Why so much?
USANA says their Pure Rest™ contains "Pharmaceutical Grade Synthetic Melatonin". I believe the high absurd price is to fund USANA's pyramid scheme.
Does anyone else have Pharmaceutical Grade Synthetic Melatonin?
A company 17 miles down the road from USANA's headquarters in Utah called WorldWide Labs. Their melatonin sleep aid costs 2.6 cents per mg per tablet, and that's the retail price!
So how does USANA's Pure Rest™ fair up with other popular brands of melatonin product? The following graph has the answers.
All criticisms towards USANA are missing the point. The buyers who pay high prices for USANA products are technically not buyers. They are technically sales people even if the only sales they generate are for themselves. The benefit of being a sales person instead of a buyer is to deduct income taxes because you are technically running a business at home. Being "ripped off" a few hundred dollars by USANA every year will allow them to claim a few thousand dollars from the Uncle Sam. It is a scheme to rip off the US government. I know there are many "distributors" who also believe the high price is worth it, but many are in it because of the ability to deduct taxes. This is a big loophole in the tax system.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteI agree, the buyers are actually distributors who are purchasing the product in order to be commission eligible.
You wrote "They are technically sales people even if the only sales they generate are for themselves."
Not true. They do not generate sales "for themselves" when they purchase the product. Why? Because commission is not paid to the distributor who buys their 100 PSV in order to be commission eligible. The commission from that purchase is only given to the upline members.
You wrote "The benefit of being a sales person instead of a buyer is to deduct income taxes because you are technically running a business at home."
False! That is illegal. Distributors cannot deduct their personal purchases if they consume or use the product themselves. Therefore, there is no benefit of becoming a distributor versus a regular customer. Also, if the distributor has no intent to make money, then they are breaking the law by deducting their business expenses. Why? Because then it is only considered a Hobby loss.
You call this a big loophole at the end of your posting. However, there is no loophole at all. Distributors who deduct their personal purchases on their taxes are simply breaking the law, Period. But I agree with you, they are screwing the government by doing so.
How is USANA getting such much big sales out of hong kong, with little population. Will China government stop so much unapproved product going across the border did to NHTC and UNICITY? What happens to growing then?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous wrote "How is USANA getting such much big sales out of hong kong, with little population. Will China government stop so much unapproved product going across the border did to NHTC and UNICITY?"
ReplyDeleteIt appears from your question that you already know the answer. A large sum of USANA products does in fact end up in Mainland China, which is off limits to USANA. China isn't doing anything about it and neither is USANA. As long as distributors purchase USANA products, you can be sure that USANA will allow rules to be broken until an outsider points out the fraud and complains. It is known throughout USANA corporate that a lot of their products end up in restricted areas where they are not allowed to be in. China is their biggest problem. If USANA is doing anything to take care of the problem, they aren't telling anyone about it.
Still Usana is only ones listed in Physicians Desk Reference proving our 100% potency guarantee....no one can take that from us!!!!!All other products just say they have 100% but did you know the FDA will approve it as long as they have 3% of a substance.....so that's why USANA is not FDA approved but we do follow the guidelines!!!!!!!Our products continue being the best! GO USANA!!!!
ReplyDeleteNo comment for that one?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteI thought you were being sarcastic and assumed you were one of the critics of USANA from the Yahoo Message Board.
There are many vitamin companies listed in both PDRs. A couple years ago USANA claimed the PDR gave them credibility. USANA was warned by the publishers of the PDR not to make any such claims. USANA then had to redo all of their advertisements and remove their untrue claims about the PDR.
Fact is, USANA pays a substantial price to have their products advertised and listed in the PDR. USANA is the one who chose which book to list their product in. The fact USANA chose to list in the PDR for prescription drugs means absolutely nothing and does not mean USANA's products are better than their competitors.
Why do I know all this? I contacted the publishers of the PDR 2 years ago and talked with them about all of this.
dear blog author,
ReplyDeleteThere are hundreds(if not thousand) of supplement companies out there of varying degrees of quality in their products.
and you purposely pick out
only a small percentage of companies and then put them along side with Usana to make your comparsion chart(in order to show the "drastic" difference to make your point.)
I think in the future it's better if you can include also products from companies of higher quality(than the ones you selected) such as Thorne Research, Douglas Laboratories and VRP in all your comparison charts to avoid any statistics bias.
thanks.
I think you need to check out Lyle MacWilliams' book on Nutritional Suppliments....it's a comparative guide of over 1500 different companies reasearched in the US and Canada. Seeing is believing and the product has done wonders for my family. It is the BEST! Also being a product of my product, constitutes as advertising and YES YOU CAN use that as a write off....
