How much can you earn with Tropic Skincare?

Business

Thinking of becoming an Ambassador for MLM Tropic Skincare? Find out how their Success Plan works, and how much you can earn.

So how much money can you earn working as an Ambassador for Tropic Skincare? Before we look at the Tropic opportunity specifically, it’s worth asking a bigger question when evaluating the direct selling marketplace as a whole.

Is the MLM industry dying out?

From what we can tell, the signs aren’t looking good for the MLM industry in general at the moment. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) appear to have MLMs in their sights:

And the signs are that they may not stop here. Employees from the FTC apparently contacted the producers of the podcast The Dream, to say they were listening to and enjoying the podcast which explores the history and workings of the direct selling industry, and are ‘ready to reassess the way they’ve been handling MLMs’.

And as William Keep, a marketing professor at the College of New Jersey told Forbes:

“The more the FTC successfully demonstrates the ability to prosecute a firm for a pyramid scheme in this industry, the higher the probability that the next firm could be prosecuted. Because they all fundamentally use the same model.”

‘The direct selling industry is in decline’

It’s not just the FTC putting MLMs under the microscope. Truth in Advertising (TINA) recently published an article claiming that the direct selling industry is in decline. They note that the number of companies leaving the Direct Selling Association (DSA) is outpacing the number joining it.

They also observe that cases against MLMs are beginning to stack up. Between 2008 and 2018, the FTC pursued four cases alleging MLMs were pyramid schemes (and as we’ve read above, they’ve since launched more). And between 2017 and 2018, 24 federal class actions were filed against MLMs alleging they were pyramid schemes (seven of these companies were DSA members.)

Over the past three years, a 15% decline in sales volumes averaged by MLM reps has been reported, too. And we’re seeing the fortunes of some long-standing MLMs take a dive. Forever Living UK’s accounts showed a 30% drop in new business in 2018, compared to 2017. And that’s on top of a drop of 64% in 2017 compared to 2016.

In August, Coty announced they were ending their relationship with MLM Younique after just two years, and planned to sell their stake back to the founders again.

There’s an increasing movement against – and awareness about – the MLM industry too. Documentaries like Betting on Zero, the BBC’s Secrets of the Multi-Level Millionaires, and the aforementioned The Dream Podcast have helped take the message mainstream.

And there are a growing number of popular Facebook groups, such as MLM Lies Exposed, dedicated to spreading the word, and offering support for MLM victims. The largest, Sounds Like MLM But Okay, has 142,000 members. The antiMLM Reddit, meanwhile, has over 500k recruits.

Some MLMs try to claim they’re different from the rest

So it’s perhaps not surprising that, in what is becoming an increasingly tainted industry, some companies are attempting to differentiate themselves from their competitors, claiming they’re ‘not like other MLM companies’.

Some companies position themselves as ‘social selling’ or ‘direct selling’ rather than ‘MLM’. But these are usually just other terms for multi-level marketing (MLM), and often when you look behind the scenes these companies are usually no different (and no better) than other MLMs. 

One company who claims they “certainly don’t fit within the ‘MLM’ bracket” are Tropic Skincare. Founded by Susan Ma in 2004 (famously from the TV show The Apprentice), Tropic launched their direct selling platform in 2013. 

A few months ago, Tropic came back on our radar after someone got in touch to ask if they really were ‘different’ and ‘better’ than other MLMs, as their reps were claiming. So we decided to investigate and find out, and a few months ago that is exactly what we did.

What happened when Susie Ma from Tropic contacted us?

If you’ve read any of our investigations into MLMs you will note at the end that we invite the companies to get in touch with us if we have published any inaccuracies.

It’s very important to us that our articles are as honest (and accurate) as possible and we are always happy to speak to the companies. We even suggested the BBC invite the Director General of the DSA onto a Woman’s Hour segment they asked us to be part of. We published this article as a result.

And as much as we don’t believe the MLM model works, we’re prepared to be proved wrong. But up to now, no MLM company has ever got in touch to correct any details in our articles, or discuss their business on any level.

That is, until we received an email from Susie Ma, the founder of Tropic. Susie wanted to speak with us about the article, and ask some questions about it. So we had a video call with her.

Unlike our initial impression of the company (and indeed impression of all MLMs) Susie was open in our call – to the extent that she offered to put us in touch with any Ambassadors, at any level of the company, to get a genuine picture of what it is like, and even to give us access to the Tropic Lounge so we could see all the documents and training Ambassadors have.

