Maybe because there are so many celebrity makeup brands, no one still talks about this permanent A list model turned show creator/network reality host and how she walked away with tens of millions of dollars from her MLM scam while leaving all her followers poor and desperate to sell off their remaining supplies.

One of those followers has tried to recreate the MLM scam using all the extra supplies and has been pretty successful in their scam.

Tyra Banks

More Than Meets the Smize: A Look Inside Tyra Banks’s Exploitative Empire

“I’m ready to come back and help share and inspire women to start their own businesses,” Banks recently told New York magazine. “That’s my passion, every day. I hunkered down and put my nose to the grindstone at Harvard Business School, learning more about the tools I needed to launch my business.”

But Banks never attended Harvard Business School. She took a non-degree-granting certificate course at Harvard called the Owner/President Management program, which, as Jezebel points out, has “no formal educational requirements” and refers to students as “clients.” Although media outlets have questioned Banks’s presentation of her education, the model continues to describe herself as a Harvard-accredited businesswoman while encouraging young women to take her advice and buy her products. (The first Google result for “Tyra Banks University” is Harvard.)

Lying to get ahead, of course, isn’t new for Banks. Several of Banks’s new ventures follow suspect business practices, and Banks still faces the repercussions of professional mistakes she’s made in the past.

Nobody knows this better than previous ANTM contestants. It’s no secret few competitors go onto fame and fortune—past stars have been sent to prison, murdered, and dated Jim Carrey—but people watch the show to see naïve young girls battle for their dream. Whereas new Real Housewives purposefully create drama so they can launch liquor lines like Bethenny Frankel, most top models lack self-awareness or even a basic understanding of show business.

Cycle 17 winner Angelea Preston was one of these girls. Growing up in the inner city, she was a wide-eyed fan of all things Tyra, but following her appearances on the show, she’s now she’s suing Banks for the mistreatment she allegedly suffered during her time.

“Tyra exploits women, period,” Preston says. “Once she gets out what she wants from you, then you’re done to her. You’re nothing. She preaches on TV that she’s just like you, that she helps girls, but she doesn’t help girls. She exploits them.”

“Nobody wanted to work with me after the show,” Preston says. “I was labeled a bitch and super ghetto, so when I would walk into agencies, a lot of them recognized me from the show. The show exploited my personality in such a negative way that it stopped my career from flourishing.”

Desperate and unable to work, Preston says she took an “opportunity” that turned out to be an escorting job. When ANTM producers found out, Preston says, they offered her a spot on the show’s All-Star cycle under the guise of being concerned about her well-being. She won her third cycle and the coveted Cover Girl contract. Months later, Angelea says, the CW called her back to New York for a full-scale intervention: The network had found out about her past as an escort, and despite the production’s previous knowledge, they were stripping her of her title for violating a “morality clause.”

Preston says other contestants endured similar experiences. She remembers producers denying girls food and water on long filming days to make them bitchy and confrontational. She says they were “put on ice,” forbidden from talking when cameras weren’t filming, spending hours in silence. One day, Preston recounts, an All-Star contestant led an uprising of models. The girls refused to work until they were provided with food. It worked in the moment, but Preston says the judges kicked the hero model off just a few episodes later, for suspect reasons.

Banks paints the startup’s goal as creating opportunity and independence for women. Selling makeup is just a byproduct of Banks’s charitable ambition; Tyra Beauty is a direct-selling concept for the Instagram generation. The company’s press tour has portrayed Banks as young women’s personal girl boss who can guide them in the art of selling commercial products. Banks has touted her business accomplishments and once again misrepresented the course she took at Harvard.

Tyra Beauty’s website inundates visitors with Banks’s parodic personal brand. References about “taking the BOOTYful route” abound. Yet the website ignores the cognitive dissonance of Banks shilling lipstick for $26, the same price as department store brands, when she once espoused rubbing petroleum jelly on your face.

When I ordered a set of Banks’s makeup, the email headline of my shipping notice began with “TYRA MAIL.” My package came with a note from Banks telling me she hoped her products helped me “werk that hallway like a runway.” I tested the makeup. It was solid, but nothing special. The plastic packaging was less expensive than that of makeup lines sold at comparable prices. If anything, the products stand out because of their branding. Banks has given her products cheeky and slightly suspect names (a blush shade called “Sexy Hot Flash,” an eyeliner shade called “Once You Go Brown”), as if they had been created by an alien trying to imitate human sexiness.

Once you sign up to be a Beautytainer, however, the language quickly becomes more business-like. Beautytainers pay a $59 initial fee and then can purchase a $80 basic starter kit or a $139 “beyond basic” starter package, so they can begin demonstrating their products to clients. Before they start work, Beautytainers must sign a six-page contract, agreeing to the 64-page Policies and Procedures manual. The booklet includes a non-disparagement clause forbidding former Beautytainers from speaking openly for a year, effectively barring any public criticism for the one-year-old business. Tyra Beauty also supplies them with a copy of the brands compensation plan. The company’s policies are open to anyone who is considering signing up to be a Beautytainer, but I had to track the compensation plan down by visiting actual Beautytainer’s personal marketing pages. Beautytainers receive 25 percent of the retail selling price of items they sell either through their personalized Beautytainer websites or through in-person consultations, with a 5 percent bonus for selling $500 to $999 in a month (a whopping $27.50) and a 10 percent bonus for selling $1,000 in a month.

The real money to be made comes through recruiting new Beautytainers to your “crew.” Beautytainers move up levels (called Bronzer, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, all the way up to a sixth level called Yellow Diamond) based on their sales, the amount of Beautytainers they recruit below them, and the combined sales of their team. Each level promises larger bonuses and a larger portion of the sales of those below you. A Yellow Diamond Beautytainer, the highest level, will have a team with a number of Platinum and Bronzer level members enrolled below them and bring in a total of $200,000 in combined sales from their team members. Tyra Beauty also gives high-performing Beautytainers “the Hook Up”—25 percent of the company’s online retail volume not sold through Beautytainers. If a Beautytainer doesn’t make her sales goals for the month, or her team doesn’t bring in enough cash, she risks losing her spot in the hierarchy and having her account deactivated.

If this selling structure sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve had a cousin try to sell you Herbalife. It’s hard not to have had contact with one of the millions of Americans involved in a multi-level marketing scheme, also known as an MLM. These businesses bring in representatives through the promise of financial freedom and the opportunity to be their own bosses. Members focus on recruiting new members to a multi-tier selling system more than selling actual products, seeing very few actual sales or cash.

The Federal Trade commission has a website warning consumers about the business model, and advocates have spoken out against suspicious companies. – Source


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