Connor Emmel

Connor Emmel

English-111  DJ

Inquiry III             

14 November 2014

Vector Marketing:  65 Years of Deception?

           “Vector Marketing: Basically a huge pyramid scheme that targets college aged people and will alienate you from all of your friends.  Seen too many people get fucked by them.”  “If you took a job with Vector Marketing you should not be going to a school like Miami.”  These arguable claims came from anonymous people on the social media site Yik Yak.  Now as someone who has worked for Vector Marketing for just over four months, is an assistant manager in the Dayton office, and is planning to run an office with the company in the summer of 2015 these yaks came as quite a surprise to me.  What caused these people to say these things?  Do they know something I don’t?  Are they complete idiots?  Am I part of a big scam?  All of these questions rushed through my mind as read these yaks.  I didn’t know what to think so I decided I would get to the bottom of this.  Normally, one would start directly with the source however, since these users are anonymous that task would be nearly impossible.  I decided to turn to the next best thing where I have an unlimited stream of fact and fiction at my finger tips:  the internet.  I began this task with one goal in mind; to find out if Vector Marketing Corporation is advertising 65 years of fraud or fact.

           I decided to take all my knowledge and experience that I have from being a part of Vector Marketing and put it aside for a second.  I went back to the basics and started off with what is Vector Marketing?  Vector Marketing is a single-level direct sales company that sells Cutco Cutlery.  Early in Cutco Corporation’s history, there were hundreds of small independent sellers of Cutco.  In 1981, Cutco grew so largely that they Vector Marketing was formed to exclusively sell Cutco.  Vector outperformed every other independent seller there was and after that Cutco bought the company to continue Vector’s success throughout the country.  Today Vector is located out of Olean, New York and there are 250 year-round locations throughout the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.  Cutco is a high-quality line of kitchen cutlery, kitchen accessories, and sporting knives.  Cutco knives have been manufactured since 1949 and they are the only high-quality cutlery line made right here in the USA.  Now that I have talked about what Vector and Cutco are it’s time to dive into the public’s opinion of Vector Marketing.

           Starting off with the Yak from the first anonymous user, the yakker claims that Vector Marketing is a pyramid scheme.  According to Daryl Koehn, “Pyramid or endless-chain distributor schemes ask people to make an investment and, in return, grant them a license to recruit others who, in turn, recruit still others into the scheme. In essence, the investor pays for the opportunity to receive compensation when his or her recruit brings others into the scheme. The opportunity to recruit is the product. Such schemes are illegal because they are unethical in two respects. They are (1) fraudulent, and they are (2) recruitment-, rather than product-, centered businesses” (Koehn 1).  Now let’s compare this to Vector Marketing.

The first point from Koehn says pyramid schemes are fraudulent.  “Pyramid schemes are fraudulent because they typically promise a large return in return for a small investment. Those who join a pyramid scheme early often do make a great deal of money. Those who come in later, however, make little or even lose money because there simply are not enough remaining people left to recruit into the network” (Kohen 1).  At Vector Marketing the way a rep is compensated is based off of a base pay rate of $14.50 per appointment or off commission.  The rep has the potential to work all the way up to 50% commission and they start off at 10%.  The reason for the base pay rate per appointment is so the rep is guaranteed to be paid no matter what even if they do not make a sale.  If the rep does make a sale they will earn a certain amount of commission.  The rep is going to be paid off of whichever is higher, either or, not both.  That means if the base pay adds up to $100 dollars and the commission adds up to $150 dollars the rep will be paid $150 and the $100 will be ignored.

Unlike a pyramid scheme, where a person is paid off of recruitment like Koehn’s second point states, at Vector Marketing a person is paid off of the amount of product they sell or the time it took them to show the product.  So far, in my opinion it looks like the two words, pyramid scheme, don’t apply to Vector Marketing.  Back in 2010 Vector Marketing had a policy where reps would have to put down a $170 dollar down payment on kit of knives that they would use to show off to potential customers.  However, that policy is no longer in place.  Today, there is no down payment at all.  No new rep needs to pay anything before they make money.  The policy that is in place now is that the company loans a new rep a $370 sample kit.  With Vector Marketing there is no license to recruit others then be compensated for bringing them in.  That may not be enough evidence for some people and there are still some arguments out there.

