49 registration fee
Best For: MLM marketers
Summary: Arbonne is a health and beauty MLM that sells skincare, nutrition, body care, makeup and hair products. It has been around since 1975 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. Arbonne has a good reputation as an MLM company. However, judging from its Income Disclosure Statement, the potential of making any money out of this remains low.
Overall Ranking: 5/10
Recommend: Yes and No
What Is Arbonne
First established in Switzerland in 1975 and then in the USA since 1980, Arbonne International is a direct selling company specialising in cruelty-free beauty products, in particular botanically-based personal care and nutrition products. It is subsequently acquired by French cosmetics group Rocher which is headquartered in La Gacilly, France.
Arbonne was founded by Petter Morck, a Norwegian botanist with the vision of creating pure, safe, high-performance products that families like his own could use, trust, and afford. Together with a renowned cell rejuvenation scientist, Pierre Botiglierri (who also formulated for the luxury brand La Prairie), they aim to create a line of products that not only excel in quality but also remain affordable and available to most people.
Today, Petter’s vision is carried out by a great product development team headed by Dr Peter Matravers, and a powerful executive team headed by CEO Kay Napier.
Arbonne is currently headquartered in Irvine, California, with offices around the globe in Chatsworth, CA, Greenwood, IN, Addison, TX, Canada, UK, and Australia.
Being in the industry for more than 45 years to date, Arbonne has indeed proven that they can withstand the test of time, and still come out strong. You certainly don’t have to worry about Arbonne being legit or not, they are the real deal.
It’s important to note that Arbonne is an MLM (multilevel marketing) company. What this means is that their products are sold through independent consultants, and people receive a certain amount of compensation for recruiting other individuals as downlines.
Overall, this company works the same way as these MLM companies:
How To Join Arbonne
Just like any typical MLM company, you cannot sign up Arbonne on your own. You have to sign up under another Arbonne consultant by providing the membership number of the person who is referring you. Else, Arbonne will allocate one for you. You will be someone else’s recruit and be part of someone else’s team.
If you go to their website, they don’t have much information on how to get started.
All they ask you to do is to get back to the person who introduced this opportunity to you – a very typical method used by MLMs.
Arbonne Product Line
Before we take the plunge, it’s important to familiarise ourselves with the product line Arbonne has to offer.
Arbonne has a huge product line- from baby products to anti-ageing, cosmetics, shampoo… to products catered for teens, adults, men, women…. nutritional products, vitamins, supplements, aromatherapy, spa products… the list goes on.
Those products fall into the following 4 categories:
Skincare – DermResults, BrightenUp, AgeWell, LiftIntense etc
Nutrition – GutHealth, CleanTox, FeelFit, EnergyFizz etc..
Body Care – Hand lotion, hand wash, body wash, moisturising lip balm etc.
Makeup – Shape It Up Brow Pencil, Glossed Over Lip Gloss, It’s My Jam Blush Duo, Pollution Defense CC Cream Broad Spectrum SPF 30 Sunscreen etc.
Hair – Shampoo, conditioner, anti-frizz dry oil, defining curl cream etc.
As a B Corp™, Arbonne is committed to reducing the introduction of harmful chemicals into our environment. They claim that their products are formulated to meet as many standards for certification as possible, including vegan, gluten-free, non-GMO and cruelty-free, as well as free of artificial flavours, colours and sweeteners.
There are simply too many products under the Arbonne brand, if you are interested in the full product range you can find them at the Arbonne product page.
How To Make Money With Arbonne
Like many other MLM companies, you can make money with Arbonne by:
1. Selling their products and earning commissions. You can get products at wholesale prices and then sell them for retail prices to make a profit.
2. Recruiting people to access bonuses and higher commission
3. Refer a friend to your very own Arbonne website and earn a commission when someone you refer buys through your referral link. This works like affiliate marketing – you promote your personalised referral link and if someone makes a purchase through your link, you will get a cut. Personally, I find this approach most appealing – no hard selling or face-to-face pitching. To help you get started promoting your links, here is a free course to guide you along.
One important thing to note is that Arbonne requires their Independent Consultants to sell products strictly through their personal arbonne.com website or in person.
