MonaVie is Embarrassed by Their Income Disclosure Statement?

This is pretty shady. But then again the entire idea of preaching about the acai and refusing to disclose how much is actually in the bottle is pretty shady too.

I am also not a big fan of the way income disclosures are prepared. There needs to be a greater distinction between the people who join to buy at wholesale and those who join to build a business.
According to their own statement 87% of the people filling out the distributor agreement are doing it to get the discount pricing. Look at the top 13% on the disclaimer (roughly the star 500’s and above) who come in and build the business make money.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK PEOPLE! Monavie is not profitable!

Monavie Business Structure
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Monavie pays a team commission of 10% of PV on the smallest leg when a distributor becomes active/qualifies. And in order to be active for team commissions, a distributor needs to buy 1-case at $130.

With this in mind, a distributor buys 1-case (4 bottles) for $130. They have 13 distributors buying 1-case (at $130/mo) for 100 PV which creates 1300 PV on the smallest leg. 10% of 1300 PV is $130…the one distributor breaks even.

Therefore, a minimum of 26 distributors are needed to buy a case free and clear per month, and at least 13 need to be on the smallest leg ordering 100 PV.

26 distributors = 1 case (your profit $130)[that's if all 26 are buying a case per month from you]
52 distributors = 2 cases (your profit $260)[that's if all 52 are buying a case per month from you])
104 distributors = 3 cases (your profit $520))[that's if all 104 are buying a case per month from you]

Needing 26 people below you ordering 100 PV (at $130/mo) to be profitable is a tough road for the average distributor, and the mathematics aren’t adding up into getting new distributors in to profit quickly.

Monavie Sales Figures
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Monavie uses “alternative marketing” or what’s known as “Back Door Marketing” in where Monavie gets all their money upfront when they sell a case and you are stuck with the product to sell, as opposed to a real distributor where you sell a company’s product with no money upfront and earn a commission. So in all reality a Monavie distributor is nothing more than a customer. [excerpt Monavie ID statement: individuals who executed a MonaVie Distributor Application and Agreement are considered wholesale customers]

So now let’s get into money. According to Monavie’s marketing sheet the average case profit is $30.

1 case (4 bottles) divided by $30 = $7.50 profit per bottle. and that doesnt even include shipping, traveling, and business expenses!

Alternatively if you divide the average hours per month required to sell Monavie as mentioned on their pamphlet it’s 32 hours.

So let’s say you sell a case a month.

32 hours of labor divided by $30 = $1 an hour. So in essence a Monavie distributor makes an average of $1 an hour. That’s less than minimum wage! and that doesnt even include shipping, traveling, and business expenses!

Or you could take it from Monavie’s own statistics that the average income of distributors is $3.75 a week. See link below.

http://www.sequenceinc.com/fraudfiles/2008/10/29/massive-monavie-distributors-losses-demonstrated-with-the-companys-own-numbers/

No matter which way you do the math it doesnt work out, and that’s if you can even find people to buy $40 a bottle juice in a market where people rarely are even buying $40 wine!

Do you see that is a pyramid scheme? Everyone has to get everyone down the line to buy more so they can get their juice for free. It turns out to not work. Look at the Income Disclosure Statement, and you can see that some 85% are working 300 hours a year or 37.5 full time working days (nearly two months of full-time work) for their “free juice.”

That is true that a preferred customer isn’t a distributor. I thought you meant distributor there. I’m new to this “preferred customer” terminology that MonaVie is using as they didn’t use in the two previous years that I looked at it.

So going back to it from a preferred customer standpoint… You are saying “If you are getting 2 cases a month than you get 5 preferred customers getting 2 cases a month.” So I have to find 5 people dumb enough to spend $240 (a fair estimate of what 2 cases a month costs?) a month on juice that is not thirst quenching (too small a serving size)? That’s the cost of a car lease for some cars. It’s not easy convincing a family that they should give you nearly $3000 a year. For that kind of dough, you need to show that it without a shadow of a doubt much, much better than any juice out there. For that price a smart consumer will want real scientifically proven evidence it’s better than anything else on the market. If you want to make a career of asking smart consumers to spend $3,000 a year on the product, you either better be good at providing the evidence (none of which exists to my knowledge), or use much of the misinformation that we’ve seen around here like acai has “protein profile of an egg.” Whether that’s true or not doesn’t matter as MonaVie actually has 0 grams of protein in it.

The pyramid scheme then comes in when those preferred customers realize that you are getting your juice for free and decide they don’t want to spend $2880 a year either. So they realize that they just need to become a distributor as well. Now they need to find 5 more people.

I’ve responded with my motivations way too many times. Read my article here, where I only try to find out more information on MonaVie. Then read The Consumerist article giving an unbiased account of how they tried to bully me around with lawyers, because I’m (with massive help of some others) are just putting the basic truth out there.

