Industry News

Reinventing Yourself:
Changing Course to Stay Charged Up
by Barbara Seale

Emmitt Smith did it. So did Al Gore. And Madonna did it more times than we can remember. They reinvented themselves, making changes that caused the public to perceive them in a different way. Emmitt, Al and Madonna did what direct selling companies have long known that they had to do—take a new direction to stay fresh in the marketplace.

Direct sellers don’t bounce from gridiron to ballroom, switch song styles or zoom in on a specific interest, but they have taken steps as big as changing their company name or taking their show on the road to signal strongly to their consultants and customers that, hey, this isn’t your mother’s direct selling company any more.

Whether their products are cosmetics, clothing or home décor, executives at the party plan companies interviewed by Direct Selling News said that periodic changes, whether large or small, are essential to their companies’ health.

Adding Fuel to the Fire

BeautiControl President Kristi Hubbard explains that her company must stay abreast of consumer and marketplace trends so the skincare, spa and cosmetics company remains successful and relevant. “We live in a high-tech world, and change is constant,” she says. “As a company, BeautiControl is always looking to have state-of-the-art products, programs and offerings so consultants and clients don’t have to go elsewhere. Our reputation as a company has been built on being innovative. We’re dedicated to giving women the best product offerings and life-changing opportunities. To be able to do that, you have to anticipate the needs of women—where they are at any particular time.”

Other company leaders agreed. Cari Christopher, Signature HomeStyles Vice President of Sales and Marketing, says, “It’s important to keep the excitement going. You always need change and excitement to stay engaged, no matter whether it’s in your office job or your business. As a company, it helps us grow and attract new customers, hostesses and representatives to our business.” Signature HomeStyles offers a line of stylish home-decorating and organizing items through in-home product demonstrations called Idea Shows.

Like Signature HomeStyles, Weekenders introduces new products twice a year. It offers easy-care, mix-and-match fashions that allow women to build a wardrobe of dozens of looks with as few as 10 articles of clothing. “For any company to continue to succeed, it is important to have a product that appeals to as broad a market as possible,” says Weekenders President Rosemary Redmond. “But for a party plan company, it’s particularly important that you are attracting people into the salesforce from a broad market—specifically, the next generation. For the longevity of the company, you need to constantly be bringing in the next generation and mentoring and training them so the company is vital and alive. Product is key in that endeavor.”

New and updated products are important to The Longaberger Company, but the family-owned company is in the thick of transforming itself. While honoring its heritage, it has adopted a unique, new strategy. “People respond when we build things,” says company President Jim Klein. The company’s craftsmen build its signature products, a line of usable and collectable handcrafted baskets, which are complemented by other home and lifestyle products including pottery, wrought iron, fabric accessories, jewelry and specialty foods. When Klein joined The Longaberger Company in January 2006, he expanded the company’s tradition of building products into a “destination strategy,” complete with building new facilities and a traveling Longaberger Homestead. “When we built our headquarters in the shape of a basket, it got people going,” he says. “We opened a Factory Store and got everyone’s attention. It got people excited, even thrilled about the business. When you see buses lined up at our venues on the weekend, it’s amazing—happy people with shopping bags having a great time. If you do a fun thing, that’s how you make the most money.”

Sticking to Their Knitting

As direct sellers seek ways to stoke the excitement fires in consultants and customers, they know, too, that they must maintain focus on their core business. Reinventing themselves isn’t the same thing as creating a new company, so executives leverage their businesses’ unique features to keep their companies and opportunities fresh.

The Longaberger Company President Jim Klein says that when he joined the company his job became to connect two distinct elements of the company: direct selling and destinations. In doing so, he found a way to increase income for the company and its consultants.

The company created a traveling Longaberger destination that it takes on the road about once a month, complete with basket-making artisans and the full Longaberger story. When visitors purchase products through the traveling exhibit, their purchases create additional consultant income in two ways. First, the company makes every effort to link each purchase to a consultant, so if a visitor already has a relationship with a Longaberger consultant, the consultant earns income from the sale. Second, if the customer doesn’t have a consultant, the commission is put into a pool and paid to the field based on its performance. The traveling show partners with other businesses such as John Deere, Jelly Belly and the Henry Ford Museum, as well as with great destinations like Colonial Williamsburg. Consultants can earn income through home shows, destination events, and—starting this month—through online sales. “Our e-commerce site isn’t just a catalog online,” Klein says. “It includes rich stories about our craft and multimedia options that create a Longaberger guest experience. So now our consultants can earn in 3-D: in-home, on site and online.”

BeautiControl leverages its exclusive formulas, which it creates and controls, in everything it does, and it constantly looks for ways to simplify how its consultants do business. “We listen to our field and what they want,” company President Kristi Hubbard says. “And who better to ask what the customer wants than the customer herself? So we’ve begun offering online tools to help customers order and consultants track their businesses. Our online tools let directors and leaders track sales, units, recruits, parties—she can work her business at her fingertips in the least possible amount of time. Ultimately, our business is not at the computer, so we try to simplify the application so a consultant can spend the least possible amount of time administratively working her business. We want to do everything we can to update, simplify and to be unbelievably bold in our offerings and unbelievably easy to do business with. For women today, time is a precious commodity. We respect that by giving them the most updated technology and products.”

Bold Steps

Few companies go so far as to construct a headquarters building shaped like its core product, but companies never lack creativity as they seek solutions to stagnation. Signature HomeStyles took one of the biggest steps possible—it changed its name. Twice. When the company was founded in 1971, it was known as Wicker World Enterprises. As decorating trends changed, and the company grew and expanded its product line, it later renamed itself The HomeMaker’s Idea Company. In November 2005 it adopted its current name.

