LITTLE BOSSES EVERYWHERE

A durable, controversial business model pays off for just a few.

There are about 700 multilevel marketing companies in the U.S., among them biggies like Amway, Herbalife, and Mary Kay, Read writes in this impressive investigative work. MLMs claim billions in annual sales, yet independent analyses show that most people who try to make a buck in the industry earn almost nothing. That’s because “participants are not employees” but so-called distributors or partners, contractors who must first buy the cosmetics, weight-loss plans, or vitamins they hope to sell. Read’s book spans nine decades, from MLM pioneer Carl F. Rehnborg, a vitamin salesman who falsely professed to be a doctor, to the industry’s current status as a political force. Amway’s co-founder and his wife gave $1 billion to Republican causes, and, inevitably, Donald Trump became an industry player. The New York magazine writer’s narrative is bolstered by revealing interviews with people burned by MLMs—one spent $75,000 on cosmetics, earning back a fraction on sales—and a touch of the madcap; she sneaks into a Mary Kay convention, where awards are given to “consultants” who bought $10,000 worth of products to sell. While paying close attention to the court cases and media exposés that attempted, often in vain, to distinguish between “predatory” but legal multilevel businesses and fraudulent pyramid schemes, Read notes that recent developments in the nation’s capital have signaled to some insiders that MLMs were working in “a postregulatory world.” Today, the battle to define what’s ethical has moved online, where “anti-MLMers” call for reform and proponents recruit on social media. In her thoroughly reported book, Read includes some levity, noting that in the 1970s, reps for Amway, founded by conservative Christians, circulated a rumor that a competitor “was run by Satanists.”

Scrutinizing an industry whose self-generated hype belies the experiences of many.