2023, Business, Family, Gatherings, Uncategorized

Let’s have a Party

52 Comments

One of my coworkers, after leaving our agency as a secretary, decided to start selling Tupperware. I am a little concerned about her, as I see that Tupperware is probably going bankrupt.

I have had several coworkers who discovered things they liked at various parties specific to selling a certain product, and decided to become sellers themselves just to get the things at a discount. I have been to Longaberger Basket parties and Pampered Chef parties put on by coworkers. I bought a few things, but it wasn’t long before my friends stopped selling these things. I was really surprised to find out this week that a fellow psychologist at another State agency sells Pampered Chef products. She is very subtle about it.

I think there are still Avon representatives in our area. I see that Avon had worldwide sales of $9.1 billion in 2020. My father sold vitamins for a while after he wanted to get the large amounts of Vitamin E he took at wholesale prices. He was convinced Vitamin E kept him from needing cardiac bypass surgery when he was in his late 40’s. He eventually needed the surgery in his 70’s, but still kept selling vitamins.

Know anyone who sold Tupperware or Avon? What sales parties have you attended? Do you take vitamins or dietary supplements?

52 thoughts on “Let’s have a Party”

  1. My next door neighbor has an Avon sign on her door, but I’ve never heard her talk about it. I also see a catalog at our senior center. I’ve been to Tupperware, Pampered Chef (if that’s where I bought my pizza stone) and maybe one more I can’t remember.

    At this point I take just Vitamin E and Fish oil. I go back and forth about taking supplements in general, and the articles I’ve read most recently say they don’t really do much. Could change, though…

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  2. I avoid those parties like the Plague. I’ve never been a fan of that kind of thing.

    My Mom used to buy Shaklee products that way. She loved a product called Basic H. I don’t remember her hosting any parties but I do remember her buying from someone that sold Shaklee products.

    I take a few supplements: vitamin D, calcium, glucosamine, and curcumin.

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    1. Given the price of eggs now, that could be profitable. I suddenly know 3 people with chickens in the back yard and eggs to sell. 2 are suburban chicken holders.

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      1. AANNNdd, a neighbor about a block away has chickens, but on Monday, twice, a bald eagle was trying to get into the coop and the chickens were making a lot of noise. The eagle flew off both times, chickenless, as far as I could see, but a duck and two crows were chasing the eagle the second time.

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        1. Good for you, Krista. It hardly makes any sense to drive to Northfield from the Twin Cities for one dozen eggs, though. I’m sure you won’t have trouble finding a local buyer.

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  4. RIse and Shine, Baboons,

    I have not been to such a party for about 10 years, but there have been many. Aside from the one mentioned there was a wine party and candles. Off to my day now.

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  5. One of my 3 ophthalmologists recommended omega fish oil for my dry eyes. I read about it. A very thorough long scientific study was done about it for dry eyes. Useless.
    They are supposed to use a lift to move Sandy but a new aide tried to walk her. She started to fall and I caught her. Walking is very painfully still three days later.
    Clyde

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  6. Ugh, yes. My aunt sold Avon, one or two of my cousins tried to sell a line of home decor items I can’t remember the name of now (I just remember a pair of wall sconces that looked like wood and metal but were just hollow plastic), and one of my coworkers does Pampered Chef. Then there’s my dad, who got involved in a number of pyramid schemes and ridiculous investments over the years, to the point that he took out a predatory mortgage to fund his get-rich-quick schemes. Obviously most of them were dogs, especially the Y2K Survival Manuals (I recycled at least 25 of the suckers when I cleaned out the house in 2004) but I am still using a knife, a spatula and a potato masher from the cutlery sets he was selling on the side back in the 50s or early 60s when he was in the military. I guess even cruddy MLM stuff was better quality back in the day.

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  7. Are there parties of that sort for men and I have not been invited.? Tool parties, lure parties, booze parties? And why did men, other men, not me, suddenly need caves? Isn’t that sort of counter evolutionary, men returning to caves?