Susie also offered to share the results of a survey she was conducting with her Ambassadors.

Read our updated investigation into Tropic Skincare

Over the past few weeks we’ve spoken to a number of Tropic Ambassadors, explored the Tropic Lounge, reviewed their training materials and guidelines, and viewed their survey. As a result, you’re now viewing an edited version of our original article.

In order for it to make sense, we’ve kept some of our initial text and calculations, but added explanations and corrections from Tropic underneath, as well as updates from further conversations with Susie, and seeing research and documents she’s shared with us.

We’ve ordered this investigation into Tropic into sections, as it’s quite long, to make it easier for you to navigate to the main points. Here they are:

  1. The Success Plan
  2. Sales targets
  3. The ‘free’ car
  4. Recruitment vs sales
  5. Is Tropic a ‘different’ MLM?

1) The Success Plan

At the heart of every MLM is an often closely guarded Success Plan – details of the commission you can make at different ranks in the company. In this section we look at the Tropic Success Plan.

There’s very little information publicly available about the Tropic opportunity

When we first attempted to research Tropic, we could find little information about becoming a Tropic Ambassador (their name for their reps). And this was a red flag to us.

Yes you can find their Ambassadors enthusiastically touting how amazing their company and opportunity is on online forums, but they don’t actually divulge any details. Instead they ask you to contact them (or they’ll send you a link to a product catalogue). 

This is a classic MLM tactic, and usually used because they don’t want factual information that can be analysed, compared and challenged easily available. And they certainly don’t want to give you something you can take to family and friends and ask their advice before joining. (And risk being talked out of.)

Instead, MLMs want to control the conversation – and information – and be able to engage in a 121 sales pitch in order to maximise their chances of signing you up. 

What do Tropic say about this?

When we asked Tropic why their business plan was not publicly available this was their explanation:

“We don’t tend to share our success plan publicly as it can be misconstrued. 

“MLM companies in the US have to share their success plan publicly by law, however this law is not in place in the UK. It’s important to note that many other MLMs (such as Arbonne) are international, which is why they publicise theirs.

“As 90% of our Ambassadors are at Ambassador level and aren’t building businesses, we don’t feel it is relevant to share publicly. We don’t feel it’s a responsible move to share earning promises; as a product-based business, the last thing we want is for Ambassadors to quit their jobs when they join and put all their eggs in one basket with Tropic.

“It’s far more responsible for Ambassadors to join with the focus of sharing products with friends and family, then decide if they want to build a business further down the line.

“We find that this grows organically, which is why we don’t make our success plan publicly available on our website etc – it just isn’t relevant to most, and we feel it could be taken out of context or misunderstood.”

We looked at the Tropic Skincare Success Plan

For our initial investigation into Tropic we were able to obtain a copy of the Tropic Skincare Success Plan. This is what it looked like at that time:

There are a few things that stood out to us. Firstly, like Acti Labs, they use actual currency, rather than a points system (such as ‘PV’) so you can see exactly how much their Ambassadors need to sell (or buy) to remain active.

Also, looking at the plan without explanation (as we did initially when writing our article), it appeared to show many similarities with other MLM business plans – namely in the requirement of a monthly sales volume, and the encouragement to build a team through recruitment-tied incentives.

It even had a car plan – all red flags for a ‘business as usual’ MLM it seemed.

What did Tropic say about this?

When we spoke to Susie, one of the first issues we discussed was the monthly sales requirement to remain active, as appeared on the plan. However, Susie was adamant that there is no sales target unless you want to actively build a business.

Here’s what Tropic said on the issue:

“We don’t give our Ambassadors sales targets in order to be an Ambassador, these figures are what Ambassadors opt-in to if they want to build a business.

“We understand how you originally concluded a bottom level Ambassador is required to sell £250 to be on the system by just looking at the table from the Success Plan. However, to be a registered Ambassador on the system requires £0 monthly sales.

“To stay on the system as an Ambassador, you simply need to have placed an order of any amount over £0 within a 12 month period. We offer products at £5 RRP so to the Ambassador, that would be one order of £3.50 needed to stay on the system in a 12 month period.

“‘Active’ Ambassador is a phrase that collects together a group of Ambassadors who are achieving £250+ sales within a calendar month. This ‘Active’ title is used for title promotion criteria for titles above ‘Ambassador’ and for optional incentives throughout the year. 

