Kleeneeze or Betterware?

Peter_Pan

Morethanconcerned wrote: »

The problem we've found is that after a few years even loyal customers have bought every knick knack they are likely to ever need. If someone orders a high value item and it pushes that weeks order right up , they aren't going to order the same next time. I've had £200 orders and more - written on extra bits of paper - superb , but they don't do that *every* time you go round. Even the little £5 - £10 orders that make up the mainstay don't occur year in and out. Eventually it fades away and an area grows stale - I had a host of customers who had dropped to ordering once every 6 months and less , I needed to drop more and more books , build bigger and bigger customer bases to stay were I was.

Yes there would be blips - many ordered more at Xmas , but a dodgy product, a few out of stocks on the trot and that customer wouldn't buy again, after a while they didn't even look at the book.

It's like bailing water with a seive - you work harder and harder for less and less.

And thats just the retailing - which was meant to guarantee a basic income to fund the sponsoring.

I know what you mean which is why its best to find products that are likely to be ordered again and again, consumables and which are of a quality that means that they will want to carry on buying which i'm afraid Kleeneze products aren't, i used to order a few products myself because i felt i should not because they were good value or of a great quality. I've learnt from my Kleeneze experience if products aren't ones that i want to order again and again myself how can i expect my customers to want to.

Jeanetteathome

Peter_Pan wrote: »

I think there will always be a market for brochures through doors, alot of people admit to liking having a brochure in their hands to look through, even my teenagers look through the mail order books when they come through, they are too busy doing other things on the internet than window shopping and making impulse buys.
I agree totally that people shouldn't think its easy money and i think as i have said before its the way it is sold by distributors as perhaps being easy money that is the problem. Its a simple Business in as much as you don't need experience and anyone is capable of putting brochures through doors and if the system is followed it will work given time but its not always easy.

Lots of people have seen Kleeneze brochures, sometimes 5 in the same week (as in one road we did when we were Kleeneze agents:eek::eek:) which does make it harder to find interested people in the products and i do think that most of the products you can find a lot cheaper elsewhere and we found the quality of some of the items frankly embarrassing.

If the products were better quality, that the distributors sponsoring were more honest about the work involved in building a customer base so that people wouldn't join, put books out and then quit giving Kleeneze a bad reputation in that area then Kleeneze would still stand a chance because you CAN make a useful extra income from brochures through doors, we have done it in the past with Kleeneze and are continuing to do it with our current Company.

As someone else said there is only so much stuff people want to buy, our uplines made out that people _always_ wanted cleaning stuff. But we found very little of it was kcleaning stuff, this sort of thing people purchased at the supermarket with their ordianry shopping. We found it was the unsuual kitchen items, the summer garden things too. But when they'd had them they didn't re order them , unless they broke and then they weren't happy.

Going back every 4 weeks for just 11 months I found orders dropping off as people had seen all the stuff and little new stuff was in the books. When there was some new item as often as not it was out of stock due to high demand.

One if the reasons I'm stopping is that as original customers orders dry up I'll need to go further out and there are already so many doing this I'm falling over their books. If I get there first I'll get orders but next time I might get nothing, it just isn't worth it.

Jeanetteathome

Peter_Pan wrote: »

I know what you mean which is why its best to find products that are likely to be ordered again and again, consumables and which are of a quality that means that they will want to carry on buying which i'm afraid Kleeneze products aren't, i used to order a few products myself because i felt i should not because they were good value or of a great quality. I've learnt from my Kleeneze experience if products aren't ones that i want to order again and again myself how can i expect my customers to want to.

Much of the stuff is of such poor quality and so expensive that If I ordered anything , even with the distributor discount they weren't worth it.

Looking through the goods as they come in the boxes it's embarrasing really to then take the goods and get money for them. Had I not done kleeneze I doubt I'd buy anything now from them. I did years ago but not now at those prices.

Peter_Pan

Jeanetteathome wrote: »

As someone else said there is only so much stuff people want to buy, our uplines made out that people _always_ wanted cleaning stuff. But we found very little of it was kcleaning stuff, this sort of thing people purchased at the supermarket with their ordianry shopping. We found it was the unsuual kitchen items, the summer garden things too. But when they'd had them they didn't re order them , unless they broke and then they weren't happy.

Going back every 4 weeks for just 11 months I found orders dropping off as people had seen all the stuff and little new stuff was in the books. When there was some new item as often as not it was out of stock due to high demand.

One if the reasons I'm stopping is that as original customers orders dry up I'll need to go further out and there are already so many doing this I'm falling over their books. If I get there first I'll get orders but next time I might get nothing, it just isn't worth it.

We too found that not many people ordered the consumable products when we were in Kleeneze, and i think you are probably correct about they buy it as part of their weekly "robotic" shopping each week. We also found that most of our customers were elderly people who had a job to get to the shops and tbh i felt i was ripping them off with the poor quality and items that could be brought in the cheap shops in town.
I would be very interested to see a breakdown of the age categories that buy from Kleeneze, we found the younger generations weren't interested.

Lady_Python

Peter_Pan wrote: »

We too found that not many people ordered the consumable products when we were in Kleeneze, and i think you are probably correct about they buy it as part of their weekly "robotic" shopping each week. We also found that most of our customers were elderly people who had a job to get to the shops and tbh i felt i was ripping them off with the poor quality and items that could be brought in the cheap shops in town.
I would be very interested to see a breakdown of the age categories that buy from Kleeneze, we found the younger generations weren't interested.

I found that too. Many of my regular customers were either in the older age group or disabled. Occasionally if there was a new gadget or novelty item the younger ones would buy too.

A lot of the Kleeneze products at that time (about 5 - 6 years ago) were actually good ideas, it was just that they were very poorly made.