“It was time for a name that better reflected today’s environment and who we are as a company,” Christopher says. “We had discussed it internally for a number of years, and then the idea started to come from the field. I don’t think we would have done it if the field hadn’t brought it up. Our top-level leaders were involved in focus groups and helped come up with the name. Our field leaders were the first to know about the name change. Then we announced it to the full field in a special meeting in a convention-style format.”

At the same time, Christopher says, they knew that a name change wasn’t enough. “We were looking to change our image, so we knew we needed to introduce new products as well.” So the company introduced the award-winning Wall Wizard System®, a collection of mix-and-match frames and inserts. “Today’s consumer likes to create her own style and customize her decorating. The Wall Wizard System went over very well. It’s been a very good product for us.”

Leading the Pack

BeautiControl clients have come to depend on their consultants not just for products, but for a unique experience also. “We’ve always been in the forefront of providing value-added service in our parties,” Hubbard says. “Our heritage was a free color analysis. In 2003, we introduced an in-home spa experience we call Spa Escapes.” Now included in the BeautiControl Spa Escapes experience is an introduction to a new product, a hand-spa collection called Show of Hands. The line includes a paraffin treatment, age-spot treatment, cuticle pen and overnight hand treatment. “It’s a way of refreshing our party with innovative products,” Hubbard says. “We’ve taken a complicated and expensive day-spa process and simplified it. We offer it to our customers so they can do it in the privacy of their home and at a more affordable price.” Hubbard says consultants and clients have embraced the new products. “They have the best looking hands in town,” she says. She also notes that the hand-spa treatment is typical of changes the company makes. “If we change, we do it to update and simplify.”

Hubbard says that BeautiControl is known not for following trends but for setting them. So the company reinvented a direct-selling tradition: the car program. “In an industry where lease-car programs were standard, we awarded the car keys—cars, title and ownership of a red Ford Mustang convertible. We’ve always been bold in our offerings and always will be.”

Hubbard says that the introduction of the Mustang Leadership Program is her favorite memory of a successful innovation. “The Mustang is ageless,” she says. “It’s everybody’s dream car. When we announced that we would award the car with keys and title to directors who achieve their goals for the program, it was an unbelievable award. But we have 600 of them on the road today, so believe it!”

Joyous Innovation

Weekenders’ Redmond says that the company recently innovated its way to success in several ways, but the introduction of the Joy Collection was a strategic move that has paid off big time, expanding the demographic of the company’s clients and coordinators.

“When I started the company in the States in the late ’80s, all our initial coordinators were in their 20s and 30s,” Redmond says. “We designed for that market, and those are the age groups they recruited and sold to. We continued to design for them as they aged. But we realized that we had to look at another market. Their children were coming of age, but they were looking at Weekenders as clothes their mothers wore. Their moms looked beautiful, but the clothes weren’t outfits the daughters would wear. So we needed to design a different line to attract that market. We learned that you are not only designing for the market segment you’re selling to, but you’re also constantly looking for the next market coming along.”

Introducing the Joy Collection. With clothing that is more fitted and modern, the new label targeted Gen Xers and is offered in the same catalog and home shows as the Weekenders Collection. But the company got a pleasant surprise it hadn’t counted on. Gen Xers and baby boomers purchased clothing from both lines. The company also experienced a dramatic shift in recruiting.

“Until 18 months ago most recruits were baby boomers,” Redmond says. “But now 50 percent of the women being recruited into Weekenders are between 25 and 45. Our target market feedback from younger women is that they came in because of the Joy Collection.”

Redmond didn’t count on the baby boomers’ reaction, though. “We introduced the Joy Collection to appeal to the next generation, but the people who got so excited were the baby boomers. You know how everyone’s saying that 50 is the new 30, and 60 is the new 40? And there’s a great expression that baby boomers won’t know they’re dead until an hour after they’re in Heaven. We pride ourselves that we don’t look like our mothers. We want to look sassy and sharp. It tickled me so much at the first conference to see baby boomers wearing the Joy Collection and feeling so good about themselves. Even women who weren’t as trim as they were in their 30s were wearing these new, youthful styles and feeling sassy and sexy.”

Keep It Simple

As direct sellers refresh their offerings—whether it’s their products, their incentives or their business tools—some have learned that simplicity is the key to creating changes that their salesforce will embrace.

“Most of our coordinators are women who have full-time jobs but need more money, so they look for a direct selling business,” Weekenders’ Redmond says. “To attract them, not only is it necessary to have an appealing product, it also has to be a simple, easy business that fits into their lifestyles. Last year we started shipping clothes directly to customers instead of having hostesses deliver them. And we now have online ordering. Both decisions have saved our fashion coordinators hours of time. Now a hostess only has to put on a pot of coffee and open a box of cookies. Then she and her friends can have a fun time together trying on great clothes. Anything we can do to make this business fit seamlessly into their lives is attractive and causes them to want to choose our opportunity.”

Cari Christopher says that Signature HomeStyles has learned to introduce change in small steps. “The biggest failure we’ve had was when we introduced too much change at once,” she says. “It complicates things for our busy representatives and leads to inaction.” She notes that being a woman-owned, woman-run business helps the company’s executives make appropriate decisions for their mostly female salesforce. “In a business that is geared toward women, we walk in their shoes,” she says. “We know what it’s like to come home from your job, throw dinner together and do a show that evening. So one of the big focuses of the company is finding and maintaining the balance among career, family and household.”

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