If you are wondering Is Neora a pyramid scheme, you've come to the right place. I'm here to help you find out!
First of all, I want to congratulate you on taking a second to investigate before investing in any business opportunity. It's the only way to avoid scams and find the legit opportunities out there.
The chances are that someone has either approached you about the supposedly age-defying skincare products or about a possible business opportunity.
After talking a while you found out they are recommending your products from a company called Neora and the products are supposedly superior to the ones available in retail and online stores.
Or maybe you have a social media following and someone you know contacted you about a business opportunity and it turned out to be Neora. Sound about right?
Well, even if you didn't find out about Neora through the aforementioned scenarios, you might still want to read through my short review to make up your mind if it's a business opportunity you want to take part in.
Neora is network marketing aka multi-level marketing company. There are tons of MLMs that are legit and MLM is not the same thing as a pyramid scheme.
But pyramid schemes do use the MLM model, so it's easy to understand why people get them mixed up. MLMs can offer work from home opportunities and even full-time income if you work hard, but the sad truth is that most people in MLMs don't end up making any significant income.
But the question in your mind probably is if Neora is one of the legit MLMs or a pyramid scheme? Let's find out.
Before we continue, I want to be completely transparent. I'm not affiliate with Neora in any way, I'm writing this review just to give my opinion if I think Neora is a worthwhile business opportunity.
My site is about finding online income sources that can offer full-time income and help you work on your own terms. So I try to find the most effective ways for you to make money online. You can check my number one recommendation through the link below:
Neora: The Company
In their own words, Neora is a global relationship marketing company that offers proprietary age-fighting skincare and wellness products.
The company was launched in 2011 with a staff of 13 and it was originally called Nerium. The company grew pretty fast in their second year they already had over 100 employees and an over $100M in annual revenue.
They've grown steadily since, achieving $400M annual revenue in 2014 and achieving several industry accolades over the year.
The company is headquartered in Addison, Texas but they have several global subsidiaries. At least in Singapore, Hong Kong, Colombia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico,
They changed the name from Nerium to Neora apparently as a part of a global rebrand that reflects the company's evolution.
The founder CEO of the company is Jeffrey Olson.
The Products
Neora focuses on two main categories of products. Skincare and wellness. They claim to use exclusive ingredients with proven antioxidants, peptides, plant extract and vitamins that target the signs of aging.
Skincare products consist mainly of creams and ointments that target the signs of aging. The products have very scientific names:
- SAL-14
- Eco-Veil
- Sig-1273
- PhytoLumina
- I-FIL4R
- SIG-1191
- TC3-Armor
- Sea3C
The wellness products range from products targeting brain health to skin renewal and immune system function as well as things like sleep aids:
The Business Opportunity
So now that we know the background of the company and what they sell, let's look at the business opportunity they offers.
Neora being an MLM company, they naturally offer people the opportunity to become their individual sales reps. And of course the possibility to recruit more members.
Neora calls it's sales reps Brand Partners. When you become a Brand Partner, you will receive:
- A business in a box. I.e. Everything you need to get started.
- A Personalized E-commerce website that they host and customize for you
- Marketing materials. These are marketing documents to help you get sales.
- Digital tools like mobile app, comprehensive reporting and social media tools.
- Access to 24/7 training in form of of training videos and resources.
- Order fulfillment. You don't need to keep your own stock. In their model customers order directly online.
- Customer service that handles the tough questions for you
There are four different starter packs to choose from. They are basically all the same but include different amounts of inventory of the products:
- Basic Kit $49.95: Includes marketing and training material. No products.
- Starter Pack $500.00: Includes marketing and training material and 13 Neora products
- Builder Pack $750: Includes marketing and training material and 13 Neora products
- Premier Builder Pack $1000: Includes marketing and training material and 32 Neora products
Neora doesn't seem to share it's compensation plan on it's website at the time of writing this review even though they reference to it on couple of pages.
Is Neora A Pyramid Scheme
Neora has had some controversy in recent times. Most notably the Federal Trade Comission FTC has sued Neora for operating an illegal pyramid scheme.
"The FTC’s complaint says Nerium markets its products through a sales network of “brand partners,” or “BPs” who it recruits with promises that they can earn “lifestyle-changing income” and gain financial freedom.
In fact, the FTC says, most Nerium BPs end up making little or no money, and a substantial percentage lose money. According to the complaint, Nerium is a classic pyramid scheme that encourages new BPs to make big upfront investments in buying Nerium products, then compensates them based mainly on how many new BPs they recruit, not on their product sales. The new recruits, like the BPs who recruit them, are allegedly encouraged to make large upfront investments in products. But, according to the FTC, it is difficult for most BPs to sell Nerium products because, among other things, consumers often can buy the products directly from Nerium or other sources for the same or less than the best price a BP can offer."
Keep in mind that sometimes there's a fine line between legit MLMs and pyramid schemes and sometimes the companies or individual sales reps test the boundaries. To make things even more complicated, the line is always changing as the legislation and guidelines change over time.