If you ever come across Arbonne products sold via online platforms like eBay, Yahoo Shopping, Poshmark, Allegro, or Amazon, those are sold by unauthorised sellers and Arbonne is not able to make any product guarantee or process any product returns for purchases made that way. Products sold through these websites are diverted, and therefore may be diluted, expired, obsolete or counterfeit.
As an Independent Consultants, selling Arbonne products via third-party websites can get your account suspended and deregistered. Arbonne has Zero Tolerance Policy on this issue.
Cost To Join Arbonne
There are 3 ways for you to be part of Arbonne:
Regular Customer (Free)
Customers can buy Arbonne products at retail prices.
Arbonne Preferred Client ($29 per annum)
For $29 per annum, you get to become an Arbonne preferred client.
As an Arbonne preferred client, you get to shop for products and enjoy a 20% discount on all products and a 40% discount on special value packs. You will also qualify for free shipping on orders over $100, gain access to special offers and exclusive benefits, earn a complimentary product on qualifying orders etc.
Arbonne Independent Consultant
As an Arbonne Independent Consultant, you get to share and sell Arbonne products, earn commissions, product discounts, overrides, and exclusive offers.
To become an Independent Consultant with Arbonne, you will need to pay a $49 registration fee for a welcome package. Included in the package is your very own personal e-commerce website with a shareable digital catalogue, access to free apps for on-the-go business management, a social marketing library for sharing Arbonne and a complete knowledge library for product and business information.
As for Preferred Clients who want to become Consultant, simply top up the difference and pay a $20 fee to upgrade their membership. A term is a 12-month contract and a $29 renewal fee at the end of the 12-month term.
In addition, there is something worth mentioning…
Monthly Fee
In order to earn a commission under the category Override (more on this under the Arbonne Compensation Plan), you need to achieve “Qualified Status” by accumulating 150 Personal Qualifying Volume (PQV) each month. That’s equivalent to around $150 worth of product.
Arbonne Compensation Plan
Like many other MLM companies, Arbonne has a complicated compensation plan.
I will try to lay it out as simple as possible.
There are 4 ways Arbonne claims you can get paid:
1. Client Commissions
This is the most straightforward way to make money with Arbonne. You get to earn a commission at 35% of Suggested Retail Price, or SRP from personal product sales to Clients, or 15% of SRP from personal product sales to Preferred Clients.
2. Overrides
Overrides allow you to earn commissions from the product sales by your team.
3. Achiever Awards
These are bonuses made available at each level based on personal and/or team product sales when you build a team and your team makes sales
4. VP Success Award
This award is only applicable to Vice Presidents who have purchased or leased a white Mercedes-Benz automobile and have affixed the Arbonne car emblem to the automobile.
It is given as an allowance starting at $200/month to be applied to the purchase or lease of a white Mercedes-Benz based on team sales volume.
5. Additional incentives reward and recognition programs based on personal and/or team product sales.
Payout is done weekly for Client and Preferred Client commissions, and monthly for overrides and bonuses, based on the Arbonne SuccessPlan exclusively through an independent third-party payment processor using Arbonne Pure Pay.
As you can see below, members are classified into five types of dealers based on their total purchase volume and commission level, and the performance of the smaller leg play a crucial role in determining which level you get classified into:
1. Consultant
2. District Manager
3. Area Manager
4. Regional Vice President
5. Regional Vice President
Don’t worry if you cannot figure out how does the compensation works, such structures are common among MLM companies. They cannot reward members directly for recruitment, as this will give rise to suspicion for pyramid schemes (more about this later). So instead, they offer rewards when your downlines achieve a certain sales volume. That’s to encourage you to recruit and build up your team.
The various levels of rewards and dealerships also serve as a way to make the whole scheme look enticing and exciting. They make it looks like career advancement is great with many ways for you to make money.
To make things easy, just remember, the two most important thing to keep in mind when joining an MLM company is :
1. Sell the products
2. Recruit downline
Here is a walkthrough video of the compensation plan if you want to understand it in more detail:
Is Arbonne Pyramid Scheme
Despite some critics labelling Arbonne as a pyramid scheme, personally, I don’t think so. First off, Arbonne has a wide range of products to offer. Their main focus is not on recruiting as they recommend people to become customer-first (In other words, it’s product-oriented!). Also, you don’t get paid by recruiting people. You get paid when there’s a product being sold.
What Is A Pyramid Scheme?