I spent quite amount of time reading comments posted by people on a page called Knifeup.  There seemed to be a commonality among the users on that site.  Another claim made by a multitude of commenters is that Vector Marketing isn’t a real job.  One user states, “Get a real college job such as:  lawn work, kitchen work, pizza delivery, bartending, lab work, or donating plasma” (Knifeup 1).  I don’t understand personally what qualifies these jobs as real college jobs however I decided to examine the common case that is out there.  With my personal experience, I have never given Vector Marketing a dime and have made thousands of dollars.  In my opinion I would consider that I real job.  Now according to Israeli innovation lab worker, Ron Karidi, multi- level marketing is defined as, “Direct selling method in which independent-agents serve as distributors of goods and services, and are encouraged to build and manage their own sales force by recruiting and training other independent agents” (Karidi 1).  Now this is exactly what I described earlier in the essay on how Vector Marketing works.  Vector Marketing has the foundation of multi-level marketing.  According to Karidi, multi-level marketing is a legitimate business strategy that is implemented by many companies throughout the world.  A writer, Matt Markoff, wrote on the site Clantilyscad and stated “I made about $3000 in three weeks and worked a total of 10 hours.  I liked the product but hated the way we had to sell them” (Markoff 1).  The reason why this is an important quote is that this another person saying that this type of marketing system works.  Thus, that he made money from Vector Marketing and that it is not a scam.

           I’m going to conclude by making my case for why Vector Marketing is not a scam.  For starters, Vector Marketing has been around for 65 years and have been referenced in an article by the magazine USA today as the number one stepping stone job for young adults.  Vector Marketing is also implemented into some college marketing classes throughout the country.  Two examples are the University of Dayton and Michigan State University.  These schools actually have students go out and sell for a semester and then donate the money earned to charitable organizations.  College’s like doing it this way because students are able to get real life experiences instead of just learning about it in a text book.  A big reason why I think Vector Marketing gets such a bad reputation from some people is because it is not for everyone.  This is not a typical job where a person is told what they are worth.  Where they are being paid for what someone else thinks they are worth.  At Vector Marketing, a person is able to create their own wealth and make as much money as they want to make because of that commission factor.  To do this job a person must be disciplined, goal oriented, and self-motivated.  The only way a person gets paid is if they pick up the phone and call their referrals.  They don’t have someone telling them that they need to do this and do that; it’s up to them whether or not they want to work and make money.  For some people, they see the $14.50 base pay per appointment and think that they get that by being lazy just like they were in their minimum wage job.  Well, that’s not the case.  If a person wants to be successful they must take ownership and earn it.  They must do it for themselves because they want to.  To the yakker that said “If you took a job with Vector Marketing you should not be going to a school like Miami;” I say that if you don’t take a job with Vector Marketing you shouldn’t be going to a school like The Miami University.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Muffin, Scandalous. "The Cult of Cutco: How Vector Marketing Mass-Hires Students into Dubious Contract Labor." Clantily Scad. N.p., 13 June 2010. Web. 06 Nov. 2014.

"Vector Marketing Scam | Cutco Knives Scam Review." KnifeUp. N.p., 6 Jan. 2013. Web. 03 Nov. 2014.

Koehn, Daryl. "Ethical Issues Connected with Multi-Level Marketing Schemes - Springer." Ethical Issues Connected with Multi-Level Marketing Schemes - Springer. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 01 Jan. 2001. Web. 06 Nov. 2014.

Emek, Yuval, Ron Karidi, Moshe Tennenholtz, and Aviv Zohar. "Mechanisms for Multi-level Marketing." Mechanisms for Multi-level Marketing. SIGEcom, 5 June 2011. Web. 06 Nov. 2014.