In this post I will present some facts and evidence to you but I will leave it for you to make your own conclusions.

People have been wondering what is happening to Forever Living for a while now. Timeless Vie speculated about its future two years ago. See what they had to say here and here.

Timeless Vie said that Forever Living were reaching saturation point. They said that a company approaching saturation point would either introduce new products, or new markets. At the time of their article, FLP were trying to sell aloe vera products to horses. Since then they have brought out a new beauty range and this year they have rebranded their most popular drinks. Also, members seem to be increasingly chasing foreign markets.

Timeless Vie described some new rule changes that had been made to make it easier to achieve ranks. This has continued to be the case.

Lifecycles

The lifecycle of any living organism always follows roughly the same trajectory, whether it is a colony of bacteria or a species of animals. MLMs have often used this trajectory to show how well their company is doing, and they encourage people to join based on where their company is right now.

Have a look at some examples.

Here is someone trying to recruit people into Pink Zebra

Let’s have a look at that chart

They are suggesting that all you have to do to be in the top 2-3% of earners, you just have to join at the right time. Research shows it is incredibly difficult to earn any money in an MLM, so reps will be doing all they can to get themselves any advantage they can.

The chart above stops at stabilisation. Let’s see what science has to say about population survival charts that this chart is based on. Here is a chart documenting the rise and fall of a colony of bacteria.

Here is what is happening to the human population in industrialised countries.

In MLM terms, this means that initially there is a lot of excitement about a new company, loads of people join in pre-launch. They get more people to join and spend their money, they spam their friends and family and everyone gets bored of it. After a while the people who joined leave faster than the rate of people joining. This is the start of the death/ declining phase, or oversaturation.

I wonder where Forever Living Products are on this chart? Let’s look at some evidence. How has the UK company being doing financially over the last few years? Companies House has all the details we need on this. The money brought into the company is documented every year.

The 2017 report that looked at the company for  2016 has this to say

This bit tells you how much profit they made in 2016.

For a detailed breakdown of where the money came from, have a look at this

This shows the company earned a lot of money from things like success days and

This shows that the company made a lot of money from success days, training materials and ‘delivery revenue’. The sales of goods has declined from 2015.

Let’s lay out the total turnover from over the past few years.

2011-£23,878,750

2012- £27,167,812

2013- £34,726,349

2014- £58,993,590

2015- £106,489,238

2016- £80,066,133

2017- we will find out in October this year.

That just looks like a load of numbers. I prefer charts and pictures to show what is happening. Here is a graph showing the above figures.

I wonder what this chart will look like at the end of this year when the 2017 figures are shown? We can look for clues. One of the things that Forever Living do each year is share some of their profits with the top people who brought in the most money and recruits to the company. If the cheques are smaller this year, that would indicate a decline in profits.

What did those cheques look like in 2016? The evidence for them is everywhere, as it is a good way to lure in new recruits. It makes it look like people are successful and it is possible to earn loads of money.

2015 Global Rally in Singapore

There were 97 cheque earners from the UK in 2015.

This was on the cover of FLP’s magazine. This is the highest earner in the UK. We’ll call her number 1.

The following images are accessible from the FLP website and have been widely shared by a lot of reps in order to make their company look successful and to make it look profitable for people.

Another top earner, we’ll call her number 2.

 

This one of the mid earners. She’ll be referred to as number 3.

Number 4 is also a mid earner.

This one was number 8 in the UK in 2014. In 2015 she qualified for a cheque at the rally as the 11th biggest cheque earner.

There were loads more cheques presented, I have only put three here as examples. Another indicator of success of the reps is the amount of people being promoted up the ranks. In FLP’s magazine for April 2015 they have listed the people being promoted to Managers in March.

Here are the names that were promoted to Assistant manager-

And these are most of the supervisors. There are about 250 supervisor promotions.

Let’s see what their success day looked like when everyone got back from their cheque sharing extravaganza. They call the trip abroad, the Global Rally.

 

2016 Global Rally in Johannesburg, South Africa

We would expect the cheques to be bigger for the three reps whose cheques we have seen. This is because the company’s revenue was much higher this year than the previous year. Let’s see what they were in 2016. The cheque details for all the money awarded can be found on this slide share website. There were 176 cheque earners from the UK at the 2016 event.

