~Avon Hints & Tips (Part 8) ~ Please read first post :)

Drea

I,_Geek wrote: »

If you sell £600-worth of products at full brochure price, and none are fixed discount items, the items will cost you £450 and your gross profit will be £150.

After that however, you have your business expenses such as brochures, paper and ink (if you print notes), calling cards etc... - basically everything you have to pay for to run your business.

So your net profit will be less than £150. I'd say £130-£140 is a realistic net profit figure from those sales.

Fixed discount products are items where you get the same discount no matter whether you hit MOV or HOV. They're the branded goods and are listed at the back of HT.

Thank you for explaining

If you don't mind me asking, how much profit would you say you guys make on average? And how many hours do you put in? Thinking about starting up but seems it might be a lot of work for not much money.

lozza1985

It's impossible to say - between me and Dh we sell at least £600 worth each time (apart from
January when it's less), september - Xmas we sell nearly a
Grand, and it doesn't take us that long now but then we've been doing it 3 years. Some people sell far less, but sometimes that's through choice, they're a rep so they get there own stuff at a discount/free.

Initially it will take a lot of time while you build up your customer list and while you work out the best way to do things.

For us there's no contest, it's easy money now and fits around us both working shifts perfectly.

Unless you give it a try you'll never know - but the best thing is that it's yours - fitting it round work/kids etc, if you got a part time
Job yes you might earn more for the amount of hours - but you'd also have to work when you were told. I usually bag up books up while watching tv in an evening when husband is at work, I can do it in my
Pjs with my cats at the side of me lol

Drea

I've just lost my job so looking for something to help my partner with the bills until I find something full time. I wonder if I could do two catalogue companies together and put out books at the same time...

Mumto2

Hi Drea :wave:
I remember you from the Couch to 5k thread a few years back

I started Avon last April - got a territory of just over 200 houses now. Average sales between £150 to £250 per brochure. Now I've found out who the customers are it doesn't take too much time.
Like other said, it is very flexible. Works for me around the 3 kiddies.
In essence, it is very low risk as you get money from customer when handing over goods then pay Avon. Start up fee is also very low (£15 spread across first 2 campaigns).
This is a great thread with so much useful information.

Good luck

I,_Geek

Drea wrote: »

I've just lost my job so looking for something to help my partner with the bills until I find something full time. I wonder if I could do two catalogue companies together and put out books at the same time...

Doing two companies would be fine. Kleeneze doesn't have territory - you can canvas where you like, and Betterware has territory but they're much larger than what's initially provided by Avon.

However you'd still only be able to canvas for Avon customers within your allocated Avon territory. Last year a Betterware rep put out flyers with their Betterware brochures - so nowhere near as bad as a brochure but I know at least 2 of us reps got in touch with the ASM and she confirmed that shouldn't be happening. She even said it was a common problem (not that particular rep but just people in general using their Betterware round).

I can understand a Betterware/Kleeneze rep asking their established betterware customers if they're interested in Avon (since they now know them already through their round). And maybe they said no to me but have got to know the other rep so decide to give it a go. Fair enough, but the active canvassing of everyone whether you know them or not would probably annoy other reps if they found out.

Certainly worth trying the other companies route if you want to, and once you've got to know people on those rounds it would be a good network of people to ask about Avon from you - it's just a case of being careful how you do it.

EDIT: If you decide to go into the sales leadership/recruitment path that might mean you can't do more than one company. I think there's something on the back of our agreement about it - worth checking with every company you speak to before limiting your options.

qwertykeys92

I,_Geek wrote: »

We're not supposed to have the word Avon in our e-mail address or any URL we create (Facebook page etc...) although many reps do. It's to do with not making ourselves look like Avon employees.

I have an e-mail address with Avon in it, which I set up before knowing I couldn't. I've set up a new one and use that everywhere online now, and it's the address Avon has on file for me.

Thanks for that, I didn't realise the same went for email as well as Facebook and the like.

I had to contact Avon today by phone to pay a deposit to get my order released, and the assistant asked for my email address to send through a confirmation, and even though it had the word 'Avon' in it then he didn't say anything about it, but perhaps he doesn't realise, being on the payment department and not the account department.

Drea

Hey mumto3! Ah yes, let's hope this isn't another one of my fads are you still at the running?

Thanks I Geek, I hadn't thought of that. Definitely something to think about when choosing which companies to go with!

lozza1985

I'd be careful on researching which company/companies you want to join thoroughly - some require a large up front payment for books/stock. I'd choose companies which don't do that, like avon, which give you a chance to see how you do before committing yourself - if you dont place an order with Avon you won't owe anything, and at £15 its not much of an investment, some companies sound great but the initial costs are massive considering you don't know how much money you'll actually make.

qwertykeys92

I agree, one of my relatives used to do Kleeneze and had to pay £100 upfront to them just to get started. In comparison, Avon's £15 is amazing!!

P.S. Especially when the £15 is actually spread out over your first two campaigns, so if you work hard enough and get some orders in, your orders can actually cover the cost of the startup fees.

Drea

I was thinking about doing both Avon and Kleeneze but the plan is to start Avon first and earn my Kleeneze start-up fee, I don't really want to pay out of my own money just yet I've applied online for Avon