This article is reproduced from the WeChat public account "Xinmin Weekly" (ID: xinminzhoukan)
On May 12, local time, a number of Swiss media also reported such a news - the direct selling company Jeunesse Global organized 12,000 Chinese employees to carry out a six-day trip to Switzerland, which is the largest tour group ever visiting Switzerland.
Group photo of Chinese dealers from Jeunesse in Switzerland Image source / 20 Minuten
According to reports, the 12,000-person tour group will visit the Rhine Falls, the Aare River Gorge, Mount Titlis, Lake Lucerne in batches over a period of 6 days, as well as visit cities such as Bern and Zurich.
It is estimated that Chinese tour groups will spend as much as CHF 14 million on hotels, restaurants, transportation and attractions, not including flight costs.
Signs that read "2019 Polar Peak Swiss Incentive Travel" Chinese Traditional, which can be seen everywhere in Switzerland these days Image source / 20 Minuten
According to Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland's most influential newspaper, the first members of the tour group had appeared in scenic spots such as the Rhine Falls and Titlis Mountain on the morning of May 11, and that wherever they went, special police officers maintained order.
Because there are so many people, their entry into cafes and restaurants needs to be done in batches.
A tour group of Chinese dealers organized by Jeunesse, holding a banner of "Guangzong Yaozu & Step by Step" Image source / 20 Minuten
The Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten reported that 4,000 visitors from the tour group came together to the city of Lucerne in central Switzerland. To this end, the city with a population of less than 80,000 has arranged 95 coaches.
In Switzerland, buses line up to receive Chinese tourists Photo credit / 20 Minuten
Jeunesse travels so high-profile, reminiscent of Tiens France in 2015.
From May 6 to 9, 2015, Tiens Group, a health product direct selling company from Tianjin, celebrated its 20th anniversary with about 6,400 employees on a luxury four-day tour of France. At the time, mainstream European media, including The Parisian in France, The Guardian and Reuters, paid attention to the matter.
In 2015, Tiens dealers traveled in Nice, France
So, what kind of direct selling company is Jeunesse? Why is it so "proud" to organize 12,000 Chinese to travel to Switzerland?
U.S. direct sales "dark horse" founded only 10 years ago
Compared to China's Tiens, Jeunesse is a young direct selling company founded in 2009 in Orlando, Florida.
The United States is the base camp of direct selling companies, and most of the direct selling brands that are well known to the Chinese people start from the United States, and the popularity of this "rising star" is not high in the United States.
Many Americans noticed that Jeunesse may have been in 2016, when news reports were made of "mysterious billionaires" who spent thousands of dollars on a mansion in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California. The U.S. media dug deeper to find out that the buyers were a low-key couple from Orlando — Randy Ray and Wendy Lewis.
Mr. and Mrs. Randy Ray and Wendy Lewis
The couple had previously been unknown, and the media continued to dig deeper and learned that the two were the founders of Jeunesse.
Before starting the company in 2009, Randy Ray was just a salesman and Wendy Lewis was a math teacher. In just 7 years, the two have jumped from the middle class of the town to the upstart of the first-tier cities, which shows the gold absorption ability of Jeunesse.
The question is, why is Jeunesse so profitable?
First, let's talk about Jeunesse's products. In fact, many Americans are big and old, so the company name also likes "Yangdashang", Jeuness's name is the French meaning of "youth", and this company is also based on anti-aging products.
As I said, Randy Ray is a salesman and he's been successful in that regard. Before founding Jeunesse, he was pitching a $2 capsule product everywhere, claiming that adding to a car's fuel tank would boost the vehicle's MPG (miles per gallon of gasoline), similar to the fuel treasure of domestic gas stations, you know.
In 2009, Randy Ray teamed up with Dr. Nathan Newman of Beverly Hills, who developed a series of anti-aging skin care products using stem cells, and then Randy Ray and Wendy Lewis mass-produced the product line, which was named Luminesce, and then began multi-level remuneration for direct sales, and Jeunesse was born.
