Des Alpes – my impressions

A friend of mine on Facebook linked me the Des Alpes business opportunity.

After reviewing the presentation here is my feedback

If Des Alpes is successful in leading people into their shopping portal and away from the other big box portals, they have a chance. Melaleuca is the world’s largest home business and they generate over 1 billion in revenue, so it can be done. I was a part of a Melaleuca team that had the motto of: “Switch Away from big box toxic products and back to safe and American-made”… and the Switch Back produced the most revenue in Melaleuca in 2022 and 2024. I’ve remained a customer there but I dont build it. I did build Lyoness, an international shopping community. I have no idea what happened to them.

I personally loved a debit/credit card that paid out multi-level commissions on the use of the debit card – then there is no need to lead people away from where they want to shop and you earn income on their swipes of the card.

When I look at the fact that a large portion of the monthly membership is being paid to upline members I began to think:

• Melaleuca charges $19 for a year and they are charging much more – will be worth it?
• Paying compensation on recruiting like this is somewhat questionable isn’t it? Herbalife and Amway have had to pay fees and/or adjust their comp plan to adapt to this?
• In other words, compensation to upline should be based on product sales in a legitimate MLM. I would be surprised if sharing recruiting fees every month will pass the FTC. But we will see.

The first question that people will ask is: “what am I going to get for paying X dollars per month”?

The next question is “what products do you have and how good are they” … or “how cheap are they”.

Finally, there will be questions about return policy, etc. Speaking of returns, one of the reasons I shop so much at Amazon is that I can return things at Whole Foods. No need to pack things up, etc. I dont really think Whole Foods is treating their employees well, but that is a topic for another time.

So the idea here is “everyone shops, why not profit from them changing their shopping to our portal”.. but I would say that something more fundamental is: everyone spends, why not profit from their spending? Coming back to Melaleuca, they have a credit card that pays 6% cashback in shopping credit in their online store. And it pays 2-4% in shopping credit on everything you use the credit card for – gas, groceries, etc.

I have seen many shopping communities rise and fall:

• Solavei
• Shop.com
• Lyoness
• there are others, but I’ve forgotten them.

Presumably the developers of this community did their homework. They have a lot of work to do to create a shopping experience that is as smooth and rewarding as the current major players in shopping:

• Melaleuca
• Amazon
• Target
• Walmart