Seint Beauty: from Blog to Brand to MLM.
Seint Beauty, formerly known as Maskcara, is a MLM that I recently became aware of after being invited to a makeup related Facebook group by my boyfriend’s sister. I’d imagine that’s how most people discover them if they did not follow the original blog. Honestly, it kind of caught me off guard to see so many people drawn to their products or to MLMs in general. After commenting on one of the posts about feeling uncomfortable supporting an MLM, this was the “artist’s” response.
“It’s women making extra money selling makeup, just like Mary Kay or anything else that’s been around for decades…someone is always making money off of sales. MLM isn’t bad unless it’s a pyramid scheme and someone is asking for a big investment and making false promises of income that isn’t a reality. Or we can give our money to big companies like Target, Ulta, Sephora and let the rich get richer.”
While I have been known to enjoy arguing, especially if it involves standing up for someone, I’d like to instead share some information about the company so you can see the grim reality and decide for yourself. The following blurb was taken from the compensation plan when the brand was still called Maskcara.
Introduction: At Maskcara Beauty, we truly believe that we can have our cake and eat it too. But what does that really mean? It means you don’t have to choose between financially supporting your family and spending time with them. It means you don’t have to choose between helping yourself or helping others. With a little creativity, optimism, and hard work, you can have it all. Our Compensation Plan is no exception; it’s easily customizable to fit the level of part-time or full-time involvement that suits you. We are confident that you’ll find it both rewarding and easy to share with others.*
Have it all? Not “having to choose between supporting your family and spending time with them” seems a bit like an income promise. It suggests you’ll at least be able to quit your full-time job and not spend much time selling product.
In 2020, the company rebranded to Seint Beauty. Their reason for rebranding? The founder wanted to update the mission so it represented the company better. You can draw your own conclusions after reading, but I’m guessing it involves lawsuits.
Now, I have a lot to say about multi-level marketing and ultimately I’d like to give product recommendations for things you can buy instead, but first let’s start with a little background on this company and the creator.
First, the Blog
Originally, Maskcara was a blog created in 2009 by the owner of the brand, Cara Brook.
Meet Cara Brook.
Raised Mormon, she is now a 36 year old mother of three boys and one girl.
For the first year, this blog had a pretty small following of pretty much only friends in Utah and her family. It wasn’t until a hair tutorial became viral on Pinterest that she gained traction. I didn’t notice any hair care products on the Seint website. In the early days, she wrote posts based on samples she’d get from Sephora.
A few years later, after her sister encouraged her to enter a contest at Allure, she goes on to win their 2013 Beauty Blogger of the Year. The award was for her HAC method, pronounced HACK, which stands for highlight and contour. So essentially using different shades of highlights, contours, bronzers, and blushes instead of foundation. This method of applying makeup has been done well before she decided to call it HAC.
Over time, her blog became really popular. Right around when the beauty brand was founded, her blog received over 3 million hits a month. With this following, she saw an opportunity and presented the products on her blog only to find out her first invoice was more than what she could afford with the money she had and what her parents attributed. She needed to come up with more or lose the momentum.
Then an E-Commerce Business
So after saving $30,000, her parents giving her $30,000, and her recently retired father-in-law giving his entire 401k of $120,000, they were able to pay for the first invoice. The first release was on Black Friday in 2013 and, luckily for the FIL, sold out within 48 hours. It was around another year before there was a restock. The company made about $1 million the first year and $1.5 million the next. The more recent figures estimate revenue around $25 million.
Over time, people started sharing products with their friends and family, like hosting parties. Thus, people in Cara’s circle suggested she cash in on the demonstrative aspect and transition the business to direct sales. After being “super against it” she “soon realized how incredible the direct sales model is and how the party plan was a perfect fit [for them].” She goes on to state that she “wanted Maskcara to be a real job.”
Direct Sales or MLM?
The company switches to “direct sales” in January of 2017. However, I’d like to pause here and explain direct sales versus multi-level marketing.
Direct sales describes the business model of where independent contractors sell a company’s products directly to consumers. There are different methods for selling the products, but most people operate out of their homes.
