USANA Will Release Their First Quarter Earnings Report For 2015 and Reveal How Effective The Doctor Oz Show Was For Them.

Today's Q1 2015 earnings release after the markets close will reveal how successful USANA's strategy was to promote their products through the Doctor Oz Show. If there are a couple million viewers watching the show each day and just 1% of them become Preferred Customers, we should see a substantial increase in the number of preferred customers in the United States and in Canada. 20K? 40K? 100K? I don't know. They promote a USANA product every month since January and the earnings report covers three months. If the number of additional preferred customers in the United States quarter over quarter is under 20K, then I would consider the effectiveness of the Dr. Oz Show to be a bust.


*** EARNINGS RELEASE UPDATE ***
Regarding the "Americas and Europe" market, which is where the Doctor Oz Show viewers are allowed to register as preferred customers:

USANA gained only 3000 additional preferred customers quarter over quarter from 60,000 to 63000.
USANA gained only 1000 additional Associates quarter over quarter from 85,000 to 86,000.

This should not go unnoticed by stock analysts and should question USANA during the earnings conference call tomorrow why there was no impact from the popular Doctor Oz Show after showcasing 3 USANA products over the course of 3 months to several million viewers. I believe this revelation is evidence of a product with no demand in the free market at its current selling price, which is the price the associates and preferred customers pay. In other words, if you put USANA products on store shelves nobody would buy it!

USANA Becomes Trusted Partner and Sponsor of the Dr. Oz Show - Gives Preferential Treatment To Gold Directors and Above

USANA's latest marketing campaign designed to get USANA products in the eyes of Dr. Mehmet Oz viewers may only benefit the top 1% of USANA associates Gold Directors and above as well as provide means to falsely satisfy associate's 5 customer rule and fool federal regulators.

According to USANA document Trusted Partner and Sponsor of The Dr. Oz Show - Partnership Guidelines

Allocation of Preferred Customers and Sales Volume Preferred Customers, Sales Volume Points (SVP), and other leads that come in through www.USANAhealth.net - a shopping experience for viewers of The Dr. Oz Show - will be provided to recognition-eligible Gold Directors or above who reside in the United States and Canada. We will allocate leads to each Associate meeting the above criteria, filtering first by pin level and then by application date. That means we will move down the tree of Associates residing in the United States or Canada, going from the longest tenured Star Diamonds to our new Golds. The process will restart each time every eligible Associate has been allocated a new lead. This only applies for www.USANAhealth.net. We will follow existing protocol for anything that comes in through www.USANA.com.

So when someone watches the Dr. Oz show that features a USANA product and goes to USANAHealth.net to order the product or become a preferred customer, USANA gives the commission points and preferred customer to a preferential class of USANA distributors who are Gold Directors and above, which represents less than 1% of USANA associates!

This is a very clever trick by USANA that could be used to fool federal regulators such as the FTC by giving the top 1% of associates (who also happen to account for the majority of commissions paid out) customers as a way to automatically satisfy one of the Amway safeguards - USANA's Five Customer Rule, which was designed to protect associates from falling victim to a pyramid scheme. There are not enough preferred customers according to USANA's SEC filings to satisfy the 5 customer rule for most who received a commission check and I believe there are even fewer retail customers. I believe if the FTC were to investigate USANA, USANA would be unable to produce any proof that the majority of commissions paid out were legitimately paid to individuals satisfying the 5 customer rule.

It may also be against the law for USANA to assign customers generated from the Dr. Oz show exclusively to preferential group of distributors as well as paying them commissions for sales those distributors had nothing to do with.


UPDATE - FEBRUARY 11, 2015:
After the 4th quarter earnings statement was released, president Kevin Guest made the following statement regarding the allocation of customers who purchase from the Dr. Oz show after asked about it from a stock analyst during a conference call:

So we’ve a referral system in place. usana.com has millions of people visit it on a yearly basis. So we do receive referrals that are unsolicited directly from someone. And so we’ve a referral system in place and it's basically the same system that they fall into from a referral system. And it’s computer functioning, it’s non-biased and we distribute those leads just as we would distribute anyone visiting usana.com.  - Kevin Guest - President

 Reference for this quote can be found on the Seeking Alpha transcript of the conference call.

That statement by the USANA president was very misleading when he claimed it was "non-biased". In fact, it couldn't be any more bias. Only Gold Directors and above will benefit, which accounts for less than 1% of USANA's associates.