Young Living
Young Living is a network marketing company headquartered in Utah that deals with essential oils, bath salts, and organic beauty products. Donald G. Young founded the company in 1993. The idea to sell essential oils was born when Donald Gary Young took an interest in alternative medicine to help with a back injury he suffered in the early 1970s. Mr. Young became interested in essential oils after attending a conference in California, where he met a French lavender distiller. He travelled to France to learn distillation and later bought a 160-acre piece of land in Idaho at the beginning of 1990. By 1996, Young living projected between 8 to 10 million dollars in annual sales and by 2017, the company reported over 1 billion dollars in annual revenue.
In 2010, Young Living became the largest profitable distillery to use frankincense for the distillation of essential oils. By 2014, the young’s Highland Flats distillery became the first computerized and automated distilling facility for essential oils in the USA. Gary Young started a new clinic in Ecuador, where he practised medicine and performed the surgery. He stepped down as the CEO for Young Living in 2015, and his wife Mary Young took over. The company relocated their corporate set-ups to Utah where they received a significant tax break allowing them to expand their operations and by 2017, construction of the new headquarters began.
Young Living uses a pyramid selling business marketing model where they recruit numerous independent distributors who sell directly to customers and earn a commission in the process. The independent distributors are also required to recruit other independent retail distributors and earn a commission through the sales made by the people they bring in. The merchants are categorized based on how much they sell. The highest rank of distributors are known as the Royal Crown Diamonds, while the lowest level of merchants are called Distributers. In a 2017 New Yorker report, research showed that for a distributor to earn a commission, they must purchase up to 100 dollars. The report also said that about 1000 royal crown Diamond Distributors make over a million dollars.