“Above Ambassador, to promote to another level, we have a standard Personal Sales amount to encourage leading by example so that our leaders are doing their own sales. The £500 does not rise as the title progresses since the time the leaders have to devote to Personal Sales is spent elsewhere in their team through training and support.”

Tropic shared their new Success Plan with us

Since we originally published this article, Tropic have updated their Success Plan, and they shared it with us and gave us permission to publish it here:

There are two key things to point out here. Susie Ma is keen that Tropic doesn’t pressurise their Ambassadors to hit sales targets. So they have abolished the car plan and replaced it with a one-off Title Maintenance Bonus.

The plan also clearly states that there are no volume requirements to earn commission:

“As an Ambassador with Tropic you earn a basic 25% commission on all sales – there’s no minimum sales requirement to earn this commission. An Ambassador is classed as ‘Active’ when they place £250 Personal Sales on the system within any given month – the status of ‘Active’ is important when looking at the number of ‘Active Ambassadors’ required within a team in order to promote to a higher title within the Success Plan and is not a title, sales requirement or target in itself.”

So, to be clear there is no minimum sales requirement to earn or maintain the title of Ambassador and earn commission. So if anyone wishes to join Tropic and simply sell the products to family and friends and earn money, they can.

2) Sales targets

Why is the sales requirement so important? In this section we’ll look at why a monthly sales target is a red flag in MLMs.

Why is a monthly sales target so important?

We know from interviewing former reps from other MLM companies that reaching sales targets isn’t easy.

In most MLMs, monthly sales quotas (even if applied over a rolling period) are imposed on their reps, often with pressure from their upline, from day one. And several former MLM reps from other compares have told us that it is active minimum sales requirements that have led them into debt. 

They tell us that it’s just not possible to sell what are usually expensive products in the quantities needed every month to make the targets regularly. And that, to maintain their active status, they’ve purchased products themselves, believing they’ll be able to sell them later. 

One of the biggest complaints about MLMs is that the reps are the real customers as a result. Even a Black Status Younique Presenter – their top rank – admitted that she personally purchased her own minimum sales requirement to stay active.

The problem is that this debt often accumulates. One month rolls into another, and by the time reps leave their MLM they often have boxes of unsold products in their spare rooms and garages.

Tropic discourages Ambassadors from holding stock

Susie Ma was very emphatic that Tropic do NOT endorse or encourage ‘garage qualifying’ (buying product personally just to reach a rank or remain active).

Their term and conditions clearly state that Ambassadors are not to hold any more than 20 items at stock at any time. And to avoid them incurring debt, Tropic have a buy back policy:

“We are more than happy to refund any excess stock an Ambassador may have to ensure they never lose money, especially through products.

“As our survey showed, 97% of Ambassadors understand that orders should be placed to fulfil genuine customer orders and not to hold stock, as per our T&Cs.

“Our business model partly came about because we wanted our products to be freshly made and not held as stock in shops. By achieving this business goal, we continue to make fresh products in house with sell by dates and therefore further discourage Ambassadors holding stock.”

Here is an excerpt from the Tropic T&Cs confirming that the company does not encourage Ambassadors to personally purchase stock – nor encourage their downline to do so:

“TSC [Tropic Skin Care] do not advocate or encourage Ambassadors to hold unsold stock. Ambassadors should also not encourage other Ambassadors to hold stock for personal gain. Ambassador TSC product purchases should be made to fulfil genuine customer orders.”

They clearly state there is a 20 piece stock limit in their T&Cs too:

“Where the Ambassador would benefit from holdingsome items of stock for their business (for example, when doing events) then the Ambassador mayhold up to twenty (20) items of an individual TSC product and/or TSC product collection SKUs as stockfor sale at any one time. Stock of TSC products needs to be passed onto customers or used within 1 month of purchase.”

Tropic makes sure their Ambassadors understand they are not to hold stock

Tropic’s recent survey also confirmed that their Ambassadors are aware of this policy:

In our original article, we showed photos from an Ambassador appearing to show over £500 worth of stock they were trying to sell – seemingly confirming our suspicions that Tropic encourage Ambassadors to meet sales targets. But when we spoke to Susie she was genuinely surprised by this, and asked if we’d give her the name of the Ambassador.

She stressed that it was not to get them in trouble, but if an Ambassador was personally purchasing stock over the limit, she wanted to speak to them about it, as it wasn’t good business practice for the Ambassador or company.

The Ambassador later contacted us (Susie had personally called them) and explained the reason for the photos – and satisfied us that there was a simple explanation for them.

