Shaklee on Oprah

[Shakespearegirl]

http://www.shaklee.com/index.shtml

Long time no see, Quatloosians! Oprah's done it again, putting Shaklee on her program and raving about it. And what do they sell? Why outrageously overpriced cleaning products, that are supposedly safer for everyone!

You can't get the prices from their website (naturally), but Oprah was quoting some price like $90 per bottle with a 33% discount! These crooks were living it up, since Oprah blindly just gave them legitimacy in the eyes of American women.

I get depressed for the women who watch her show sometimes. Must we all behave like stoned sheep?

This MLM is similar to Usana and Melaleuca I think, as far as products and claims, etc.

Here's my favorite part, where the Shaklee dude explains to Oprah why the products "need to be sold in the home":

Mr. Barnett :"We think that the most compelling way to get people to live a greener, healthier life is to help educate them. There's not enough time in a 30-secont TV ad to properly explain the need....
Our business model is not dependent on people gathering in a home to demonstrate it. It's dependent on people learning something they didn't know, having a positive experience with our products and then sharing that with their friends."

Uh huh. It's all about EDUCATION.

[Judge Roy Bean]

Call me stupid, but I've been buying Basic H for what has to be 30 years or more from a relative, and I'm not an environmentalist whacko nor is she a fool.

[hartley]

I'm a little wary about them, based simply on this statement from their About Us page:

And we were the first company in the world to obtain Climate Neutral™ certification and totally offset our CO2 emissions, resulting in a net zero impact on the environment.

That's a lie. With carbon offsets, you are still polluting. You're just paying someone ELSE not to. Your actual net reduction of pollutants is zero.

[Shakespearegirl]

I said nothing about people who buy this stuff being "environmentalist wackos".

If you want products that clean your house that won't pollute the environment, try baking soda and white vinegar.

The point here is that once again, we have outrageously overpriced products being hyped by an MLM, and this time Oprah is selling it.

Oprah is indeed a fool when it comes to MLM. She sells advertising slots in her magazine for MLMs, and Mary Kay has been in her magazine AND on her show a few times. Recently she also ran an ad for Amway/Quixtar in her mag, too. She either has no clue what MLM is, or she doesn't care.

*edited to add* it's possible that because Oprah's audience is the biggest number of distributors AND buyers of MLM products (women!) that she's just catering to her market without caring what MLM does?

[wserra]

Call me stupid, but I've been buying Basic H for what has to be 30 years or more from a relative, and I'm not an environmentalist whacko nor is she a fool.

No one would call you stupid, JRB. And, if you like the stuff, by all means keep using it. As SG says, though, it is ridiculously overpriced - like virtually everything sold by MLMs. Gotta pay that upline.

A 16-oz bottle of Basic H has a "member price" of $10. They say to use 2 oz per gallon of water. See here for confirmation. So it costs about $1.30 to make a gallon of cleanser.

Amazon sells a case of 12 28-oz bottles of Mr. Clean for $33. The directions say to use 1/4 cup per gallon of water - 1/4 cup is 2 oz. So it's about $.10 per oz, or $.20 for a gallon of cleanser.

Maybe Basic H can be obtained cheaper in larger quantities but, if so, the web site doesn't say. In any event, I doubt that larger quantities would make up for the factor of 6.5 reached above. In larger quantities, if a discount is available at all, maybe you'd only pay five times as much.

[Judge Roy Bean]

*edited to add* it's possible that because Oprah's audience is the biggest number of distributors AND buyers of MLM products (women!) that she's just catering to her market without caring what MLM does?

That would be my observation as well.