Although China does not allow MLM (multi-level marketing, that is, the sales of the next home can be commissioned after the development of the upper line), it is legal in the United States, and this is the main reason why the direct selling company can grow rapidly.
Unlike direct selling companies, the percentage of compensation that salespeople ultimately get paid from product sales
According to 2016 US media reports, Jeunesse is the fastest growing direct selling company in the United States, with a growth rate of more than 811% for three consecutive years, with one-month sales of up to US$120 million (about 825 million yuan), while the company's global sales in 2010 were only 30 million US dollars (about 206 million yuan), and in 2015 it reached 1 billion US dollars (about 6.875 billion US dollars).
There is no direct selling license in China, and it has been exposed by the media many times
According to The Glance, Switzerland's largest newspaper by circulation, Jeunesse is currently active in more than 140 countries and territories. Its business is also controversial, and the health products it sells lack independent and reliable quality assurance information, and consumers have to "risk themselves" – a common problem for many direct selling companies.
So why did Jeunesse organize 12,000 Chinese distributors to travel to Switzerland this time? Jeunesse's website is available in two languages, English and Chinese Traditional, which shows the importance of Greater China to this company.
Wool comes from sheep, and Greater China is Jeunesse's "gold mine" - although it has not yet obtained a direct sales license in China, it pays more and more attention to anti-aging and health Chinese, and is more superstitious about "foreign products", even if the price is staggering.
In fact, in recent years, the issue of Jeunesse has been repeatedly exposed by the media in China.
According to the March 2016 Xinhua Viewpoint report, "What is behind the micro-business "divine product" created by the "Nobel Prize Team"? - "Jeunesse Products" survey, which mentions the promotion of "Jeunesse Peiquan Jinghua" in the domestic market, claiming to be able to treat 31 diseases, and its core ingredient, resveratrol, has been blown to the point of being blown to the point of being divine.
In fact, the role of resveratrol on the human body is still in the research stage, whether it has a positive effect on human health, in what way it works, whether there are side effects, etc. are still inconclusive. It is even less likely to say that it is effective for a specific disease, nor does it have an anti-inflammatory effect at all.
It is worth noting that a person named Vincent Giampapa will be mentioned in the use group of Jeunesse products, who is called a consultant to the medical team of Jeunesse Global Group, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2014 as a full-time nutrition consultant for NASA, etc., deeply linking him to Jeunesse's products.
However, this information did not appear on the official website of the Nobel Prize, and the relevant staff replied that the nomination materials for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine were strictly confidential for 50 years and would not be publicly disclosed.
In March 2019, Interface News "Starting from the bottom of the "Peiquan Jinghua" and the American businessman Jeunesse Under the cloak of the American businessman transnational pyramid scheme? It is mentioned that another flagship product of Jeunesse, "AM&PM", is highlighted as the so-called "cell repair", saying that it "repairs the chromosomal telomeres of cells through the Nobel Prize telomere repair technology, which can effectively delay the aging phenomenon". This statement is also clearly exaggerated.
According to the Health Times, Truth in Advertising (TINA), a non-profit organization that specializes in disclosing false advertising in the United States, conducted a detailed investigation of Jeunesse in April 2017, detailing 12 major "crimes", including more than 100 cases of jeuness dealers' exaggerated publicity, comparisons before and after the use of suspicious products, confusing product prices and consumer complaints.
In July 2016, Jeunesse encountered a class action lawsuit in the United States involving more than 100 Chinese in California, accusing Jeunesse of deceiving Chinese immigrants in the United States and encouraging them to organize illegal pyramid schemes in China to sell Jeunesse products to relatives and friends in China. Products enter the Chinese mainland through Channels such as Hong Kong, circumventing the monitoring of China's industry and commerce departments and customs.
Well, speaking of which, you should understand why Jeunesse rewards so many Chinese to travel to Switzerland, right?