MonaVie makes it to News Week !

While network marketing ‘professionals’ in competing companies are calling it a "bashing" the latest press coverage for MonaVie is about as good as it gets from main stream media as far as I can see. The article, while using some words and phrases that can cause us to cringe, was on the whole quite balanced.

It highlights MonaVie’s HUGE accomplishment of reaching $1 Billion in sales in only 3 short years, and 1 million distributors, it admits that 90% are wholesale drinkers (that’s a good thing I think), and brings out the names of a few celebrities who are swigging the purple juice for health reasons.

You can call it whatever you want, but if I were a distributor in MonaVie I would be calling it a coup, and buying copies for everyone I knew.

Here’s the beginning of the story.

BUSINESS

A Drink’s Purple Reign

Devotees claim MonaVie cures their ills and makes them millionaires. But is it just hype in a bottle?

Flanked by a Ferrari, a Maserati, a Bentley, a Rolls-Royce and a Lamborghini, Dallin Larsen paced the stage, swigging deeply from a bottle in his hand. "I’ll tell you what," said the tanned 49-year-old, opening his arms to the 4,000-person crowd, people are "looking for something they can count on, they can depend on, that’s constant." The stirring scene would not be out of place at a megachurch revival—except Larsen’s event, organized this June in Orlando, Fla., was bent on earning sales rather than salvation. The object of hope was not God but a dark purple fruit juice called MonaVie.

The rich syrupy blend of Brazilian açai (pronounced "ah-sigh-ee") berries and 18 other fruits has gained a cult following among those who say it can kill pain, disease and malnutrition. Packaged in wine bottles like the one Larsen gripped onstage, MonaVie retails for around $40 a pop and isn’t available in stores. Instead, the Utah-based company tore a page from the Avon lady, enlisting regular people to sell the product to friends and family. Now MonaVie claims to be one of the world’s fastest-growing private companies, with inroads on five continents, and an army of drinkers and sales apostles signing up at a rate of 10,000 a week. Earlier this year, the company announced that cumulative sales had topped $1 billion and that it had signed its millionth unsalaried sales person. "We’re blessed," says Larsen, who founded the company in 2005. (As a private organization, MonaVie isn’t required to publish financial data, making such claims difficult to judge.)

In a sliding economy, MonaVie appears to buck the trend, minting dozens of mom-and-pop millionaires, according to company sales data, and luring customers who rave about the not-too-sweet taste and miraculous health benefits. In NEWSWEEK interviews and proliferating online videos, people testify to MonaVie beating back cancer, curbing anxiety and controlling the symptoms of autism. Among the converted are former Daytona 500 champ Geoff Bodine, who credits MonaVie with helping him recover from one of the worst crashes in NASCAR history; Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone, who says it will help him live another 50 years (he’s 85); and Boston Red Sox outfielder J.D. Drew, who sells the stuff on his MySpace page.

Distributors Diane Nafziger and Sherry Whitaker embody the two-sided MonaVie pitch: better health and more income. The former first-grade teacher and onetime flight attendant travel the country hosting "tasting parties" and sales meetings to entice new recruits. At a recent event in a New Jersey Holiday Inn, they put on a smooth presentation for an audience of around 10 people. Nafziger took the stage first, describing how a diabetic friend committed to MonaVie broke his need for insulin shots. Then Whitaker plied the business angle, outlining MonaVie’s sales structure. For a $39 initiation fee and responsibility for sales of at least eight bottles of MonaVie a month, people can retail the product and build their own sales tree, which is where the big money is. In two years, Whitaker and Nafziger have built a 30,000-person tree, earning them up to 20 percent of every sale—which is more than $1 million each in annual commission.

But not everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid.  Read the rest at Newsweek Magazine.

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Shelley Penney lives in her own world.... building a network marketing business from her home office, and writing about it in hopes that she can TRULY make a difference. Find her at http://www.shelleypenney.com
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Tags: acai, Dallin Larsen, Geoff Bodine, J.D.Drew, MLM, MonaVie, Network Marketing, news, newsweek, Sumner Redstone