To date, we have seen no other evidence that Tropic Ambassadors are personally buying stock in excess of the limit stated in the T&Cs.

Tropic Ambassadors exceed their sales requirement on average

Another big red flag for MLMs is that there is no increased sales target for reps as they climb up the ranks. This indicates that the real focus of the business is not selling products to customers, but recruiting people underneath you.

Susie has always been adamant that Tropic is a product business, not a recruitment one. And she shared the following chart with us as proof:

This chart shows the average monthly personal sales this year (excluding November and December which are yet to come in) per title – ranging from Ambassador on the left up to Diamond Executive, the top rank, on the right.

Susie says: “As you can see, the monthly personal sales go up the higher the level, which is important as our Ambassadors always focus on building their customer base.”

It’s also important to note that Ambassadors have no sales requirement, and every rank above has a £500 requirement. Unlike other MLMs we have investigated (like Younique), you can see that Tropic Ambassadors have no problem selling more products than needed for their rank.

This confirms that Tropic does indeed have a thriving customer base outside their own Ambassadors, and it would therefor be unlikely that Ambassadors would need to personally purchase just to maintain their rank.

Tropic have sold to over 1.25 million customers not connected to the company in the past five years

To further confirm that Tropic’s core business is selling products to genuine customers, not building teams of Ambassadors who personally buy the products in order to maintain their status, Susie revealed some key insights from their company data.

Tropic currently has around 18,000 Ambassadors who are actively selling products. And over the past five years has had over 1.25 million customers who were not Ambassadors.

The pandemic in 2020 also gave the company more insights into who was buying products.

Ordinarily, to save on postage, Ambassadors have their customers’ products delivered to them and then personally distribute them. But when the pandemic hit, and it wasn’t as safe or easy for Ambassadors to meet customers, Tropic offered free postage on orders.

With customers now able to get products delivered direct for free, this demonstrated how many sales were indeed for genuine customers outside the business, rather than Ambassadors personally buying.

Susie said that in November, around 50% of all orders placed went directly to the customer, while the other 50% went to the Ambassador or Hostess, as often they will offer a gift wrapping service especially around Christmas time.

It’s clear from the data shared by Tropic that they do indeed have a thriving customer base of people who love their products, and that Tropic Ambassadors are able to easily meet (and surpass) their monthly sales requirements selling to people outside the company, and not personally buying.

3) The ‘free’ car

It also worried us to see a car plan on the original Tropic Success Plan. While it doesn’t have details on their specific car plan, we know how the ‘free car’ plan works in every other MLM we’ve investigated.

How does an MLM car plan work?

With most MLMs, you need to maintain your rank to keep your car plan benefit. You generally need to lease the car yourself, and simply receive a bonus payment from your company towards it every month you qualify at your rank. 

Of course, this places a considerable amount of pressure on you to maintain your rank. And what happens if, one month, one of your two managers says she’s thinking of quitting? Or you or your team don’t quite make the required sales?

If you miss your target on most MLM car plans you lose your car payment that month. But with the lease in your name, you still need to find the money to cover it.

In this circumstance, we’d imagine you may feel the pressure to push your team, and possibly even make purchases yourself to get you over the line. (As incredible as this sounds, we know from speaking to former reps from other companies that this happens in MLMs.)

Do Tropic Ambassadors get a ‘free’ car?

So do Tropic also offer their Ambassadors a ‘free’ car? Tropic have since clarified with us that their ‘car plan’ is very different:

“We have no affiliation with any car manufacturers or dealerships, and have never promoted Ambassadors signing up for a car lease as part of Tropic. 

“This is language leftover from the early days of Direct Selling, and we used it as it’s familiar to those with experience in this industry, but we do recognise that this can be confusing, so we have updated this language as part of our Success Plan revamp launching later this year and it will be re-named ‘Executive Personal Bonus’ so it reflects the ability to allocate this bonus to whatever our Ambassador wants.

“It was originally named ‘Car Bonus’ as Ambassadors usually use it to contribute to travel costs when they go and meet other Ambassadors as part of managing their team, as many sales workers would do in any business.”

We’re delighted to see that under their new Success Plan Tropic have removed their car plan completely and now offer a one-off Title Maintenance Bonus payment.

4) Recruitment vs sales

As we’ve already touched on, one of the main problems of the MLM business structure is that they are set up to reward recruitment over sales.

