Friday, February 11, 2011

Scentsy's sellers savor sweet smell of success

By Cathy Jett | fredericksburg.com

Link to article

Stay-at-home mom Kellie Kidd was looking for a way to earn enough money to send her son to Fredericksburg Christian School.

The Spotsylvania County woman had worked for four direct-sales companies in a dozen years but said she never made more than she spent on catalogs, demonstration products and other items.

Then she discovered Scentsy, which sells scented, wickless candles and decorative ceramic warmers through home parties. She signed on as a consultant, bought the $99 starter kit and sold $900 worth of products at her first party.

Ever since, Kidd has made enough money by holding a couple of parties each month to pay 5-year-old Cameron's tuition.

"It's truly a lifesaver for me," she said. "My son wouldn't be getting the education he's getting without Scentsy."

Kidd was among the 800 or so Scentsy independent sales consultants and directors attending a regional Scentsy "Spring Sprint" road show Wednesday at the Fredericksburg Expo and Convention Center.

The Meridian, Idaho-based company is holding 27 of them across the country over a four-week period to show off new products, sell sales supplies such as scent samples and provide training. Organizers expect to reach about 20,000 of Scentsy's 100,000 consultants by the time they're done, said spokeswoman Stephanie Finch.

Not bad for a company that started in 2004 as Orville and Heidi Thompson's last-ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy, and reached the No. 1 slot on Inc. magazine's 2010 list of fastest-growing private companies in the consumer product and services category. It ranked 19th overall.

Orville Thompson got the idea for the product after meeting two women at a trade show who were demonstrating how to use a wickless scented candle they'd developed. It used a low-wattage light bulb inside a ceramic warmer to safely melt scented wax.

Thompson and his wife signed a royalty agreement to sell the product, even though they were $700,000 in debt. To market it, they set up a home party-plan company similar to Avon, BeautiControl or Tupperware.

By 2009, Scentsy had annual revenues of $178,375,434. That's a cumulative growth rate of 8,094 percent from 2006, when revenues totaled $2,176,876.

Direct sales at companies such as Scentsy have flourished in the last few years despite, or possibly because of, the recession when companies began shedding jobs.

According to the Direct Selling Association, the direct-sales force nationwide topped 16.1 million in 2009, the latest year for which it has figures. That's up from 15 million in 2007, the year the recession officially started, and 15.1 million the following year.

"You create your own destiny," said Karen Fettes of Oceanside, Calif., a Scentsy SuperStar Director who is married to a Marine gunnery sergeant, of the appeal of direct sales.

She started at the bottom with Scentsy as an Escential Consultant 18 months ago, and swiftly reached the top rank for directors by assembling a team of 800 consultants in the United States, Canada and several military bases abroad.

The Scentsy road-show stop in Fredericksburg was one of seven Fettes is making to help train and network with many of her consultants and directors. She receives a percentage of each sale they generate.

Fettes, who said her income is in six figures, said Scentsy consultants range from stay-at-home moms like Kidd who are looking for a way to earn extra income for their families to people who have lost jobs (or whose spouses have lost theirs) to retirees who want to supplement their income.

"My husband and I have built this into a full-time business for us," Fettes said. "When he retires in two years, we'll have a nice, comfortable life selling Scentsy. We'll be able to put our three kids through college, no problem."

Cathy Jett: 540/374-5407
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