This is one of the things why I'm not personally a fan of the business model. It's never easy to tell if a network marketing business is fully legitimate in the eyes of authorities.
Network marketing can be "used for good" but any company that chooses to use it as its main business model should be extremely transparent about what part of its revenue comes from product sales to consumers and what from recruited sales reps.
I'm telling you this, so you can understand why some of the large MLMs have been accused and even ruled to be pyramid schemes but many have fixed their business models and thrived for decades after that.
So a single lawsuit is not the end-all-be-all ruling if a company is a pyramid scheme. But it is disconcerting nevertheless.
Neora has been around since 2011 and they do have a very clean track record before this recent incident. Pyramid schemes are usually short lived and the owners vanish into thin air with the money when authorities get interested.
But Neora is actually fighting back, like you see in this complaint they filed. To me it seems that this is a matter of opinion and the FTC wants to set an example. And Neora seems to think so as well:
"A business cannot operate without being able to know the law. Improper attempts to retroactively change federal law and to effectively preempt state law are unconstitutional. This is especially pernicious when a powerful federal government agency such as the FTC attempts to improperly, unilaterally, and retroactively change the law. The FTC has not done this with passage of a new law by Congress or through the agency’s own formal Rulemaking. On the contrary, it has done this through issuance of “Guidance,” similar documents, press conferences, and through the threat of filing “fencing in” enforcement actions."
While this might sound like I'm defending an illegal pyramid scheme, I assure you I'm not. I'm just pointing out that MLMs are legal until they are established to be pyramid schemes. As far as I can tell, there isn't a court ruling yet from the FTC lawsuit so I wouldn't consider Neora a pyramid scheme.
From the information I could find, Neora actually seems to be one of the more legit MLMs out there. They don't require you to hold expensive inventory, the cost to join is small and they have actual scientifically driven R&D department, unlike many other MLMs.
That said, MLMs are definitely not for everyone. They require you to be very proactive and social if you want to succeed by selling products directly to consumers. The same goes for recruiting people underneath you.
The fact is that most people won't end up making any significant amount of money with MLMs. But the ones who succeed, can earn much more than in regular jobs.
But I'll leave it up to you to decide if Neora is a business venture you want to take part in. But I'm going to shamelessly recommend an alternative business opportunity I personally believe in.
This business model can be used to increase sales and get people into your downline for MLMs as well, so you might be interested either way.
A Way To Get More Referrals Or Start Your Own Online Busines
If you want to work for yourself in 2020, it would be stupid to not leverage the online world. There are over 4.5 Billion people using the Internet and the numbers are growing constantly.
If you can get your offers in front of thousands or millions of people online, you can rest assured that your business will thrive, not matter what business model you use.
I personally use a business model that combines search engine optimization (SEO) with affiliate marketing. There are other ways to leverage the online world, but SEO give you the benefit of endless source of customers for free.
Just think for a second how you found this article. You probably Googled if Neora is a pyramid scheme or something along those lines. Or maybe you spotted my post in social media.
But either way, I knew there were people like you looking for that information. And I knew how to get my post in front of your eyes and apparently you clicked it, since you are reading this.
Now think about for a second if you could find out exactly what people are searching for online and knew how to create content that would pop up on their search result pages. That would be pretty awesome right?
I bet you can see the potential here. If you can get people to read you content, you can make sales. That's a fact.
But I want you to think outside of the box of conventional lead generations and sales process. If you combine SEO with affiliate marketing, it's actually possible to automate the process that all you have to do is to create the content. Everything else is automated.
Your website will work for you on automation 24/7. This allows true passive income and a cumulative income structure. Each piece of content you create essentially becomes an individual sales agent working for you tirelessly.
Affiliate marketing removes the labor intensive parts of regular sales process, like customers service, shipping and handling etc. You just refer the customer and get commissions on automation.
If this is something that interests you, definitely check out my number one recommendation and my free 7-day course for getting started:
Conclusion
I hope you found this Neora review useful. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments section below and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Neora is a well established network marketing business with high quality products and a dedicated company for product research.
Unfortunately there is some controversy as the company has been accused by the FTC of running a pyramid scheme. It remains to be seen how the lawsuit turns out.
In my honest opinion it seems that at this point it might go either way, so I'm going to give Neora the benefit of a doubt.
I personally don't prefer MLMs as I find online affiliate marketing better for my own skillset. I don't really like selling to people and I like the fact that I can work on my company from anywhere in the world and that my sites produce income on automation.
If you are into MLMs or looking for a way to work from home, definitely check out my recommendations.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
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2 replies on “Is Neora A Pyramid Scheme? [2020 Review]”
A few companies are working under the MLM model, it is not an inherently bad setup. The question would be if people abuse the system, and it only takes a couple to do it. Are the products worth selling, do they provide benefits for the consumer? Do people focus on selling the product or recruiting new clients? Things to consider before investing in any scheme.
I think you are right Johan. It depends a lot on the intricacies and also on the individual sales reps in the system. If most of the revenue comes in from the sales of products, then I would say they have to be useful to the consumer. But there will always be people in MLMs purely focusing on recruiting, as that’s where the real money is.