Who doesn’t get turned on after watching Fifty Shades of Grey? It’s a depiction of every naughty cougar’s – I mean, every thrill-seeking lady’s dream. With Christian Grey’s abs shaped like Sierra Nevada and with a Saw-like room (only less deadly), you would surely wear your sexiest outfit when you see your man. That’s simply you and he probably approves it. Of course, who doesn’t want to see his girl, once in a while, wearing sexy things like emotionally-unstable Miley Cyrus? Every man wants it. So you, being an aspiring dominatrix you are, got excited when you heard that there would be a party where your fantasy would be brought to life: Ann Summers’ Party. But when you arrived, got drunk, and enjoyed all the African banana-like toys, you were offered to be a part of the “team.” Half dizzy, you were like, “Like the Rubby Ribbon sh*t? Is Anne Summers an MLM? Isn't it a pyramid scheme?”
It suddenly dawned on you. You are not going to be an Anastasia Steele. You are going to be an Ann Summers ambassador. Oh, sh*t.
The Basics
- Company: Anne Summers
- Founder: Michael Caborn-Waterfield
- Key People: David Gold, Jacqueline Gold, and Vanessa Gold
- Products: adult toys and sex products
- Website: www.annsummers.com
- Cost to Join: $30 or £25
If you were born in a nunnery-like household, you might find yourself raising brows in every Victoria’s Secret fashion show. Well, if that’s the case, you might want to bring a jar of agua bendita for your eyes after visiting an Ann Summers store.
Ann Summers is a British multinational retailer company of sex toys and lingerie. It is one of the big companies focusing on such products that it has over 140 high street stores in various places like the UK, Ireland, and the Channel Islands.
Was the founder of the company named Ann Summers? No. The company’s founder was Michael Caborn-Waterfield while Annice Summers (Ann Summers) was his secretary and rumored mistress. The company started as a standard sex shop in 1970 in Marble Arch, London. It then grew into six more shops. In 1971, the company was bought by brothers Ralph and David Gold. The sex shops were turned into high street brand and lingerie boutique by the brothers until it gained its fame.
As the company was growing, the daughter of David Gold, Jacqueline Gold, was introduced to the company in 1981. With laws restricting the displays of sex toys, Jacqueline got an idea to help the company circumvent these restrictions after attending a Tupperware party: open a multi-level marketing (MLM) wing for the company through Party Plan.
Though Ann Summers still sells their products through stores, its MLM wing helps it to make bigger sales through its independent contractors named “ambassadors.” So, yeah, besides physical stores, Ann Summers is also an MLM but there are still a lot of things you should know about this.
Anyway, with the new idea, the company grew bigger with 4,000 Ann Summers Parties happening every week in the UK alone. Yes, that’s a lot of plastic dongs being celebrated every week.
Nevertheless, despite the company’s success, it was rained, and is still being rained by a lot of controversies due to its adult nature. From the use of nursery rhymes and the Queen for advertisement to production of a blow up doll named Mustafa Shag that offended Muslims, Ann Summers became one of the companies that faced great numbers of complaints.
In 2007, Ann Summers faced another legal issue with Apple after releasing the iGasm. Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Dude. But, let’s have more. iGasm is an iPod-compatible sex toy that connects audio devices and then VIBRATES to the beat of the song being played by the user. Oh, dear, folks at Ann Summers do have very imaginative minds. Just imagine yourself using the said device while playing a hard metal version of the song “Twinkle Twinkle Dildo Star.”
The Queen and Steve Jobs probably hate it.
Annice Summers must be laughing at this.
The Products: Sizzling and Erotica
Anne Summers offers a great deal of products revolving around SEX. Its site features the products as if Fifty Shades of Grey exploded. The site has its categories like Lingerie, Sex Toys, Erotic, Sex Essentials, Bondage, Nightwear, Fancy Dress, and others. Some of the products include underwear, vibrators, dildos, aphrodisiacs, lubricants, contraceptives, toy cleaners and batteries, costumes, and even handcuffs and whips. As much as I want to tell you all the items, the list seems endless not to mention that I am currently writing this in a café. Who the hell would browse a site full of vibrators and dildos while you are getting served with your coffee?
Anyway, the best-selling products of Ann Summers are varieties of its vibrators and dildos with prices ranging from £10 to £85.
With lots of positive feedback about the products, Ann Summers attributes the success and perfection of its products’ performance to product reviews and customer’s insights online where the company gets ideas. According to the company, in order to give the customers the best products and customer experience, its customer service team regularly looks at all their reviews to underscore the products’ strengths and areas of development. With that, Karen Hitt, Ann Summers’ Senior Online Merchandiser, stated: “It’s very important for us to provide our customers with the best experience and products, and therefore we’re continually trying to improve. The insights from products reviews help us do just that.”