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  8. Growing up in a small town, there was an Avon Lady. I don’t know if Mom ever bought any of her products. A couple of my former co-workers sell Pampered Chef and my sister used to sell Longaberger baskets (a long time ago). I have been to Tupperware, Longaberger, Pampered Chef, and Norwex parties – mostly to help out friends but I never bought much. These days I pretty much avoid those kind of parties.

    I do take supplements – Mg, Ca, and Vit D for my bones, Turmeric for inflammation (nothing specific, just in general), Fish Oil, Vit B12, and Elderberry. I don’t take multivitamins – most of them I get via food, which is the best source. Besides, any excess water soluble vitamins just makes your pee expensive, and excess fat soluble just sit in your fat.

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  9. As for dietary supplements, I take a vegetarian multivitamin and calcium+D supplement from the co-op. The multivitamin contains high dosages of things like B12, B6 and thiamine, and includes a lot of plant extracts (lemon bioflavonoid, bilberry, pomegranate, tomato, etc.), so out of excessive caution I only take one instead of the recommended 3/day.

    My dad used to take Shaklee vitamins; he’d line up half a dozen different tablets and gel capsules in front of his breakfast plate every morning. Mom thought he was (almost literally) sending money down the drain with all those supplements, but he was always a true believer in whatever his latest thing was and couldn’t be argued with. My uncle tried to reason with him when he was drinking diluted turpentine to cure his arthritis and got nowhere, but fortunately it didn’t seem to do any harm. Didn’t cure the arthritis either, of course.

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  11. My mother was an Avon lady and a manager for other Avon ladies in her area. I don’t know how profitable it was but at least Avon offered products that customers wanted and was not a pyramid scheme. There were no Avon parties and I think my mother enjoyed getting out and visiting with her customers. She collected many sales rewards, whatever that signified.

    One of Robin’s sisters and one of that sister’s son and daughter-in-law are involved in Amway, which IS, essentially, a pyramid scheme and though it is allowed in the US, it is banned in the UK and India. Amway is owned by members of the DeVos family (as in Betsy DeVos) and contributes to right wing causes and candidates. It also operates like a cult. That sister and her progeny, being staunch evangelicals, have prequalified themselves as susceptible.

    We’ve made it clear that we are not interested in supporting Amway or its products in any way..

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  12. Yes, I take daily supplements, as per my doctors’ recommendations. In addition to a multivitamin, there’s calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, turmeric. Because I don’t absorb B-12 through my gut, probably due to radiation damage during cancer treatments, I get a monthly injection of it. I have been doing this for years now. Though my annual blood tests are within the normal range and vary little from year to year, I can tell that I need more of something, just don’t have any idea what that might be. My energy level is sorely lacking, but perhaps that’s just something you need to adjust when you get old? Probably a little sunshine and fresh air would help.

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      1. They have “natural” ingredients to promote attention and focus, as opposed to tried and true prescription medications for attention that actually work. Husband has mild ADHD and doesn’t want to take stimulant medication for it.

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  16. I’ve been to a few parties, although I have told people upfront that I won’t be buying anything. Sorry Longabergers and Avon. I am a Pampered Chef fan so have been to several of those and I own some good quality PC stuff.

    Of course, I sold StampinUp products for years at home parties, although the last 10 years, I only had folks over to my house – my few fellow stampers seemed to appreciate that more than getting some free stuff for hosting on their own.

    One multi-vitamin plus additional vitamin D (per my doctor). It was hard to find vitamin D that wasn’t in gel caps.

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  17. There are several very successful MLM or direct sales companies around. The quality of the products is what separates the good one from the bad ones. Avon, Mary Kay, Tupperware, Shaklee, Amway, Watkins, Fuller Brush, and several others that have already been mentioned probably all fall in that category.

