USANA Rebrands Themselves and Makes Impossible Promise To Their Distributors

Get ready for the new USANA! After 20 years, USANA announced at their 2012 International Convention that it was time to re-brand themselves. They are starting with the United States first. USANA redid all their packaging, sales tools & literature, website, and even their logo!

USANA's New Logo

USANA states that their new Brand Promise is the following: "We promise everything we do will help you love life and live it — and that will help you help others do the same."

 I think USANA's new logo actually looks like something out of a nightmare. Maybe the Mirror Prison in the first Superman movie.

Unfortunately, 99% of USANA's distributors never make a profit. In fact, according to USANA, less than 1% of distributors are even considered "Full Time" working associates (0.76% to be exact). USANA considers a distributor full time if they are a "Gold Director" or higher. To get to Gold Director, a distributor must max out their "Business Center" four weeks in a row. To max out a business center, the distributor must accumulate 5000 "Group Sales Volume" (GSV) on their "Left Leg" and 5000 on their "Right Leg". The distributor accumulates this volume of points from either "Preferred Customers" or recruited distributors in their "Downline".  There are over 3 distributors for every preferred customers, so obviously preferred customers are not relied upon for this volume points.

In order to accumulate 5000 GSV on a leg, they need their downline to personally purchase at least 100 "Personal Sales Volume" (PSV) worth of points through an "autoship" plan. These aren't really sales however, they are personal "Purchases" made by each "active distributor". A distributor is active as long as they personally purchase 100 PSV every 4 weeks (13 times a year). These personal purchases count as GSV for each distributor in their "upline".

So, 5000 GSV can count for 50 distributors who each personally purchase over $110 worth of product. This needs to happen on both left and right legs of the downline. So to max out a business center, it may take 100 distributors to do it. Doing it once only makes you a Silver Director. When you do it however, you get a new business center at the bottom of your one of your legs so you can continue recruiting more distributors and make more money. So to max out four weeks in a row, you need to time when you recruit your distributors so they order at different times during a 4 week period. So maxing out 4 weeks in a row may take over 400 recruited distributors.

Now the reason each distributor makes these 100 (some cases 200) PSV purchases every 4 weeks is because it is a business requirement by USANA. If the distributor fails to make that personal purchase, then that distributor will lose any GSV they may have accumulated and can not qualify or collect any commission that may have been owed to that distributor.

Imagine what it must take to become a Diamond Director, or 4-Star Diamond Director, or 10-Star Diamond Director. A Diamond Director must have 4 business centers all maxed out four weeks in a row. A 10-Star Diamond Director needs to max out 14 business centers four weeks in a row! That takes upwards of tens of thousands of distributors in their downline, balanced between the legs, and actively personally purchasing 140,000 volume points of product (about $154,000) each week!

Now how many downline distributors does it take to cover the cost of these personal purchases? About 10 actively purchasing distributors. So 10 would give about 1000 GSV (500 on left leg, 500 on right leg) which pays out $100 in commission. You only get paid a commission when you accumulate enough GSV according to USANA's pay plan. This $100 still doesn't cover the $110 + shipping for something like the Healthpak100. So lets just say it takes about 11 distributors to cover the cost to participate as a USANA distributor. Right off the bat, USANA has designed the compensation plan to fail 11 out of 12 distributor.

Unfortunately there are many other problems with the compensation plan and how USANA pays out commission as well as other factors that cause about 99% of USANA's distributors to lose money and never make a profit. So only about 1% distributors even have a chance to make a profit. These are fixed percentages designed into USANA's Binary Compensation Plan. It's even evident by USANA's own statistical figures that show only 0.76% of distributors are Gold Directors or higher.

And now we have USANA stating that "we promise everything we do will help you love life and live it — and that will help you help others do the same."

Here's what I think would be a more appropriate logo for USANA:

I call it "Suffering MLM Distributors Trapped in a Web of Deception and Misfortune"

Time For a Name Change? USANA's Failure in the United States May Leave No Other Option.

USANA has failed miserably in the United States territory for many years now. Even after all the contests designed to increase the recruiting efforts of their distributors in an attempt to increase their "Active Associate" numbers in the US have failed. Even after USANA added a "Matching Bonus" to their compensation plan, their US territory has failed. Even after dishing out all sorts of bonuses for recruiting distributors and becoming platinum pace setters, USANA has failed in the US market. USANA even stopped publishing their Active Associate numbers for their United States territory because they are so bad and instead give a combined total with Canada, Mexico and even Europe. So what else is left for USANA to do? Change their name - Amway did it in the past with Quixtar.

With a name change people in the US wouldn't know they are still dealing with USANA. In other words, get the bad taste out of everyone's mouth. However, 99% of distributors would continue to lose money... Doing almost any kind of Google search on USANA brings up my blog and my website "www.mlmpyramid.com", which certainly is a problem for USANA distributors trying to mislead others into joining a pyramid scheme.

USANA announced that shipment of any USANA product will be on hold between August 10 and August 14 until after the convention due to a big announcement at their annual international convention. Either USANA is understaffed and nobody will be at their facility to ship product, or USANA simply doesn't want the product shipped due to a major change. It should be noted that Diamond Directors make a lot of money during this convention because USANA pushes attendees to purchase a lot of product for their business.

I have seen many cars advertising Monavie, Herbalife and other MLM companies, but never have I seen anyone driving around with a USANA advertisement. Other MLMs have been expanding in the United States, except for USANA. There isn't much left for USANA to do to improve the US distributorship other than to pull an Amway and change their name. Better yet, USANA should just move their headquarters to a foreign country since the majority of sales is outside the US. Not only that, but the founder had renounced his US citizenship in the 90s and moved his assets to Lichtenstein, which is considered a method of tax evasion. So USANA is simply a foreign owned company.