While the reps may eulogise about their products on social media, their real goal is not to grow a customer base and sell products, but to entice people to join their team. Indeed, when you look at MLM company literature, like the Forever Living first steps to manager brochure, the emphasis is heavily weighted towards recruitment, not retail sales:

Does Tropic’s Success Plan reward recruitment over personal sales?

So what about Tropic? Do they reward recruitment over sales? As we’ve already covered, their Success Plan does reward people who build teams, but the company places much more emphasis on the products they sell, rather than recruitment.

Tropic started with Susie’s passion for skincare products, and this passion is the why that drives Tropic. We’ve had access to the Tropic Lounge – the business and training hub for Tropic Ambassadors – and unlike Forever Living’s push to build a team, the emphasis here is on their products.

In the three minute welcome video, the R word (recruitment) is not mentioned once. Nor is any reference made to building a team. And we could not see one training document teaching you how to bombard friends and family with unsolicited messages, and instructing you not to take no for an answer (as we have seen with other companies). Instead, the training emphasis is all about the products.

Having explored Tropic’s Ambassador training and incentive information, we have found no evidence that the company encourages or rewards recruitment over personal sales.

In fact, quite the opposite. There is a clear drive to educate Ambassadors about the company’s products and empower them to sell them. This is reflected in the volume of sales that their Ambassadors achieve every month.

What do Tropic say?

Here’s what Tropic say about their Success Plan:

“The Success Plan is shared with Ambassadors to encourage growth no matter how they want to build their businesses.

“The Personal Commission Bonus shown in the Success Plan is the main focus for over 90% of our family and this document shows how we reward the love of sharing the products. You can get up to 35% commission on your sales without welcoming a single person to Tropic as part of your team. 

“Yes, there are extra bonuses for building a team because they reflect the effort and time that would be invested in welcoming, training and supporting a team. You can do very well on Personal Sales alone but as with any business, for it to be taken to the next level, it must expand and that involves more people.

“Above Ambassador, to promote to another level, we have a standard Personal Sales amount to encourage leading by example so that our leaders are doing their own sales. The £500 does not rise as the title progresses since the time the leaders have to devote to Personal Sales is spent elsewhere in their team through training and support. 

“As you move through the Success Plan you are still encouraged to focus on sales since the Personal Sales Bonus of up to 35% is offered at all levels.” 

How easy is it to earn money from personal sales alone in Tropic?

To highlight just how important personal retail sales are in MLMs, here’s what Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection says of the differentiation between MLMs and pyramid schemes:

“Participants in legitimate multi-level marketing companies earn money based on actual sales to real customers, rather than recruitment. But pyramid schemes depend on recruitment of new participants to pay out to existing participants, meaning that the vast majority of participants will ultimately lose money.”

It’s also worth noting, again, that the FTC recently fined former MLM Advocare for being “a pyramid scheme” and a “scam” because, among other reasons, it “rewarded distributors not for selling product but for recruiting other distributors to spend large sums of money pursuing the business opportunity.”

As we’ve already covered above, while it is possible to build a team, Tropic encourage and reward their Ambassadors to grow their personal sales.

How much can you earn with Tropic Skincare from sales and recruitment?

So let’s get down to the big question: how much money can you earn with Tropic Skincare – from both personal retail sales and recruitment? Here’s what we calculated in our original investigation:

Let’s start with your own personal sales. If you’re an Active Ambassador, and you meet the minimum requirement of £250 a month in sales, you’ll make just £62.50 in commission, according to their Success Plan. And if you’re every rank above and make the minimum £500 in personal sales, you’ll earn £125 a month, plus £7.50 Personal Sales Bonus. 

If you’re a Tropic Manager and above, you also earn commission on your central team. This is 4% on minimum sales of £4,000, which works out at £160 if you just scrape the minimum. 

You also earn a Team Mentor Bonus of 3% commission on your personally sponsored Ambassador sales – and for Managers and above you need a minimum of five personally sponsored Ambassadors.

If these five just make their £250 monthly quota, you’ll earn a total of £37.50. And if they each need to make the £500 minimum, you’ll earn £75.

So what does this add up to? If you and all your team make just the minimum qualifying requirements, we calculate you’ll earn the following:

  • Your personal sales commission = £125
  • Your Central Team Bonus = £160
  • Your Team Mentor Bonus = £37.50
  • Your total monthly earnings from Tropic = £322.50

What do Tropic say?

Tropic state that the math examples used here are not a representation of how they believe potential earnings should be shared.