However, in 2017, Ann Summers had issued a product recall on their Black Power Wand vibrators. Oh, don’t blame Hermione and Harry for this. The company feared it over the damages of the products after prolonged use. The notice states: “The quality and safety of our products are of paramount importance to us.
“Therefore, as a precautionary measure we are recalling the above product.
“The product complies with all relevant CE safety testing standards, but we have taken this voluntary measure in response to a very small number of isolated reports that the wires in the cord have become exposed at the base of the product over a prolonged period of use.”
Wow. Can’t believe someone could wear out toys over “prolonged” use to the point of wires getting exposed. That must be a lot of friction, man! No need to celibate, folks! Find yourselves partners!
Pleasure and Money: Earning at Ann Summers
I know that besides the wonders that Ann Summers’ products promise to bring to you, you are also expecting to see in this review the ways you could utilize the company’s products to earn some cash. Far from our previous MLM reviews featuring detailed compensation plans like Pink Zebra, Paparazzi Jewelry and a lot more, Ann Summers is a very different one: it is very secretive.
In one of our MLM reviews, we often encountered MLM companies that aren’t releasing their income disclosure statements though their compensation plans are available everywhere.
There are also some MLM companies that require membership before you get a peek of their compensation plans. Sneaky peaches. Ann Summers, on the other hand, brings it to a new level: no compensation plan, no income disclosure statements. Squeeze all you want but you won’t find a thing or two on its website, not on any of its pages, nothing on YouTube, not on any third-party sites, not on online reviews and comments. It’s as if not even a black and white of its compensation plan and income disclosure statement were produced.
Wikipedia, on its Ann Summers’ profile, includes Ann Summers’ secrecy as one of its controversies saying that “the company's payments to party organizers were discussed by a number of media sources” in 2003. This confirms Ann Summers’ high-level of secrecy when it comes to public transparency.
Nevertheless, you can find bits of ideas online about its ambassadors’ estimated earnings and the enrollment fee which is $30 or £25 that you need to pay to process your membership.
You also need to purchase a starter kit from the two choices available; the Starter Pack that costs $50 or £39 that contains £129 worth of products or the Pro Pack that costs $75 or £69 that contains £275 worth of products.
Nevertheless, while I was looking for these details, I saw an article published by the Guardian in 2003 saying that Ann Summers offered “rental kits” before instead of one-time payment starter kits. These rental kits, according to the company’s former ambassadors, were the ones they use in Ann Summers’ parties.
According to one former ambassador who imparted her experience on a forum, returning the rented kits after she quitted was truly traumatic. She stated:
“So...eventually, I decided I'd had enough. It wasn't suited to me, and so I called my rep and said I wanted to quit. She was really, really difficult about it (because she got some commission off my sales), and messed me around, and after the initial call, she no longer answered my calls! There were loads of more paperwork involved in quitting, and then the return of the kit. That was the really tricky part. I had to arrange for a van to pick it up, but as I lived in halls with a broken buzzer, it was impossible! They had this rule also that the driver himself wouldn't call, but some guy at the depot would! So, we tried three times to drop it off, no luck. The next time, I asked to be called on my mobile and I'd come down and drop it off. I ended up being in a lecture at the time, so I had to leg it halfway across campus, and by the time I got there, the van had gone! They kept trying to charge me £500 for it (which is probably why they were so unwilling to pick it up). I offered to drop it off at the depot, and they got really shady and said it wouldn't work like that. Eventually, I left it at the main reception desk, and it was taken off my hands. Literally, two of the most stressful months of my uni experience! I got into huge money problems with it, and felt way too embarrassed to tell my parents.”
Thankfully, Ann Summers now offers a one-time payment for its starter kits, so you don’t need to worry about experiencing such a moment but who cares? I mean, for someone who has the libido genetic of Zeus who always seeks for pleasure, you surely wouldn’t mind, would you? Plus, you don’t want to miss the chance to get the products for 30 percent, 25 percent commission on your sales, qualify for a company car for making big sales, and trip incentives. At least, that’s what those ambassadors are saying. Too bad we don’t have the compensation plans for ourselves.
As for the earnings, Ann Summers promises you on its website to “earn around £250 a month for just one evening a week or work full time where the potential is endless.” Thinking about it, earning “£250 a month for just one evening a week” makes it £62.5 a week for a single Ann Summers’ Party. The company suggests throwing parties at least three times a week. With that, doing the math, you could earn at least £750 a month for three parties a week. Well, that’s a good amount if someone is just looking for some extra cash and just enjoying the sensation of holding the toys. However, if you are someone who needs to make ends meet, you better set five parties a week and drown yourself with all those shaking jelly dongs just to earn a decent income. Also, don’t forget that throwing a party could cost you for some snacks, drinks and “party prizes.” You don’t want to be that lame host, of course.
