The privately-owned, direct sales company, Vantel Pearls, promises you the opportunity to build a business that fits your life, and the more you party, the more you can make.
But, is Vantel Pearls a good opportunity or just a typical MLM pitching hype and false hope?
Is Vantel Pearls a Good Opportunity? Vantel Pearls does not publish the actual earnings of its Consultants. For this reason, it is doubtful that the average Vantel Pearl Consultant ever earns a profit. Caution advised.
Before you commit to any so-called opportunity, it’s critical to conduct your own due diligence. This article shows you how.
Vantel Pearls uses a multi-level compensation plan, otherwise known as an MLM.
To understand how badly the MLM game is rigged against you, be sure to watch the video Why You Can’t Win with MLM.
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Is Vantel Pearls a Good Opportunity?
After a thorough analysis, it is my conclusion that most people who try the Vantel Pearls opportunity will lose money.
As a member of the DSA (Direct Selling Association), Vantel Pearls is expected to follow the DSA Code of Ethics.
The DSA Code of Ethics explicitly states that a member company, such as Vantel Pearls, must offer enough information for a prospective Consultant to properly evaluate the opportunity.
Vantel Pearls fails to offer this information.
Specifically, before the Vantel Pearls opportunity can be evaluated, we need to know its full cost and how much the average Consultant earns.
Not only does Vantel Pearls hide this information, but its company policy also prohibits Consultants from revealing how much they earn or, perhaps more appropriately, how much they fail to earn!
To be sure, Vantel Pearls knows the real cost of the opportunity, and it also knows how much every Consultant earns. For tax purposes, the company is required to track this information.
You can bet if this information proved the Vantel Pearls opportunity was profitable, you’d see it plastered all over the company’s website.
We can only speculate about why this information is not known outside of the company. A reasonable guess is because it would prove that the Vantel Pearls opportunity is NOT real.
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Vantel Pearls Overview.
Pearl parties have exploited tourists in beach communities for decades. Vantel Pearls merely brought them into people’s homes.
Vantel Pearls claims to be a luxury goods & jewelry company and the nation’s original oyster opening jewelry company.
The truth is less impressive.
Vantel Pearls is yet another MLM that markets over-priced products through in-home parties and virtual online parties. It does not offer a market advantage of any kind, and competition in the jewelry party niche is fierce.
Sales have been flat for Vantel Pearls since 2017.
Most, if not all, of the pearls Vantel Pearls offers, are inexpensive, cultured, and massed produced. Vantel Pearl charges a high premium for pearls it purchases wholesale for pennies.
Many of the pearls are dyed to conceal imperfections.
As the company name suggests, Vantel Pearls’ flagship product is pearls and jewelry with pearl settings, such as earrings and bracelets.
The pearl jewelry niche, combined with a party marketing strategy, is a potent synthesis of two psychological factors
Vantel Pearls’ Appeal
1.
Pearls and jewelry trigger an impulse buy response.
2.
Making money while having fun is enticing.
The psychological trick occurs when a Consultant tells themselves they are building a business when really all they are doing is buying pearls and jewelry for themselves.
This behavior is excellent for the company, but not so much for the Consultant.
You Are the Customer.
The promise of opportunity is just a marketing trick.
That’s MLM’s dirty little secret.
Most MLM Consultants never build a business. Instead, all they do spend money on starter kits and over-priced products.
It looks like this is the case with Vantel Pearls too.
Only in the MLM industry are the salespeople expected to pay for the privilege of making money for the company. Outside the MLM industry, companies pay their salespeople.
On its website, there is a starter kit priced at $99. In a Vantel Pearls Opportunity Brochure, it lists a Pro Kit for $149.
Buying a starter kit is just the beginning.
To be considered “active,” a Consultant must generate $500 in retail sales over a rolling two-month period. It is assumed that this $500 requirement is retail sales made to customers.
However, it may also be products the Consultant buys for themselves, which is often the case with MLM.
In other words, a Consultant can buy $500 worth of product to ensure they are qualified.
Any way you slice it, the Consultant is the customer.
Vantel Pearls’ Unstated Goal.