They say that being an Ambassador is dependent on the individual and in this article, full-time working hours have been used as a measure but with no requirement for hours worked at Tropic, these examples are not reflective of how their Ambassadors build their businesses.

Tropic’s longer response to our calculations above is as follows:

“We have reviewed the earnings and wish to share two examples of monthly earning for a Manager based on the same averages (average Pamper sales of £250 and an average Pamper time of two hours). Here the hours worked are key as these earnings are not at 40 hours a week. 

Example 1

In this example the Manager, who is more skilled at selling and used to taking in higher Personal Sales, makes up the majority of the £4,000 Central Team Sales:

  • MGR Personal Sales = £2,750 (avg 22 hours work)
  • Team Members = £250 each (avg 2 hours work each)
  • MGR earnings = £866.25 Personal Sales + £160 Central Team Bonus + £37.50 Team Mentor bonus = £1,063.75 total for just over half a week’s work making it £48.35 an hour.

Team Member each = £62.50 for 2 hours work making it £31.25 an hour.

Example 2

In this example the Manager, who has decided to dedicate their time to supporting their team and helping them achieve their own business goals has done their £500 and then works with their team to make up the rest of the £4,000 Central Team Sales:

  • MGR Personal Sales = £500 (avg 2 hours work)
  • Team Members = £700 each (avg 5.6 hours work each)
  • MGR earnings = £132.50 Personal Sales + £160 Central Team Bonus + £105 Team Mentor bonus = = £397.50 total for 2 hours work making it £198.75 an hour.

Team Member each= £185.50 for 5.6 hours work making it £33.13 an hour.

5) Is Tropic a ‘different’ type of MLM?

Many companies (and their reps) try to claim they’re a ‘different’ MLM. And it’s something Susie and Tropic Ambassadors are keen to portray (Susie prefers to describe Tropic as a direct sales business). But is is true?

We need to be clear that our stance on the MLM industry as a whole hasn’t changed. But there are a few things that give Tropic’s claims they are a different MLM credibility for us:

  • We can see from their Tropic Lounge that they actively discourage typical poor MLM practices like ‘garage qualifying’ and income claims.
  • Their products are genuinely unique and high quality. Many of the Ambassadors we spoke to had been customers for months or years before they joined the company.
  • They really do seem to care about their Ambassadors, and want to build a fair and ethical business. They have taken a considerable amount of time to speak to us, and have appeared to be as open as possible – sharing their training materials, T&Cs and research.

Unlike pretty much every other MLM we have investigated, Tropic genuinely goes to great lengths to ensure that their Ambassadors enjoy their experience with the company and are able to meet their own personal goals.

Tropic Ambassadors appear to be happy

Here are some of the results from a company survey conducted in November 2020 that Tropic shared with us:

  • 93.41% of Ambassadors joined because they love the products (part of multiple options to select).
  • 55.46% joined because they wanted to earn money (part of multiple options to select).
  • 44.06% joined because they wanted to buy products for themselves at a discount.
  • 62.01% said the starter kit was very good value, and 37.35% said it was correctly priced.
  • 35.20% spend less than 5 hours a week, and 35.31% spend 5-10 hours a week on their Tropic business.
  • 29.36% said they were earning less than expected, 53.26% said they were earning as expected, 17.38% said they were earning more than expected.
  • 65.94% said that is easy or very easy to sell Tropic products, the rest said it was difficult.
  • 53.55% said they are happy, and 41.38% said they are extremely happy as a Tropic Ambassador.
  • 96.86% would recommend being an Ambassador to friends, family or colleagues.

Of course, Tropic is not perfect – no company is. There are most probably rogue Tropic Ambassadors out there, making wild claims about their products and aggressively trying to recruit.

But from personally speaking to Susie we know this is something she and the company actively try to prevent. And when we have shared details with her of potentially unethical activity she has always followed it up.

Susie is also keen to find out more about the Ambassadors who aren’t earning what they expected, and those who aren’t happy, so the company can continue to improve.

I can honestly say that in four and a half years of researching MLMs and meeting with the Director General of the DSA, Tropic is refreshingly different to other companies.

Susie Ma seems to me to be genuinely open and passionate about building an ethical business that empowers women – and creating beautiful products. I have found her honest and unafraid to ask tough questions about what critics think of Tropic, and how she can use the insights of others to make her business better.

It’s much, much more than I can say about any other MLM we have investigated, or the DSA itself.

Photo by Sarah Comeau