Here is number 1’s cheque. It is about $12,000 less than the previous year. Proportionately, it is about the same as 2015.

Here is number 2’s cheque. It is an increase of $325,054.54. That’s a massive increase of 48%.

Number 3’s image was taken from a website of an FBO trying to entice people to join based on the large cheques.

 

This cheque is a huge 1061.63% increase! Ten times her previous cheque!

 

 

 

 

 

Number 4.

Number 4’s cheque has increased by a whopping $92,387 and she’s gone up a place in the cheque leader board. She must have been feeling pretty successful at this point.

These are the promotions for that month.

Again, there are about 250 supervisor promotions, the same as the previous year.

 

2017 Global Rally in Dubai

You can access the British cheque earners and their amounts at Forever Living’s own site. There were 108 cheques awarded.

 

Number 1’s cheque reduced.

 

 

 

Number 2’s cheque reduced

Number 3’s cheque also reduced.

Number 4’s cheque has also reduced and she has dropped down to number 18 in the cheque league table.

Let’s have a look at the promotions this year.

Notice the massive drop in supervisor promotions. 2015 and 2016 both had about 250 promotions at this level. Now there are only 28! A massive drop.

2018 Global Rally in Dallas, USA

To see the cheques that were awarded this year, go to Forever Living’s website.

Number 1 must be very disappointed with her cheque of $756,687.82.

Number 2 got this

Number 3’scheque is much lower than last year.

Number 4 qualified to go to the rally but she didn’t qualify for a cheque this year. She must have been pretty devastated at that because all her team will have been expecting her to get one. I think the expectation is that the ‘business’ should grow year on year and once you start earning cheques, it should really take off. The cheques and recognition process is so public that their decline is out there for all to see.

I tried to find a list of promotions but it seems Forever Living don’t publish them anymore. Have a look at one of their online magazines.

A Bot Watcher has told me that Bob parker, the UK and Ireland boss of Forever living publishes the reps’ names for their promotions. The most up to date ones are here-

Some graphs

There is a lot of information to digest above. I’ll put it in some graphs to make it clearer.

Here is an illustration of the three people’s cheques from above.

Here are the number of promotions awarded in May of each year.

 

‘Supervisor’ is the first promotion that a rep in Forever Living gets. The numbers have gone from a steady 250 a month, down to 28, and now 17. These are the bottom rung of the pyramid structure. Without enough of them, the whole structure won’t be able to support itself and could topple.

All of these bottom FBOs will be looking to the people at the top and will be watching them get their cheques. We know that the cheques are becoming smaller each year, but new joiners won’t necessarily be doing much research into the situation. They could well be being blinded by the cheques and aspiring to earn one themselves.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the cheque earners I have shown you above. FBO number 3 is actually number 10 in the UK. She is the tenth highest earner in Forever Living in the UK and as such, is considered successful. Her Facebook page has some inspirational posts. In the following images, she shares her thoughts on Forever Living’s future and her experience of it so far.

Do we think things are getting better and better for Forever Living? How are things going for our person number 3? The tenth highest earner? She has registered her business activities with Companies House so we can go over and have a look at how successful she is.

Oh, she’s not doing so well. In August last year there was a meeting and a resolution was made.

Her company has been voluntarily liquidated. It went through the courts in May 2018 and a liquidator was appointed. Here are the last accounts that summarise what has been happening.

I’m no accountant (would love to hear from one), but it looks to me like a tax bill of £115,586.10 couldn’t be paid, resulting in the company being £63,078.10 in debt.

Whilst this person was in Dallas, holding a giant cheque and trying to recruit people off the back of her ‘success’, she was actually in quite a bit of debt. And this, remember, is the UK’s number ten in the list of earners.

I am not gloating at this poor person’s failure. I am sure it has been dreadful for her and extremely stressful. I feel more sorry for the unsuspecting people who might sign up under her, hoping to earn some money under her mentorship. What hope do they have of obtaining a promotion or earning any large cheques if one of the most successful people in the company is not earning anything?

Just one more photo before I leave you to ponder the direction this company are heading in.

A ‘success day’ from 2018, held in the London Paladium. Photos from this event show a less than half full room, or they just show the very front or corner, to make it look more full.

This would have been unthinkable in 2016 when there were events in 4 different major cities in larger arenas and better attended.

How do you think the company is doing? Are there another 40 years in it as they are promising?