The Origins of MLM

I found an interesting article by Stephen Barrett, M.D. titled: “The Origin of Multilevel Marketing“.

This is fascinating to me. It appears to be such a simple idea, yet in today’s world of Multilevel Marketing, (MLM), the concept is often forgotten in a mountain of books, tapes, and meetings.

After seven years of “experimentation,” Rehnborg produced food supplements which he gave to his friends to try. According to his son, Sam, who became Nutrilite’s president and chief operating officer:
After a certain length of time, Dad would visit his friends to see what results had been obtained. More often than not, he would find the products sitting on the back shelves, unused and forgotten. It had cost them nothing and was therefore, to them, worth nothing . . . It was at this point that he rediscovered a basic principle-that the answer was merely to charge something for the product. When he did, the friends, having paid for the product, ate it, liked it, and further, wanted their friends to have it also. When they asked my dad to sell the product to their friends, he said, “You sell it to them and I’ll pay you a commission.”