I would never recommend any MLM because, by its nature, the game is rigged against you. Anytime you are looking at a business opportunity, take time to follow the money.
We’ve seen that a Vantel Pearls Consultant must first spend a substantial amount of money just to get started. And, we’ve seen that the probability of making a profit is extremely low.
So, where does the money go?
It goes to the top, mostly to the owner and president of Vantel Pearls, Joan Hartel Cabral, but also to the few professional marketers at the top of the sales organization.
This realization brings us to Vantel Pearls’ unstated goal.
As a private corporation, there is only one absolute goal for Ms. Cabral and her company. That is to maximize profits.
Maximising profits is NOT an evil ambition. It’s capitalism at its finest.
Honestly, this is an admirable goal. If Ms. Cabral did any less, she would be seen as incompetent by her executive staff.
Maximizing profits is the goal of every respectable business endeavor.
The problem with the MLM business model, is a more significant percentage of the company’s profits come from the sales force when it should be coming from retail sales.
According to BusinessForHome.org, Vantel Pearls earned $7 Million in 2018. That same year, based on industry averages, most Vantel Pearls’ Consultants lost money.
Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, CFF
“You can work incredibly hard in multi-level marketing and never come close to turning a profit because it is a game that is rigged against you.”
A Breach of Trust.
Vantel Pearls’ lack of transparency is a breach of trust and enough reason to avoid its so-called opportunity.
As a minimum, the Vantel Pearls opportunity will cost you the price of a starter kit, $99. According to Dr. Jon Taylor, Ph.D., it costs approximately $2,500 a year to operate an active MLM business.
There are other expenses associated with the Vantel Pearls opportunity, too, such as buying products to stay qualified.
While there is plenty of proof the Vantel Pearls opportunity will cost you, there is no evidence you will earn a profit.
MLM Exploits Its Sale Force.
Vantel Pearls is a direct marketing company with a multi-level compensation plan that has 8 levels. Because it has a multi-level compensation plan, most people would call Vantel Pearls a multi-level company or MLM.
MLM is an inefficient and outdated business model.
In the past, it has been very lucrative for the people who own the company and a few professional marketers at the top of the sales force. But, for the rank and file salespeople, it’s an impossible business model.
The reason MLM can be so lucrative for the owners of the company is that the Consultants pay for the privilege of making money for the company.
And, the Consultants buy most of the products! The Consultants are the primary customer!
No other industry in the world charges its salespeople for the privilege of making the company money.
Also, no other industry in the world exploits its salespeople by making them buy boatloads of overpriced products.
The Industry Average.
Although Vantel Pearls does not publish how much their Consultants earn, we can look to industry averages for a clue.
In 2011, Dr. Jon Taylor, Ph.D., published the most detailed and in-depth analysis of the MLM industry. He researched the top 300 MLM companies in North America and documented how much their distributors earned.
Through his research, Dr. Taylor found that, on average, only .4% of the people who tried MLM made a profit.
We can safely assume your chances of making a profit with Vantel Pearls are no better.
Remember this, there is a 100% chance the Vantel Pearls opportunity will cost you money, and less than a 1% chance you will make a profit.
That’s not an opportunity. Vegas has better odds, and a part-time minimum wage job would be a better investment.
Did You Join Vantel Pearls?
If you already joined Vantel Pearls, record every cent you spend on the business. Record the time you spend working your business too.
It probably won’t take long for you to discover you are losing money and wasting your time.
The Psychology of MLM.
Direct selling companies, like Vantel Pearls, use highly sophisticated psychological strategies to make people fall in love with the opportunity. They cultivate an emotional bond that binds the Consultants to the company.
Because it is an emotional bond, many Consultants and prospective consultants cannot see they are being manipulated to buy over-priced products.
When you keep a record of your expenses and the time you spend trying to make your Vantel Pearls business work, you can see through the emotional fog and break free.
The Vantel Pearls Compensation Plan.
The Vantel Pearls Compensation Plan is NOT a legal document. It’s a marketing piece designed to create the illusion of an opportunity where there is none.
If you read the Vantel Pearls Compensation Plan and the Vantel Pearls Opportunity Brochure 2019, you will probably believe the company is offering you a real opportunity. It’s not.