ReplyDeleteFrom what i can see, you speak a lot on price, comparison of price and all your graphs about price.
ReplyDeleteI dont think anyone who does USANA denies that it is more expensive than the competitors, but if you have a background in science, chemistry or biology you would be able to test for your self simple rudimentary redox reactions and pit products against each other.
also if you understood the principles of channel distribution, you would not only figure out that the product you buy from retail is worth at most 25% of what you pay. Which is part of the reason why nobody buys $200 3m HDMI cables from the shop, they buy it direct from an ebay seller in china for $5.
I respect you have been doing research on USANA since 2006, but from my knowledge USANA havent been slammed by other vitamin companies, lyle macwilliam hasnt been sued by centrum for giving them 4 points out of 100.
Many people fail of course, but many people also arent serious minded on doing business, or expect to see results immediately from starting the business. This isnt a job, its a business. What you put in, you get later.
USANA is expensive because 45% of the cost goes toward funding the pyramid scheme. So a Healthpak-100 costs a distributor $110. However, about $49.50 of that goes toward paying commissions and bonuses. Yet, only 1% of distributors make a profit.
DeleteWouldn't you rather pay $60.50 for a Healthpak-100 which you can then actually retail to a customer for $75??? The distributor who makes the sale would make all the money!
Essentials would cost only $23.40 instead of $42.50! Wouldn't you rather pay less as a distributor and then actually be able to retail the product?
Of course this isn't USANA's marketing plan because all of their cronies at the top of the pyramid scheme wouldn't be able to make millions swindling people into joining a pyramid scheme. They know that the sale of product would actually depend on REAL demand instead of forcing their distributors to purchase unwanted product just so they can collect a commission.
As it stands right now, if a "SHARER" distributor recruited two preferred customers and split the points on the left and right leg, those preferred customers would need to purchase $585 worth of product on average before that distributor would get paid a measly $40 in commission. That's a 6.8% commission... But that distributor will not actually get paid the commission unless he or she PERSONALLY PURCHASES over $110 worth of USANA product every 28 days (13 times a year).
So that poor SHARER would need to find enough preferred customers who purchase a combined total of over $1600 worth of USANA product every 28 days just to cover the forced purchase requirement USANA has installed on its distributors. Poor distributor is still in the hole because there are shipping costs yet to be covered. So lets just call it $1700 in preferred customer sales every 28 days, and the distributor has still yet to profit.
However, if USANA didn't run a pyramid scheme and the essentials cost only $23.40, and you sold it for $35 retail, you would already have profited $7.60 minus shipping costs!!!
Would you care to explain to me why this is not a better model?
As for the $5 HDMI cables, where do you think Usana purchases their vitamins? Since you research Usana you can tell me what percentage of the product materials are imported from China and what percentage of it by weight is composed of heavy metals?
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't capitalize lyle either. He was on Usana's advisory board but resigned when he realized that the distributors would discover that he wasn't an unbiased third party. Do you think?
It wasn't just a job for madoff's accountant it was a swindle.
I have a background in business and finance. I can assure you that Usana's business is a pyramid scheme. It is not about the product. It's about conning your friends and relatives into a get rich scheme. You have no conscience.
ReplyDeleteNatural melatonin is made from cow brains. Synthetic is not, and Usana clearly states that their sleep aid contains no animal ingredients. Synthetic melatonin tends to be considerably more expensive than natural. In most cases you would want natural over synthetic, but not with melatonin. Unless of course you want the cheap stuff, and want to risk getting mad cow disease. If you don't believe the cow brains bit, here is just one source of many that prove this: http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=2803
ReplyDeleteI love Usana its a great help in our family's health.... Love helping people. True health true wealth indeed... If its a pyramid scam then why is it that usana, amway, herbalife and other mlm companies are still active until now? Do the us government don't know the existence of these companies? They should have made actions and close these companies if they are scams...
ReplyDeleteLove Anonymous, you speak of Usana as a religion.
ReplyDeleteUsana has three scams going.
Usana uses false claims to make people believe in it's pills can cure everything.
Usana is not about selling product, it is about, selling a false business opportunity. About 88% percent of the people drop out each year. 99% lose money.
Usana uses most its profits to buy back the insider's stock. Mr Wentz renounced his US citizenship and pays no tax on these stock sales. The SEC is not competent in prosecuting fraud. If Usana disclosed the dropout rate, the stock would drop like a rock.
Wake up!