If you are researching Herbalife, you have probably noticed that no two reviews are the same. Many reviews about Herbalife offer conflicting information that can be hard for readers to sort through. Some reviews promote Herbalife as a viable MLM and Home-based Business opportunity, while others flag Herbalife as a pyramid scam. Let me help to clear things up.
Why are there so many different reviews about Herbalife anyway?
A long time ago, Herbalife was one of many companies, including Amway, Nuskin, and Shaklee that went under hard and fast. Back then, these companies used compensation plans that were out of touch. These ancient giants of the MLM industry used business models and product lines couldn’t adapt to the changing needs of both their sellers and their markets.
MLMs did manage to progress and over time, people really began to understand the value in this model for creating their own home-based business. Visionary entrepreneurs developed new compensation plans for their new companies, adapting their business models to use unilevels and binaries rather than breakaway plans.
These new compensation structures are more easily adaptable to the changing needs of both consumers and distributors, and that flexibility allows them to stand the test of time.
Herbalife has attempted to improve their compensation plans while still working in the older system. They have added various ways to achieve higher levels within the compensation structure, but in the end using the old-school system means that more money goes to the corporate and higher-level executives than is the case in the more modern compensation structures. Personally, I don’t think this is the only reason that Herbalife went under.
In my opinion, Herbalife neglected to explore one of the most important aspects of a flexible, enduring company when they did not expand their funding for research and development. NuSkin, for example, made a bold and brilliant move when they created their sister company Pharmanex, and both have pushed to stay modern and cutting edge by improving product value, and expanding their product lines.
Instead of investing in research and development, and expanding their product line to appeal to a wider range of consumers and distributors, Herbalife invested in heavy advertising campaigns in countries where MLM activity was at a minimum. This was an attempt to minimize costs while maximizing profits, and it has had both a positive and negative effect.
Because of their compensation structure, an attempt at maximizing profits while limiting the investment into research and development destroyed Herbalife’s reputation in some of the marketplaces they initially developed. However, their aggressive ad campaigns brought the MLM Lavorare con Herbalife model to markets that before then had never seen this type of industry before, and provided opportunities for new markets to develop. Personally, I think that Herbalife tried to take the easy way out by making as much money as possible as quickly as possible, instead of investing in and developing a long-term marketplace.
Once the MLM industry was introduced into these new markets, Herbalife began to experience competition where there previously had been none. Because of their unwillingness to change their compensation structure or invest in research and development to strengthen and expand product lines, Herbalife’s ability to capitalize on these once-untapped markets declined.
Finally, Herbalife is getting back on track. They are expanding their product lines, and right now they are overhauling their website, herbalife.com, to enhance customer experience. This could be just what the company needs to get going again and to prove that they are a reliable company with which to start your own home-based business.
Can Herbalife do it, or is it too little, too late?
Herbalife might just get back to their glory days again. Investing now could put you in an advantageous position if the company gets reinvigorated, as an established member of a company with good financial backing. However, I do no think that their product quality is quite up to par just yet even though they have significantly expanded their product line.
I think that Herbalife needs to refocus its efforts on product quality above all else, and then look at developing new products or product lines. If they can invest more time and money into these two fundamental areas, you could profit from a very viable home-based business opportunity. However, the company’s track record for being slow to react to consumer demands and the changing market might mean that Herbalife’s reputation is damaged beyond repair. This will become obvious over the next little while as the company’s new website is completed and their new products become more widely available.
If you speak Spanish and have a talent for Internet marketing, Herbalife can provide you with inroads to markets in more countries than most other MLM’s can even dream of. I think that the best bet for Herbalife is to focus their efforts on Spanish-English bilingual markets. However, even if you are not bilingual there is still an opportunity for you to create and develop your own home-based MLM business.