These documents are hypothetical.
Vantel Pearls Compensation Plan and the Vantel Pearls Opportunity Brochure 2019 show you what you MIGHT achieve if you jump through enough hoops and buy enough Vantel Pearls products.
The Vantel Pearls Compensation Plan has 8 levels.
A traditional direct selling company, the kind door-to-door salesmen worked for has only had 4 levels at the most.
Four levels are all a company needs to conquer the world.
When a direct selling company has more than four levels, it favors the company at the expense of the salesperson.
With so many levels, the commission earned from a sale is shared with all the levels above it, even when the top levels had nothing to do with the transaction.
With so many levels, it’s impossible to earn a living income from just retails sales because the commission on each transaction must be shared.
A Consultant is forced to build a sales team if they want to make a substantial income.
Also, with 8 levels, like Vantel Pearls has, it makes the base of the sales organization extremely wide.
This results in thousands of rank and file Consultants being forced to share their commissions with a few professional marketers at the top of the organization.
The Vantel Pearls Income Disclosure.
What you need to see to determine if the Vantel Pearls’ opportunity is real or not is the Vantel Pearls Income Disclosure or Earning Disclosure.
This Disclosure would show you what Vantel Pearls Consultants actually earned. Vantel Pearls has this information, but it is not sharing it.
I think we know why.
Vantel Pearls Products.
Although Vantel Pearls claims to be a luxury goods & jewelry company, its products are costume jewelry made with cheap cultured pearls.
According to an article on BuzzFeed, industry experts claim the way Vantel’s party hosts appraise the pearls is nonsense. They are over-pricing the value of Vantel’s cheap grades of pearl that sell elsewhere for less than a dollar.
The same article states that Vantel is selling cheap, commercially farmed freshwater pearls, which have been inserted into saltwater oyster shells.
A customer cited in the Buzzfeed article
took a Vantel pearl necklace, for which she paid $94, to a local jeweler to be appraised. The jeweler said the necklace was worth about $8 and the pearl was worth only pennies.
There are many complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau about how cheap the Vantel products are.
A complaint on the BBB, says Vantel products are a “waste of money.”
Another claim says, “jewelry is poor quality.”
Cheap Pearls
Massive Competition.
There was a period where Pearl Parties were successful on Facebook. Other MLMs held parties on Facebook too.
Then Facebook changed its logarithm.
As a Vantel Pearls Consultant, you will not have a protected territory. This too is typical of MLM and enforces the concept that every Consultant is actually a customer.
MLMs like Vantel Pearls want you to believe you can sell to the world. You can’t.
Every time you recruit someone into your organization, you create competition for yourself.
And, if that isn’t enough, there are dozens of other jewelry MLMs trying to recruit people too.
Anyone can get better pearl jewelry for less on Amazon.
Pearls are available online for under $10.
Competing Jewelry MLMs.
- 1Avon
- 2Younique
- 3Traci Lynn
- 4Park Lane Jewelry
- 5Stella and Dot
- 6Bead for Life
- 7Nikken
- 8Touchstone Crystal
- 9Compelling Creations
- 10Bella Shaye
- 11Premier Designs
- 12Sabika Jewelry
- 13Azuli Skye
- 14Chloe+Isabel
- 15Lilla Rose
- 16Endless Expressions
- 17Paparazzi Accessories
- 18Just Jewelry
- 19Fifth Avenue Collection
- 20Trades of Hope
Is Vantel Pearls a Failure of Ethics?
As mentioned earlier, Vantel Pearls is a member of the Direct Selling Association.
The DSA was founded in 1910 to represent companies that marketed directly to consumers, such as the original Fuller Brush Company and the Hoover Vacuum Company.
Beginning in the 1940s, direct selling began to change, with many companies adopting the multi-level marketing business model.
Now, the DSA represents mostly MLMs.
Perhaps to build credibility in an industry that appears ethically challenged, the DSA requires its members to adhere to a Code of Ethics.
However, the DSA does not enforce this Code, and many of its members ignore it. This is the case of Vantel Pearls.