Multilevel Marketing also involves independent contractors selling products/services directly to consumers. However, in this business model, the contractors also make money from recruiting others to work for the company. So you’d make money off your sales and the sales of your recruits, your downline.
So, Seint is a multilevel marketing company. There are a few terms these businesses will use instead of being transparent about their pyramid shaped setup.
Seint’s Setup for Earning Money
It’s very simple, but let’s break it down so we can all understand. A few terms to start.
SV: Sales Volume CV: Commissionable Volume - so think wholesale value or 20% of SV. TGSV: Total Group Sales Volume - total sales volume of you and your downline. Active: when you reach $300, $600, or $900 in monthly sales. In order to receive downline commission, your downline commission must remain active.
The brand lists 6 ways to be compensated
Retail Commissions
Artist-in-Training Bonus
Enroller Bonus
Level Bonus
Personal Leader Bonus
Generation Bonuses
So the first one is commission, the second one has to do with earning more than 20% depending on how much you sell, but all of the rest involve recruiting people. So really there are two ways to make money, selling products and recruiting people.
How do you start?
To start, you purchase either the Basic Artist Kit for $199 or the Pro Artist Kit for $399. The Basic Kit gives you 159 CV and the Pro gives you 359 CV. You cannot buy the Basic and later on decide to buy the Pro Artist, so already there is some incentive to invest more. This purchase is what makes you an “artist”. No qualifications or training necessary. Keep in mind, you also have to pay a monthly fee of $11.95 for back-office. So for a year, you’re at least paying $342.40.
What about hidden costs? Well, the chart doesn’t seem to mention who pays for the giveaway promotions or the travel costs if you’re going to various parties.
One of their favorite talking points is that you don’t HAVE to recruit and this is technically true. In the initial phase, you are eligible to make 20% Base Retail Commission. So, if I sell $200 worth of their products, I’d make $40 dollars. This is actually a pretty low commission rate compared to other multilevel marketing companies.
What an awesome side hustle or even FULL-TIME job. I wonder how many social media posts I’d need to make and how much time and effort I’d need to put in to make decent money.
The not confusing at all compensation plan for Seint Beauty.
To get out of “training” and into the second rank you have to accumulate $800 in sales or $640 in commission and be active for the month. The active requirement is $240 in commission or $300 in sales. This number resets every month. You have to be in the second rank to earn more than the initial 20% commission and it scales with 40% being the maximum.
Roughly, if you sell up $398 worth of product or 319 CV, you’ll only earn 20%. $400-$798 worth of product, you’ll make 25%. $800-$1998 = 30%. $2000-$3998 = 35%. If you sell $4000 or more, you’ll earn 40% commission.
Let’s say you didn’t want to recruit anyone or you couldn’t, but wanted this to be your full-time job. For our example, we will aim for making $50,000 a year which I will round to $4,200 a month. To do this, I would have to sell $10,500 worth of product every month for a total of $126,000 for the year. The tins of face products such as bronzer, highlighter, or contour are $14 a piece. At this price, I’d have to sell 750 a month.
What if I focused on eye shadow? The singles are $12 a shadow to build your own palette or you can buy a 4 shadow collection for $40. I’d have to sell either 875 single shadows or 263 collections a month. Either option sounds very achievable, right?
What if I recruit? What could I make with one person?
Let’s say we’re able to recruit one friend. From my understanding, if you personally sign up an artist to be under you, you’d make the enroller bonus of 5% of their total CV. So lets say I sold $9,000 worth of product, I’d make $3,600 in commission. If my friend sold $9.000, I’d make $450 in commission for a total of $4,050. This would equate to roughly $48,600 a year.
Okay, $4,050 doesn’t sound bad. How much product would I need to sell to meet a $9,000 SV? At this price, I would need to sell 643 of these products. If my downline did the same but sold eyeshadow collections, they would have to sell 225 of the collections.
Sounds like it’s becoming more than an easy, stay at home, side-hustle.
How is Seint Different?
It’s not. Okay, so I am not saying this is a pyramid scheme because these companies have done everything they can to make sure they can argue how different they are. From what I can tell, the following things are actually common amongst newer MLM brands, but they will highlight to further “prove” they’re not one of the bad MLMs.
No quotas.
