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Nature’s Pearl-From Retail Sales to Multi-Level Marketing-Genius or Disaster?

Written by: Ron Knighton

Article Overview: Nature's Pearl has just embraced a marketing strategy that may leave many distributors confused and frustrated. Will the new partnership with Phil Romano and Robert Blackman pay off for the weary reps?

Nature’s Pearl-From Retail Sales to Multi-Level Marketing-Genius or Disaster?

Nature’s Pearl is a supplement company based right outside of Winston-Salem, NC and is owned by LeBleu water. They produce a health food product based solely on the Muscadine Grape seed. This particular grape is known for its ability to thrive in the hot, humid and disease-prone climate of the Southeastern United States. These growing conditions make Muscadine grapes very different from common grapes grown for wine production, which are commonly grown in cooler, milder and less stressful climates. Because the grapes have developed defenses in this harsh environment, many believe that the Muscadine grape produces more disease-fighting phenolic compounds (ANTIOXIDANTS), therefore making it a good health food supplement.

The company first marketed the Nature’s Pearl supplement in retail outlets. Although this distribution method was reasonably successful, they eventually pulled the product out of retail establishments and switched to Multi-Level Marketing. The executives at Nature’s and LeBleu water consulted with several network marketing experts before settling on a compensation plan and distributor structure they felt would best promote the business. This new structure seems to keep product costs reasonable with modest distributor pay-outs. The compensation plan stops paying after 8 levels deep and does seem to prevent unproductive distributors from profiting from the system, regardless of positioning.

The product, compensation plan and structure all seem to be relatively well planned. The real problem seems to be with the marketing training provided by the company to its distributors. Nature’s Pearl lacks any real experience in the world of network marketing and has focused all of its attention on educating the distributor about the product features and benefits. Although these things are somewhat important, distributors need to be educated on how to produce a continuous income with the business. The small amount of marketing training that has been provided is based on older strategies such as prospecting friends and family, buying leads, cold calling etc.

A recent move by Nature’s Pearl to improve its profitability has been the introduction of a company owned by Phil Romano, known for his incredible success in the restaurant industry. This new company has somehow been allowed to move to the top spot above the entire NP down-line. Mr. Romano, being a little out of his element, has wisely recruited the MLM Mastermind Robert Blackman to oversee his new business venture.

All of this seems like a great move by the executives at Nature’s Pearl, but how does it affect the average distributor? Well, initially it appeared that the strong financial backing of Phil Romano and expertise of Robert Blackman was going to be the extra push and motivation they needed. Typically money and experience will drive success in any environment, but here it seems to be taking a different turn.

With the overwhelming success of the internet, legacy MLM techniques are extremely incomplete without heavily leveraging current on-line strategies. It seems that rather than training the inexperienced down-line in modern network marketing methods, this new dynamic duo has elected to profit from the struggling distributors by offering them the opportunity to purchase leads and perpetuate a failing strategy with cold calling untargeted prospects. They will of course offer a replicated web site with capture page with this new monthly membership, but with the new Google crack-downs, will those sites really be of any benefit to anyone? This new system will of course be an extra fee on top of the current auto-ship requirements. What a deal!

To sum this up, I still feel that money can be made in Nature’s Pearl by those who do not depend solely on the company to educate them in marketing. Robert Blackman is probably one of the best when it comes to off-line marketing, but that is not enough. Online is a must in this technology age. For the past several months I have been involved with a marketing system that provides everything a new marketer needs to be successful in any MLM. I suggest you check it out and see for yourself what I am revealing in this article. It is amazing how things look after you have been educated.

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