That truths is:
- There is no evidence that there’s an exceptional health benefit in this juice… or that this juice is any more healthy than other much cheaper juices out there.
- The juice is priced at an exceptional cost
- Distributors are lining their pockets with lies and misinformation (whether intentional or not is not my concern).

How is this helpful to fellow Man?

No protein in this label – http://static.lazymanandmoney.com/MonaVie.jpg

Are you going claim that isn’t a MonaVie label? If you are to claim that it’s not a current label, can you direct me to the nutritional information on MonaVie’s official site? I couldn’t find it the last time I looked.

“How do you get people to spend $240 a month on cigarettes?”

Make them think that it’s cool by having movie stars smoke them and once they are addicted to nicotine, they can’t stop. I have never met a smoker who hasn’t regretted starting smoking. Stopping smoking is a cause worth my while, but I’d be preaching to the choir. Unfortunately, no amount of words I write are going to overpower someone’s addiction. Fortunately, to my knowledge there are no addictive properties in MonaVie (at least not yet!), so a logical argument still has some weight.

Plus, most major brands of cigarettes are priced near each other. There isn’t one brand claiming to be super-healthy and charging a 10x-20x premium to all other cigarettes. You can be sure that if that kind of thing happens, I’ll start a blog against that brand and say, “Hey, smoking isn’t cool and it isn’t healthy. It’s not a good financial decision either. However, this company is clearly lying about the health benefits as all the tests show, and they are duping you into paying 10x more than the already expensive cigarettes. Do something worthwhile and just put the money directly in a charity instead of making that company rich with misinformation and lies.”

“Someone that is drinking 3 sodas a day is spending what it cost to drink Monavie.”

I wish you’d have read all the comments here before you make the same argument that has been addressed time and time again. I’m not going advocate that soda is healthy… it’s not. However, a 2-liter of Sam’s Choice soda is 76 cents at Wal-Mart (in one of the expenses in the country to live, Silicon Valley). This is more than 3 sodas a day. I don’t think MonaVie comes in at 50 cents a day. If it does, then it’s getting closer to being on par. However, the other comparison is that that 3 sodas is 36 ounces of thirst quenching beverage. Who has ever quenched their thirst with 2-4 ounces of fruit juice? You are comparing apples and oranges here.

Are the people drinking MonaVie healthier or do they just “Feel it”? You use the that “Feel it” quite a lot, in that paragraph. Sounds like someone needs and education in what a placebo is. Did you know that a bunch of college kids can “Feel” the effects of being drunk on non-alcoholic beer.

I’ll keep hating while you keep on trying to suppress the truth so that you can line your pockets with people’s hard earned cash. Sounds like neither of us are going to stop.

I don’t think people run into convenience stores three times a day. If they do, then I think they need to spend more time examining their spending. (Of course this applies to average people of average income or even those above it and not people who make millions, who have graduated beyond typical personal finance advice).

I don’t just have doctors that say that say that MonaVie is worthless. I have common sense (i.e. processed fruit juice can’t be better than eating fruit) and scientific studies that prove MonaVie lacks nutrition…

So doctors, common sense, and scientific tests… of course they are wastes of time and The Rest of the Story doesn’t really address any of them very well. It’s a good try, but I’m not surprised the he takes his ball and goes home.

Yeah the fact that Dean Edell is syndicated nationally in 90 markets really speaks how low-valued his opinions are (note the sarcasm).

Dean Edell is unbiased unlike MonaVie’s Doctors and Advisors. Are you going to take someone’s word who has nothing to gain or someone who is trying to sell more $45 bottles of juice? Clearly you go with the unbiased nationally syndicated doctor.

If you have proof that the other juices paid money to rank higher in the Men’s Journal / Chromadex study, then come out with it. If you do not it’s just conjecture on your part.

Even if one of the juices wanted to pay off Men’s Health, they’d have the problem of trying to pay off an independent lab like Chromadex.

Another problem is that MonaVie’s own Dr. Schauss’ tests came to the same conclusions of the Men’s Journal/Chromadex tests.

Which particular point am I wrong about? Do you have evidence to back up why you think I am wrong?

It never enhances a debate to make statements such as these. I will delete comments that don’t enhance the debate in the future.

Hey folks,

Although I can see how you can look at Monavie as a pyramid scam, I must humbly disagree at claim.

Basically, Monavie is taking a (so called) stand alone product, and selling it to the health/wellness market through direct sales of its distributors. The product sales are always at the consumer level (for both distributor and consumer alike). Whether you’ve got hundreds of people in your downline or not, the commissions are always payed out per qualified volume of product purchased per week (Monavie pays weekly). It does not matter how the structure works (binary, unilevel, etc.) as that is not what makes the company a pyramid, or a scam. What I believe makes a company a pyramid scam is that there would be major incentive to recruit others and not to move (sell) product. If all that company does is recruit and not move any product or service, than I would stay away from it! Just because a juice is expensive, or that the compensation plan sucks, or that the organization structure is a certain way (binary, unilevel, etc.) doesn’t mean its a scam (pyramid).