According to Wikipedia, a pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products.
As the recruitment progress, the structure soon becomes unsustainable due to the sheer amount of new recruitments needed to take place. There simply aren’t enough people to maintain the structure of the pyramid. As such, pyramid schemes are doomed to collapse and are deemed illegal by many countries around the world.
Due to the nature of MLM, there is a fuzzy line between MLM and pyramid scheme. Avoid any MLM that overemphasise on recruitment rather than selling the actual product. Legitimate MLM is focused on the product itself, not recruitment.
What I Like About Arbonne
1. Proven Track Of Record
Started in 1975, they have passed the 35-year mark and already achieve an estimated annual sales revenue of $847 million in 2020, ranking #22 in the DSN Global 100 list of top direct selling companies in the world.
It is a known fact that very few MLM companies actually make it to the five-year mark. Arbonne surely has its unique selling point that makes its business sustainable.
2. Money Back Guarantee
For many other MLM companies, people are joining only to make money. I have to admit that Arbonne is somewhat different when looking from this perspective. It occurs to me that many Arbonne members are actually customers that had tried and tested their products, love them and eventually joined the company.
And Arbonne is aware of that, they truly stand for their product. All products in the Arbonne catalogue carry a 45-day money-back guarantee.
3. Certified B Corporation™
Arbonne is a purpose-driven company that holds itself accountable to support a thriving planet and improved community wellbeing.
Arbonne is awarded a Certified B Corporation™ in 2020 for its environmental commitments, it aims to meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose.
4. A+ BBB Rating
It is impressive for a company to achieve A+rating from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), not many companies are able to achieve that not to mention maintaining the grading.
Arbonne has been accredited A+ rating since Jan 1989, which goes to show the credibility of the company in terms of good customer resolution and support system.
On a side note, Arbonne is also a member of the Direct Selling Association (DSA). In case you are not familiar with DSA, it is an organization that set the gold standard for the MLM industry. It makes sure the member MLM companies comply with the Code of Ethics through the Office of the Code Administrator salespeople to the Code of Ethics for the DSA.
5. Committed To Giving Back To Society
Arbonne is committed to building resilience in the future generation. It sets up its Arbonne Charitable Foundation in 2012 to help teenagers build and increase their self-confidence
It successfully raised over $1.5 million and improved the mental wellbeing of 83,298 youth in 2020.
6. Integrate Technology Into Their Marketing Effort
I am not knocking it, there is something powerful about face to face selling – looking at your prospects in the eyes, observing their body language as you pitch etc.
However, with this pandemic going on, and the busy lifestyle that we have, most people starting to shun away from this practice. You can spend an hour pitching only to have people tell you ‘I will think about it’, but never really get back. It is an inefficient and time-consuming way of building a business.
Good thing that Arbonne is venturing into online marketing. It allows you to use technology to generate leads from the comfort of your own home. You get to have your personal website which you can drive traffic to.
If you are interested in network marketing, a combination of both strategies is what I suggest. The more avenues you explore, the more chances of winning!
What I Don’t Like About Arbonne
1. Recruit, Recruit, Recruit…
Now, I am not saying that they’re a pyramid scheme. The difference between this company and a pyramid scheme is that Arbonne has products to sell.
However, their compensation plan has you recruiting a lot of people to get higher bonuses and commissions as opposed to just generating team retail sales.
In other words, success hinges not only on your ability to sell the products but also on the performance of your downline.
We all know the drill – an old friend or acquaintance contacted you out of the blue, before long this person is inviting you to a hosting party or asking you to watch an informative video of some sort. What hit next was the sales pitch – how you can live a carefree life while earning a side income.
It is unfortunate when someone pitches their network marketing business at the expense of their friendship.
I hate to say this, but most people newly involved with an MLM company have to get started from their close family and friends. If you want to be part of this, that’s exactly what you have to do too. Do you have what it takes to put your relationship on the line?
Expect yourself to exhaust your circle of friends and family with your sales pitch to try and convince them into the business for your own monetary gains.
After all, Arbonne is a typical MLM company. You’re required to do all the face-to-face selling to run this business.
2. How Much Money Can You Really Make With Arbonne?
Here’s the answer that you are looking for…
Below is Arbonne Income Disclosure Statement 2020:
As you can see, the majority of the sales rep fall into the rank of Distributor. And their average income?