I've still got one of their knock-off Magic Bullets that I regularly use.

Morethanconcerned

Jeanetteathome wrote: »

As someone else said there is only so much stuff people want to buy, our uplines made out that people _always_ wanted cleaning stuff. But we found very little of it was kcleaning stuff, this sort of thing people purchased at the supermarket with their ordianry shopping. We found it was the unsuual kitchen items, the summer garden things too. But when they'd had them they didn't re order them , unless they broke and then they weren't happy.

Going back every 4 weeks for just 11 months I found orders dropping off as people had seen all the stuff and little new stuff was in the books. When there was some new item as often as not it was out of stock due to high demand.

One if the reasons I'm stopping is that as original customers orders dry up I'll need to go further out and there are already so many doing this I'm falling over their books. If I get there first I'll get orders but next time I might get nothing, it just isn't worth it.

I did this for 3 years, the round became huge and unweildy - deliveriong to houses that hadn't ordered for 18 months became a right chore. I was stuck - did I continue delivering hoping they *might* order or chop them off the round for a while to give them a break, risking that someone else might comeround and get that elusive order.

Yet they still give out this idea you can do your *local* area - I was nearly 8 miles from home in the end with a huge round, still not making even minimum wage after all expenses and tax etc

shirleymarye

I did Betterware with my OH over 20 years ago! I was made redundant and thought I would try Betterware so that I could work from home as my OH was retired. My OH agreed to help me and I thought it would be healthy to do all the walking anyway!
We started with 100 books and went on from there,eventually I was asked to take on another area as well which I agreed to. I can honestly say I have never worked so hard in all my life for the small rewards I got out of it! You put the books out,collect the books in,sort the orders and send them in,the items had to be collected by yourself and then you had to sort them and deliver them,sometimes you had to call 2 or 3 times to get your money for the order. You also got insults as well! After about 3 or 4 months my OH refused to help me do it any more,he worked it out that it was impossible to make any real money from this,the idea was for me to try and earn enough from it compared to going out to work,it couldn't be done,as my OH said,we were both doing this job for the return we got and it was costing money in petrol and we were never at home and the house was being taken over by Betterware products,I had a shed full of the stuff as well! Some times people changed their mind so you kept the stuff to try and sell somewhere else,I know you can return it which means taking it back yourself and more form filling. If you only want to make a few quid I suppose it's OK but no good as an alternative to getting a proper job!

Morethanconcerned

shirleymarye wrote: »

I did Betterware with my OH over 20 years ago! I was made redundant and thought I would try Betterware so that I could work from home as my OH was retired. My OH agreed to help me and I thought it would be healthy to do all the walking anyway!
We started with 100 books and went on from there,eventually I was asked to take on another area as well which I agreed to. I can honestly say I have never worked so hard in all my life for the small rewards I got out of it! You put the books out,collect the books in,sort the orders and send them in,the items had to be collected by yourself and then you had to sort them and deliver them,sometimes you had to call 2 or 3 times to get your money for the order. You also got insults as well! After about 3 or 4 months my OH refused to help me do it any more,he worked it out that it was impossible to make any real money from this,the idea was for me to try and earn enough from it compared to going out to work,it couldn't be done,as my OH said,we were both doing this job for the return we got and it was costing money in petrol and we were never at home and the house was being taken over by Betterware products,I had a shed full of the stuff as well! Some times people changed their mind so you kept the stuff to try and sell somewhere else,I know you can return it which means taking it back yourself and more form filling. If you only want to make a few quid I suppose it's OK but no good as an alternative to getting a proper job!

Betterware with it's fixed areas often means poor or really non productive areas are always available. Round here there has never been a regular betterware man as it's so poor - it's poor for Kleeneze too which puts paid to the idea that as Kleeneze isn't fixed it's some how better.

There are some slightly better areas and there Betterware has had the same lady for years doing it, and her round has grown quite large. We used to meet as I did my customers and she did hers, obviously her productive round was never on offer for new people but the duff ones always were.

The thing is Betterware *know* where these bad and good areas are by returns. Kleeneze don't and can't as individuals put books where they want. Often I had people from well outside the area come into my area as they new a *big retailer* was making money here (just looking at my retail cheque)- they were *suggested* to come here by their uplines but as usual they didn't realise (or care) that my actual local area was poor and I was travelling miles to get the returns I was.

Jeanetteathome

Well I've made up my mind now the new year is here, I've written to Kleeneze to cancel my account, I'm giving my old books to a distributor in our group who has been very kind and actually tried to avoid my areas. He's trying to support his family as he doesn't get much, he too is looking for something else and my extra books might help till he find something else.

For 2011 if anyone is struggling with income - Kleeneze is NOT the way forward regardless what the leflets and websites say, I've given it 11 months and frankly made nothing compared to what I've paid out.

Morethanconcerned

Jeanetteathome wrote: »

Well I've made up my mind now the new year is here, I've written to Kleeneze to cancel my account, I'm giving my old books to a distributor in our group who has been very kind and actually tried to avoid my areas. He's trying to support his family as he doesn't get much, he too is looking for something else and my extra books might help till he find something else.

For 2011 if anyone is struggling with income - Kleeneze is NOT the way forward regardless what the leflets and websites say, I've given it 11 months and frankly made nothing compared to what I've paid out.

A good move - in an ironic twist a leaflet offering earnings of **£400 - £ 600 a month **Part Time** Delivering and collecting catalogues** dropped through my door toady. I fear that with todays difficult times more people will be suckered in by this. It would cost someone a fortune in fuel and catalogues building a customer base big enough to pay £4 - 600 after tax and costs.

Terrible really - I feel a fool for even falling for it but I did.