    I have bought more than my share of products from all of the above – except for Mary Kay which I’ve somehow never come across. The products have all been perfectly fine, though probably a bit over priced. Being invited to an Avon, Tupperware, Amway or Shaklee house party was always an uncomfortable situation. Apart from the totally phony notion that this was a party, there was always the nagging feeling of being obligated to place an order. To make matters worse, some of the purveyors of these products develop a near religious zeal for their wares, which I find uncomfortable.

    At one time I had a Fuller Brush man who would come around every few months or so. I was single at the time, so he was smart enough to know that I wasn’t a hug consumer, and he made a point of not bugging me. He was a likeable man, and had good products to offer, but I lost contact with him when I moved out of the neighborhood.

    I was a dealer for Watkins for a couple of years, and I had a regular customer base that would order stuff from me, but never enough to constitute a regular business. I think you have to be more of a naturally enthusiastic sales person than I’ll ever be to be successful at it.

    Back in college, I recall being invited to a home for a demonstration of a set of waterless cookware. The man demonstrating the pots and pans, cooked an entire meal for the invited guests with no water in the pans. Imagine all of the nutrients that didn’t get poured down the drain after cooking the carrots that way? They were really tasty, too. I was impressed, but the price tag was way beyond what we could afford – by hundreds of dollars – so I continued to cook in our cheap and flimsy pots and pans for years. For all I know, that company is still in business. Have any of you come across it?

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      1. Unfortunately I don’t recall the name of the brand that was promoted at that demonstration, but I am aware that there are other brands that sell “waterless” cookware. I’m fairly certain that most of us can agree that the quality of your cookware makes a difference. I’m way, way beyond the flimsy aluminum cookware and cheap teflon of my early adulthood. At the same time I’m also painfully aware that just because it costs more doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better, and worse, it’s hard to figure out who can be trusted to give you a good evaluation. And that doesn’t just apply to cookware!

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  18. There is a pink Cadillac around Rochester. I was thinking Avon, but right, Mary Kay…
    I remember mom having at least 1 or 2 Avon parties at the house. She never sold them, just hosted. I wonder which of her friends was selling?
    Years ago a theater friend asked us to meet and we thought it was really odd, but then he tried to interest us in some sales thingy. No thanks.

    I’ve got a niece that does Party Lite. And there was some make up thing that a co-worker did…

    No supplements for me either. I’ve tried multivitamins, I’ve tried Fish oil or glucosamine… but then I forget.. and I never noticed a strong benefit.

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    2. My mom had severe osteoporosis. She had numerous fractures: both wrists, her right hand, her pelvis, and her L5 (lumbar 5) vertebra. She broke her L5 so many times that it was like a tiny puzzle with fracture lines in it. Finally, her dementia, and probably a UTI, caused her to push her walker away and run for the toilet. Not a good plan, of course. She fell and broke her left hip. Due to her frailty, surgeons were unable to repair it and she passed away due to that fracture. I knew about her osteoporosis for decades. I also knew that I am just like her in almost every physical way. I have severe lumbar pain (L4 and 5) due to scoliosis and I knew I would have arthritis, which I do. So I started calcium supplements decades ago, as well as vitamin D. I started glucosamine about a year ago on my doctor’s recommendation. I don’t take multivitamins because I agree that you can get most of that from eating a healthy diet. Anyway, I had a DEXA scan recently and got the results back today. My bone density is normal! So I’m going to keep taking that calcium. Osteoporosis can be very dangerous for older women and I watched my mom really struggle with her desire to be active and independent, but she just fell so much.

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  21. I take vitamin D and calcium. That is a must because of a medication I’m on. There are many others that I take but not every day. Minerals are important, and increasingly had to get from food. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/) I’ve had to be on steroids from time to time, and steroids deplete minerals. I take magnesium and zinc. Also methylated folate and B12, fish oil, ginger root, and CoQ10.

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  22. i was amway and lived the positive messages and positive thinking they promoted
    anyone can start their own deal using alibaba today buy virtually anything at distributor price
    i havnt been to a party and don’t know anyone in that kind of sales today

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