Except, in order to be “active” you must have 240, 480, or 720 CV depending on your rank. To make more than that initial 20%, you have to sell a certain amount in the month and the number resets every month. I’m not sure if Seint knows what the word “quota” means.
No need to store mass amounts of products.
The product is shipped directly to the consumer. The artists technically do not have to dedicate a room in their house to store product. Except if you want to have giveaways and products for people to test.
They have a 30-day Money Back Guarantee, less the 10% restocking fee. So sure, you can get a refund but not all of it.
Other Questionable Things
Refund Cap
If an artist returns more than $2,500 for a refund within a 12 month period, the request constitutes as the Artist’s voluntary cancellation of their Artist Agreement. If an artist’s business is cancelled for any reason, there is no whole or partial refund for Artist Kit fees or renewal fees. Renewal fees are the monthly fees.
Non-Compete Clause
If you reach influencer level or above, then a non-compete clause in the NDA would apply. So you cannot participate in other direct selling ventures during and one year after.
Lawsuits
A lawsuit was brought against this company in 2019. The lawsuit happened just before they rebranded in 2020. Without going too into detail, just know it is pretty expensive to change a company’s name and isn’t a simple process.
Part of the terms include a waiver for class action lawsuits, so any action has to be brought on an individual basis.
Not Transparent
There is no Income Disclosure Statement. Before agreeing to join, I think it would be useful to see the numbers of how much you can actually make. It definitely feels deceitful when a company refuses to share this information.
The Products are Expensive
$10-$12 for an eyeshadow is expensive. I could buy a Pat McGrath eyeshadow palette for less and I’d consider her products some of the most expensive available. Take for example this Natasha Denona Palette.
This palette at full price is $65. If I purchased 15 single shadows at even $10 a shadow, that would be $150. Both Natasha Denona and Cara are makeup artists, but I just can’t say Cara’s background or reputation justify that amount.
What about the amount of product?
Well, this information is not listed on their website and I don’t notice it anywhere on their packaging. So as far as how much product you actually get? Who knows!
No product amount or shelf life once the product is opened listed anywhere on the site.
In Conclusion
The Opportunity
Seint Beauty would love for you to think they’re different and hope you focus on the giveaways, the “ease of use” of their products, and how much you’d be supporting other women versus big corporate companies. You can have your cake and eat it to, they say. The reality? A typical participant earns between 2 CAD and 649 CAD annually. This information comes directly from their compensation plan where they state it is essentially the same typical earnings for their American artists.
The only real chance at making money in this company is through recruiting and that’s putting it nicely. The compensation plan is anything but flexible, simple, or easy to achieve. It isn’t a business or business opportunity if you have to purchase product to start and continually purchase products to garner interest. Artists aren’t business owners, they’re customers and they’re providing free marketing.
If a company has such an enormous revenue, where is it all going? Please tell me how the rich aren’t getting richer when these companies are set up to profit the top people.
The Products
The products are overpriced. They’re not interesting or unique. In an oversaturated market, there are plenty of alternatives that do the same thing likely at a better price. Not to mention the numerous reviews online that mention skin irritation, difficulty returning, and how little use you get out of the products before its gone. Don’t even get me started on the abysmal shade range.
Multilevel Marketing as a Whole
According to the FTC, almost 99% of participants of all multi-level marketing companies lose money. The chances of being successful with an online business or starting any kind of small business is higher than your chance at making money by joining an MLM. Statistically, if you recruit 5 people and those 5 each recruit 5 more. After 13 cycles of this, you would exceed the population of the earth. Now factor in the non-compete. There are better ways to make money with affiliate marketing being a typical and more lucrative alternative to joining a MLM.
Stay tuned for more on MLMs in general and products I would recommend over anything Seint.
Read more about the lawsuit: here. Watch this video to learn more about MLMs. FTC Study on MLMs. Watch this video for more information, including discussion on the “free” trips
Resources: NYTimes Article, The Spectrum Article, Networth Info, DirectSellingNews, Business For Home, the Balance SMB, Reddit Thread, Maskcara Comp Plan, Seint’s Comp Plan, Seint Policies and Procedures, Seint Review, Non-seller’s review, Seint Breakdown.
