Is Younique worth the hype? Full review

Younique is a network-marketing based company that specializes in high-fashion makeup products.

It’s targeted towards women who want a full makeup and cosmetic solution, buying all of their products (or most of them, at least) from the same source.

The retail model is based around hosting social events, and as such is centered more on individual sales than it is on building a downline of distributors.

So did I get on board? This explains everything:

All good? Let’s continue…

When it comes to popularity, Younique is in a pretty good spot.  Search engine traffic over the past five years shows a trend typical for a company with steady, sustained growth.  

There are no rapid, hyper-explosive periods of growth; just a long, upwards trend.  Search engine traffic is a tad lower than its peak, but this likely reflects the degree of market penetration Younique has achieved.  

It’s still a reasonably popular brand, and doesn’t seem to be cratering when it comes to name recognition.

Products

If you are selling Younique products, you’ve pretty much got to a) be a woman and b) know your way around cosmetics.  It’s unlikely you’ll be able to rack up enough sales to earn reasonable commissions through selling one or two products to your customers.  

Younique’s Touch foundation, for example, retails for $32.  With a 20% discount as an entry level sales associate, you aren’t looking at a whole lot of income.  However, if you can sell a foundation, and a concealer, and a blush, and so on, you’ll be looking at much better sales numbers.

Because of this, however, you’ll need to know the products inside out, so you can demonstrate what types of effects you can achieve with the different products.  As such, you’ll have to switch to using Younique as your primary cosmetics supplier, so there’s a substantial up-front investment of time and money.

Though Younique focuses solely on cosmetics, if you name a product category, they definitely carry it.  Younique sells moisturizers, bronzers, toners, masks, cloths, brushes, and pretty much everything else you’d need when it comes to makeup.  

This “broad specialization” gives it an advantage over companies that sell supplements and also dabble in cosmetics, or only make a small, exclusive selection of a few cosmetic products.

Compensation plan

Because it’s primarily based on network marketing, the focus is less on amassing an army of downline distributors.  The first few levels as an affiliate don’t even require you to recruit anybody else.  

The focus of the plan is more on accumulating high lifetime sales volumes.

To join, you need to purchase a $99 startup kit.  From here, you need to maintain 125 product volume of sales over three months to remain active and eligible for your 20% wholesale discount.

Once you’ve racked up 1000 product volume in lifetime sales, your discount bumps up to 25%.  To start earning commissions, you need to double your rolling three-month sales to 250 product volume, plus accumulate 2000 lifetime sales volume.  

From here, you are able to recruit a downline distributor and earn 3% commission.  The number of people in your downline, and your commission rates, can grow as you move up, but the volume requirements continue to grow very steeply.

As a result, the most realistic option for earnings, at least in your first several months as a Younique distributor, is to build your own network of repeat customers and rack up lifetime sales volume.  

Your earnings will be pretty much completely from retail discount profit, so you’ll have to crunch some numbers to see if you are okay with the income stream that this can generate.  

It’s a nice side hustle, but the difficulty of establishing a large downline and a multi-tier structure of distribution makes it hard to move up.  No income disclosure statement is available, which isn’t the greatest sign.  

Recap

Younique offers a total solution for cosmetics, but there are some important points to consider before you jump in.  First, to be an effective sales representative, you’ll need to know how to use (and demonstrate the use of) a wide range of Younique’s products.  

So, you’ll need to switch to them being your primary or sole cosmetics product company, and you’ll have to take the time to familiarize yourself with the range of products they offer.  This is going to be a significant time and cost investment, though the knowledge and skills you acquire could be transplanted to other makeup and cosmetic MLMs if you so desire.  

Second, the only realistic way to earn money as a distributor is through repeat direct customers through you.  The compensation structure is such that it’s very tough to build a large downline, so your earnings are probably going to come from retail profit.  

The tricky part about adding on a downline distributor to your network is that they could start to eat into your potential market share, and since that distributor has to accumulate 2,000 sales volume before being eligible for an additional downline, it seems almost impossible to climb up the ladder.

So, get out the spreadsheets: it’ll take some number crunching to see if you can realistically move enough in actual dollar sales to earn an acceptable income level.  

This is probably not something to quit your main job for, for several reasons.  Not the least of which is that you’ll need to invest a large sum of money into sampling all of Younique’s products so you can eventually sell them.

Look, if you’re going the MLM route simply for the money, there are better ways to kill your day job.

You might like our coaching because it shows you the good life without selling beauty products to your family and friends.

http://bodynutrition.org/younique-review/