Diving in: Should I Join?
After learning that Ann Summers is an MLM company, should you really join the craze? Well, of course you do! With lots of bored folks out there, you would surely make great sales of those Ann Summers’ products. Nevertheless, you might want to consider some things before joining in. Besides the fact that earning through profit and commissions from your sales gives you nothing but insufficient income, you might also consider the fact that Ann Summers is an MLM. Oh, yeah, and so what? Well, for starters, though we aren’t able to view the company’s compensation plan and income disclosure statement, one thing is certain: it is an MLM built using the structure of a pyramid scheme.
Though the two reflect almost the same concept, there are points that separate the two.
Pyramid scheme is downright illegal. It relies on the flow of money coming from recruits who are made to believe on non-existent investments being promised by the scheme’s members. The funds collected are used to feed the pockets of those at the top. These members are then asked to recruit new members with the promise that it would help them gain back their investments. The process continues until a huge pyramid builds up. However, it is just impossible to keep this system without products or services generating profit for the entire system. With that, as the flow of recruits exhausts, the whole system would fall and would greatly affect those at the bottom of the structure with nothing to gain.
MLM, on the other hand, generates earnings through the sales of its products and services. However, it also uses the same system of recruitment as the pyramid scheme, with individuals being encouraged to recruit others in order to gain commissions. With that, the same pyramid structure would be built with those at the top of the system sucking away portions of earnings of those at the bottom of the system. Though it does sound good calling it “commissions'', it imposes great burden for those at the bottom. With little earnings, being worsened by the leeching system, most individuals in the industry leave. Hence, MLMs have high failure rates.
According to a 15-year study among 350 leading MLMs conducted by Jon M. Taylor, MBA, Ph.D. about MLMs, “100% of them are recruitment-driven and top-weighted. In other words, the vast majority of commissions paid by MLM companies go to a tiny percentage of TOPPs (top-of-the-pyramid promoters) at the expense of a revolving door of recruits, 99% of whom lose money.”
The study also says that “the claim by MLM promoters that many participants work for part-time or seasonal income is a bogus argument because without full-time and long-sustained effort, MLM participants cannot build and maintain a large enough downline to meet expenses, and therefore do not profit.”
The study stresses that only one percent of MLM participants profit from such business while profiting from legitimate small businesses is 39 percent much more possible.
So, should you dive in?
Weighing Things: Pros and Cons
In any case you want to join the org… I mean, Ann Summers Party, let us first review some points.
Pros:
- The products have positive feedback. Though there are lots of other similar products online, you might want to purchase from a company that specializes in such products.
- Ann Summers offers a variety of products. This gives you a wide range of choices to offer to your possible customers.
- The products are truly innovative. Oh, dear, iGasm really got me. Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! Dug! I am surely going to hell for this.
Cons:
- The products have a limited target market. Despite the wide range of choices it offers, you wouldn’t be able to make great sales if you have limited numbers of customers. Also, you can’t expect someone to purchase a toy every week unless it’s Mr. Grey.
- Being an ambassador looks unfavorable for anyone. Imagine conducting parties weekly just to get an estimated amount of £250. Again, “estimated.”
- Ann Summers is not providing its income disclosure statement and compensation plan to the public. That is a red flag in any MLMs. Without those, you wouldn’t be able to have the idea of the definite income waiting for you once you dive in the opportunity. Both are important as they show concrete evidence of how and how much an individual is earning.
- It is an MLM. Despite being legal, its structure might impose a big challenge for anyone especially to those who are newly recruited. You don’t want to be one of them.
Conclusion
Ann Summers is one of the MLM opportunities out there that are making a mark in the industry. Nevertheless, despite being legal and being able to establish a compelling reputation, it still has a lot of things to consider for its own growth. Besides the continuous innovation of products to continue the flow of profits, it should also start focusing on its transparency to the public. After all, everyone is looking for a trustworthy opportunity that would make them feel safe and secured, not just financially but in a hell lot of ways.
Thank you for reading this article! I hope that you realized a lot of things about the Ann Summers MLM opportunity. Nonetheless, if you are still looking for better ways to earn without the burden of sharing commissions, pressure of recruiting people, and meeting quotas, we know what to do! Just click here and we’ll show you the opportunity we have been doing since 2015 at the comfort of our homes!