USANA - Legitimate Or Scam
84Does USANA Benefit at the Expense of Others?
Recently I was asked to join USANA through a friend of mine. USANA a publicly traded vitamin company is a vitamin distribution based business (NASDAQ: USNA). USANA produces nutritional and skincare products. Being weary of this (because there are so many pyramid schemes out there) I did some research of the company. USANA claims to have the "highest rated supplements in the world." "Number #1 best home based business.
"The highest payout percentage." All these "BEST" and "Number #1" really made it feel like this is legit and awesome business wanting to help ME! out. Since this business has been around since 1992, Why haven't i even heard of these products? Or why haven't i seen so many millionaires boasting USANA? Maybe it's a best kept secret.... I wanted to do my homework on this "great earning potential product" to see if it was really worth investing in.
I am in no way affiliated with USANA nor am i trying to prove or disprove any USANA distributor results. I am also in no way stating that USANA products "do" or "do not" work. This is only a hub about my research about the company USANA.
I started my search on Google Search engine by typing "USANA PYRAMID SCHEME" "USANA SCAM" "USANA VITAMIN SCHEME" and throughout these searches I really could not find any conclusive data. A lot of my research directed me to others distribution sites, or YouTube videos about others who made killings, as well as USANA slammers who then tried convincing viewers their business was better. I went to Google Image Search and punched in "USANA Commission" which produced their compensation plan. USANA Compensation Plan was one tool i located in my research. Looks like one of those Multi-Level Marketing business. Most MLMs are pyramid schemes.
Multi-Level Marketing or network marketing is a marketing term to describe some companies overall marketing strategy. This usual means there is a hierarchy of compensation through levels, these companies usually form a pyramid (where have I heard that term before...). Most of these companies don't have any directly hired sales force.
USANA claims to have the "highest rated supplements in the world." On the USANA website on the bottom left corner it declares "USANA Nutritionals were named the best of the best when compared to 1,500 other products." When i clicked on this link expecting to see some side by side comparisons of competitors and quotes, however I did not see any of this. So instead the site directed me to something better than this, their products page.... When i went on Google and searched "USANA Highest Rated Supplements." I navigated through 5 pages of Google sites and the outcome was no content supporting the rating of the supplements nor where it had sprouted from.
USANA has been "#1 Ranked Home-Based Business." Wow Number 1 Home-based business, after a nice click, again disappointment of a biased review. I was taken to yet again another one of the USANA.com site pages known as "opportunities." There was some pretty sweet edited videos about financial freedom. I do like the editing quality of the videos. I do admit i didn't even finish one of the videos, but on the 5 videos i did watch all i saw was the success stories of people just like "us." Wow 100%, looks like all these videos are showing people who have made it in the making money biz. WRONG! An article from Articlebase, states "97% of the hopeful people who join this industry end up failing." Hmm 3%, if only USANA showed the videos of all the people who failed, I don't think they would have enough web space... However back to Ranked #1, at the bottom of the site there is a little circle with a "1" in the middle. It directs you to the MLM Insider magazine website. No offense but this site looks like a Garage Sale. The site did not even have a search bar to try and find any USANA rankings. It did not look like a viable source for others to gain trust in the "next trillion dollar industry" business.
Lastly USANA boasts "highest payout percentage of profitable reporting companies in the industry. See why USANA has been voted Distributor Choice 'Best Company' in NetWork Marketing Today & The MLM Insider Magazine for 10 years!" Wow highest payout percentages of the MLM industry, confidence is definitely within arms reach. Highest payout comes at a high price. The "profit" is to everyone from top to bottom, maybe it starts out as a high profit but when it trickles down it really does not add up to much. In the end the top is always on top and profiting at your expense. Seeking Alpha has an article, Is USANA Health Sciences a Fraud? stating "for USANA, the top 3% of distributors make 70% of the commissions."
Bottom line is although I never could prove whether or not USANA was a Scam. As an interested investor, all the information that USANA is boasting I could not locate on my own. Before investing in this company definitely do homework on how to market these products and to whom you are going to sell to. You only have so many friends and family members. "A 28 day supply of premium vitamins sells at GNC for $17 and USANA’s premium multivitamin 'Essentials' sells for $40", which was claimed on this site. Over 100% more than GNC's product is crazy, which might be one of the reasons it stays an MLM product instead of on the shelves of a nutritional store chain. I am sure there is a way to get rich off these products, however is it worth the high cost of 97% failure among others. The pyramid is only grand at the top, and at the lovely expense of others failures. I Will Not Be Joining the USANA Home Based Business.
Here are Some Additional Reads on USANA:
Wall St. Confidential: Barry Minkow Attacks USANA
Usana runs into problems with the IRS and Others
USANA named in Pyramid Lawsuit
The 10 Big Lies of Multi-Level Marketing
USANA Health Sciences and Minkow settle lawsuit - a sad day for free speech
During my research I never found out what USANA stood for.
CommentsLoading...
I use the Usana skincare, but I am not a business owner. There is actually a book out there which has compared 1,500 vitamins in the world and rated Usana as #1. (completely unattached to Usana I might add). I forget what it's called, but can find out if you're interested.
Most businesses will boast about things, and sometimes in an over the top or deceiving way. I know for a fact Amway used to say their vitamins were #1, but this book rated them as one of the lowest in the world. Goes to show research is definitely the way to go!!
97% of failure not in Usana. The percentage covers the scam one as well. I recommend that u do success percentage on Usana alone.
Also, try search 'USNA' on businessweek and forbes, u wil find that Usana is a hot growth company and best small company. Scam couldn't get quoted on those mags.
And, try get a book called comparative guide to nutritional supplements, u will find the answer why Usana products is the highest rated in term of its ingredients.
Thanks.
I think there is a conflict of interest here because Lyle Macwilliam basically hired a USANA distributor to perform the research for a book that ranks USANA #1 while trying to portray itself as an independent source of information regarding the nutrition industry. Gregg was also Co-Owner of NutriSearch at one point in time. Currently, he is only considered as a consultant. Although, when contacting NutriSearch, their replies to me also carbon copied Gregg at a NutriSearch email account. I'm not aware of companies giving their consultants email accounts.
As copied from http://www.usanawatchdog.blogspot.com/
Randy 16 months ago
You are right about the difference in price for a multi vitamin with GNC vs USANA, however get a Nutrisearch (a vitamin comparitive guide, not affiliated with any one company) and see what you actually pay for. Compare both Vitamins and see are you really getting a better deal with GNC. I was shocked looking and learning what I did not know. Just education. Also get a PDR (Physicians Desk Reference). Not all things that claim to be a multi vitamin are a multi vitamin, or are even official vitamins. Things that I had to learn for myself. Then make an educated decision.