Another note: I would stay away from any company that endorses income disclosure statements as this is not a true snap shot of income reality average. In my experience, only the very top .1% to 1% of any company would be reflected in these statements and is thus an unreal document to use in any presentation. Also, stay away from any distributor/representative making any medical claims that their “product” is curing or eliminating any disease that they know. This practice will shut them down fast!

Hey Monavie Scam,

Thanks for the reply. OK, scam and pyramid are two different things. I see what you’re saying. Thanks for clarifying.

But let me give you another point of view…

Regarding “pyramids”…

If I was an owner/broker of a real estate firm, and wanted to recruit some help (other agents) into my organization due to my increased business – you would say, great! right? Let’s say that one of my hired agents wants to become a co-broker under my parent company, and, in turn, I earn a small residual percentage of his team’s performance, isn’t this a “pyramid”? Please tell me how this structure fails?

Regarding “scam”…

I think you’re missing the boat here. Just because something is “expensive” doesn’t make it a scam. You can go to Wal Mart and pick up a bottle of “Fuit-a-vie” for $17.50 and get similar results as Monavie’s product. You see, competition puts a smack down on overpriced stuff like Monavie’s Original, Active, or any other juice product. “Scams” and “overpriced” have nothing to do with each other. My point is that when a company builds its reputation solely on recruiting and no product/service is rendered – than that’s a different story.

IF you’d like another point of view on “pyramid”s and how they are pretty much everywhere – check out this simple video…
[Editor's note: Video removed until I review it...]

Hey MV Scam,

I was using the Broker recruiting agent scenario as an (simple) example of how similar “pyramids” work in the real world. So, Mr. MV Scam – can I ask – what do you do? Are you a business owner? If so, then congratulations! If not, then, are you an employee? If you’re an employee – then, do you work for someone who you answer to, um, like say a manager, or supervisor? And, do they answer to, um, say a Director or V.P.? And does the V.P. answer to a, um, say a CEO or President or Owner? Get the picture? Doesn’t this look like a, oh, don’t say it…. a pyramid? It’s called the chain of command – it’s used in all forms of business (even in the military). I’m not saying this is a bad thing… Call it what you want (pyramid, whatever) but it’s a more common structure than you think.

As for paying a high price for something – let me just say that if the consumer payed 30 bucks for a bottle of juice and then found out later that they could get a similar bottle of similar juice for a fraction of the cost, that sounds like a savings in cost from switching from one product to the next. A scam? I think not. If I was to leave Verizon and join Sprint and have a big savings in monthly expense as a result – I’m not going to say I was scammed by Verizon. That’s just childish. Again – let competition run the gamut. At one time, Monavie was the only direct sales company out there pushing the acai berry as a super food anti-oxidant, available in a juice, and, at the time, didn’t have much competition to keep their prices in check. But times change. It didn’t take long for the competition to offer alternatives.

I would like to see the clinical trials on what you’re talking about with Welch’s 100% Grape juice as compared to Monavie’s Original or Active Juice. I didn’t see it on the Men’s Journal site you presented. As a matter of fact, I didn’t see any peer review data for doing any clinical trials data with. Looks like comparing apples to oranges to me! Not a fair comparison when Monavie has 18 different fruits and Welche’s 100% grape juice has, um, grapes?

You’ve got to give more data than this. What is Welch’s ORAC score per ounce? Monavie’s is 1026 per gram, or over 50,000 ORAC per ounce.

Who, in Men’s journal did the testing? Where’s the clinical, peer reviewed trial article?

Oh, and btw- I’m not trying to make anyone ‘buy’ my logic – I’m just sharing another point of view, shedding light on the subject, so to say. I don’t know about you, but I think everyone else can make up their own minds when all the facts are presented. And, just to clear any confusion here – I’m not a Monavie distributor.

I should also mention that eating one apple is equivalent to drinking 9.5 ounces of MonaVie (in ORAC value): http://www.juicescam.com/monavie-vs-an-apple/

The $1.99 cinnamon that I have in my spice rack has 32 days worth of MonaVie’s ORAC: http://www.juicescam.com/monavie-13-fruits/

If your measure of MonaVie’s value is ORAC, MonaVie fails horribly. Any MonaVie proponent would best be served by pretending they have never heard of ORAC.

I am very impressed Monavie Scam – you are very serious about doing your diligence in researching Monavie. And, I’m humbled by your data. I just discovered that Dr. Shuass, albeit a very good speaker, isn’t even an MD.

As for the Verizon/Sprint comparison – it was only just that. And no, Verizon hasn’t scammed me. They may have overcharged me, but not scammed me. I must admit – you’ve done well to expose a new light for me.

Thanks!