In the bottom right corner of the Vantel Pearls website, you’ll see a link to the DSA Code of Ethics. While this at first might seem impressive, the truth is Vantel Pearls ignores the Code of Ethics.
Much of its behavior as a company is questionable.
If you followed the link to the DSA Code of Ethics and scroll down to Section A, Para. 8 Earnings Representations, you’ll see that a member of DSA must provide enough information about its opportunity for someone to determine the potential for earning an income.
Contrary to the DSA Code of Ethics, Vantel Pearls withholds this information.
Without an Earning Disclosure, it is impossible to evaluate the Vantel Pearls opportunity.
Is Vantel Pearls a Typical MLM?
Many MLM members of the DSA do publish an Earning Disclosure, although I have yet to find one that does not fudge the numbers.
Reading over the Vantel Pearls Compensation Plan and the promises made on the company’s website, it appears that it’s just another MLM.
Vantel Pearls promises opportunity and empowerment but seems to deliver over-priced trinkets and false hope.
As an MLM, the Vantel Pearls game is rigged against the Consultants.
As we’ve seen, the Vantel Pearls Consultants are actually the customers.
Like every other MLM, 99% of the sales force will lose money. Meanwhile, Vantel Pearls earns revenues of $7 Million a year.
There is no evidence to suggest that Vantel Pearls is anything other than a typical MLM.
Meet Tracey Coenen, CPA.
The unfortunate truth about MLM is becoming more common, thanks to the internet and the work of people like Tracey Coenen, Dr. Jon Taylor, and Robert L. Fitzpatrick.
Tracey L. Coenen, a forensic accountant, specializing in corporate fraud, is a long-time critic of the MLM industry. Her insights and analysis are essential to understanding how Vantel Pearls operates.
She wrote the book, Expert Fraud Investigation published by Wiley & Sons and Essentials of Corporate Fraud.
An article on her website, SequenceInc.com, borrows on the work of Dr. Jon Taylor. In it, she makes the following critical points about MLM and the damage it can cause.
Read the full article, How Does MLM Affect People?
Meet Dr. Jon Taylor, Ph.D.
Although Vantel Pearls does not publish the information we need to properly research its opportunity, we can use the work of Dr. Jon Taylor, Ph.D.
In 2011, Dr. Taylor published his analysis of the top 300 MLMs in North America. This was the most extensive MLM study of its kind and proved there was not a genuine opportunity within the MLM industry.
The results of the Taylor study are available on the Federal Trade Commission website.
Taylor determined that, on average, it costs an MLM Distributor/Consultant about $2,500 a year to operate an active business.
Taylor’s research shows that approximately 99.6% of people who try an MLM “opportunity,” like Vantel Pearls, LOST MONEY!
Because Vantel Pearls refuses to reveal how much its Consultants earn, we can safely conclude it is no better than the industry average.
MLM is Dying.
Multi-level marketing is a horribly outdated business model.
It has never been fair to the little guy, but back in the 1940s, when it started, MLM made sense, sort of.
That was 80 years ago. Back then, most homes didn’t have a telephone, and there were few opportunities.
All that has changed.
We have the internet now, and the truth about MLM is getting out.
People are discovering that MLM is not really an opportunity and that most people lose money when they try it.
For the past few years, MLM growth has flatlined in North America.
If you join Vantel Pearls, you’ll be tying your fate to a dying industry.
The Last Word on Vantel Pearls.
After reading this article, if you still want to try Vantel Pearls, keep a record of how much you spend on your business and the hours you spend on it too.
With any business, the objective is to make a profit. If you’re not doing that, and there’s not potential to make a profit, cut your losses.
As an MLM, Vantel Pearls has a highly sophisticated marketing machine. It’s understandable how someone could fall for it.
Watching a Pearl Party online is mesmerizing. It seems to play on a primal desire to find something valuable.
Also, the more badly you need to change your life, the more vulnerable you will be to the Vantel Pearls sales pitch.
But MLM and cheap pearls are not the way to build a new life for yourself.
Believe it or not, the best opportunity of your life is staring you in the face right now.
A Real Opportunity.
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Suggested Reading:
- Why Affiliate Marketing is Better than MLM.
- The Heartbreak of MLM.
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