$206 per year!
And we haven’t even taken into account the cost of running this business – the membership fees, the products they bought for themselves due to months that they cannot meet the minimum requirements etc.
To make a full-time income, I’ll say you need to be at least at the Regional Vice Presidents level – which means that only 2% of the sales rep actually earn a living from it.
3. You Have to Pay in Order to Receive Commission
To remain active as an Arbonne sales rep and maximise your commission from Arbonne, you need to purchase or sell a certain amount of products every month.
It’s 150 Personal Qualifying Volume (PQV) (around $150) every month, not really hard to achieve but if you fail to maintain the points, you won’t be able to receive commission from team sales.
4. Turn distributors into customers
This is a secret they don’t want you to know.
Where do all the revenue of all these multi-million networking companies come from?
You will be surprised, in many networking companies, the bottom-ranked distributors are the ones supporting the financial weight of the company.
Your monthly auto ships, the sales target to meet, another rank or level to conquer – all these just to get you hooked up until you willingly pay to promote its products, pay to get into the game, even before you start to earn any money.
5. No Early Bird Advantage
Timing is one of the key factors to your success in the MLM business.
To establish yourself in the MLM industry, you need to get onboard the right company at the right time. Too late and you will miss the golden period for growth that the early adopters enjoy.
There are many advantages of joining an MLM early on. For example, during the early stage, there is a mystique surrounding the opportunity because not many people have come to know about it yet. It is an exciting time to get involved!
While it is still possible for you to make it big later on, you will have to work much harder than you would have if you had joined early on.
6. Product Recall
The following are a few cases of recall done by Arbonne:
1. In 2020, Arbonne voluntarily recalled the Shea Butter Body Wash, after 3,100 units were found to be contaminated.
2. In 2016, Arbonne voluntarily recalled Fine Line Liquid Eye Liner after it was found to contain three strains of bacteria- Staphylococcus saprophyticus, Staphylococcus lentus, and Staphylococcus xylosis.
A total of 14,837 units of the eyeliner in shade Eclipse (black) and 3,818 units in Arbor (brown) are being recalled.
Are You Cut Out For Personal Selling? It Is Not For Everyone…
I got my leads every day without hard-selling.
Can You Really Make Money With Arbonne?
Overall, Arbonne sounds like a good MLM company to work with. It is still growing strong even after 30 years in business and has maintained a good reputation all along.
Arbonne combines old school face-to-face selling methods with the online referral program that allows you to use Internet marketing as a business building tool. For those who are not a fan of face-to-face selling, having an online platform to sell can be a game-changer. You simply need to learn how to drive traffic to your referral link, and your business is set to go. Here is a free course that I find helpful to get you started.
I know MLMs are a tempting model because the startup cost is so low compared to many legitimate businesses. But we also have to keep in mind that due to the pyramid structure of network marketing, recruiters can earn from both their own sales and the sales of their downlines. Naturally, it rewards those at the top.
A common issue with MLM is that, in order to continue receiving commission from your downline, you have to keep on working, otherwise, you will lose the earnings of your current rank, or even the right to sell.
If passive income is what you are looking for, then this is probably not what you are hoping for.
It is easy to see how things can get complicated quickly – juggling between sales, and management of your team. It is by no mean an easy task. Far too often, I have seen many people get involved in MLM thinking that they can just get a few recruits and then sit back collecting money – now we know that it is far from the truth!
How I Make Passive Income Online
Although it is possible to make money with Arbonne, it is not something I would recommend you to work with.
In my honest opinion, the best reason for joining any MLM company is when you really love a product, and you want to get your cost covered while making extra money.
If making money is your only reason for joining, forget about it. Losing friends, wasting time and energy is not going to make it worth the money you make. And the worst part, you are still technically ’employed’, you build up nothing for yourself at all. If one day the company get busted, the downline that you have spent so much building will be gone in an instant too.
If you want to create an online business and learn how to make a full-time income, keep on reading because I have good news for you.
All these success stories you have read above come from applying one proven system.
There is no need for inventory, product creation, management of a team, or tapping into your personal network and proposition them to become your prospects. If it sounds good to you, find out more about this system here or click on the blue button below:
Let us hear your opinion – what do you think about Arbonne? Share with me your thoughts in the comment section below!
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