Has anyone heard of Traveling Vineyard? I thought I hadn’t until recently. I remembered I literally mentioned this MLM in my “Wine MLMs You Should Avoid” post. But just the other day, someone was telling me about REWINED which is by the company, Traveling Vineyard. So I was thinking, ‘What the hell is that?”
REWINED is basically a wine club, but their wines are exclusively from Traveling Vineyard. I decided to Google Traveling Vineyard since I couldn’t find anything inherently wrong with the REWINED website. Unfortunately, my Google search lead me to their website and immediately it gave those vibes. The Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss vibes. And then I saw it… the button that says, “Become a Wine Guide.”
Now I clicked the “Become a Wine Guide” link so you don’t have to, but the giant header, “A new career, a new life” is definitely a red flag. I’m talking boy with ‘J’ name RED FLAG (apologies to the nice ‘J’ name boys out there). Then they go on about setting your own hours, running your own business, and turning it into your full-time job. No offense, but selling shitty wine sounds like a terrible job.
At some point in my series, I’ve mentioned that MLMs target stay-at-home moms because they value the flexibility and Traveling Vineyard is no exception. They’re pretty obvious about it too, as shown in the screenshot below:
What really annoyed me is that information is hard to find on their website even though I do appreciate a challenge. It took a lot of clicking and an email sent from me as the name, “Bri Chyze,” to finally get what I was looking for. But I did get to the join now page which was filled with business kits for purchase. Again, no one should be buying things just to work for a company. It’s a really great way to lose your money.
They’ve got what they call the Essentials Success Kit that comes with 10 bottles of wine and some random marketing crap for $99, the Digital Success Kit that comes with $35 of store credit and access to digital marketing stuff, the Complete Success Kit that includes 10 bottles of wine, tasting glasses, and the same random marketing crap. If you read carefully, there’s an additional fee of $15.95 per month that includes your website to sell the wine.
Once you select your kit, you’re forced to buy it from a Wine Guide. I chose a random Sarah from who knows where (sorry girl). Turns out I did all of that work to be directed to the same terms and conditions on the home page. The terms and conditions barely say anything about being a wine guide, which should probably be illegal. The most MLM wording I could find was a section called Direct Selling Association with one sentence. “As a member in good standing of the Direct Selling Association we follow and adhere to the DSA Code of Ethics.” Targeting stay-at-home moms doesn’t violate ethics? Good lord.
To add insult to injury, once you miraculously find their financial compensation page, you get slapped in the face with, “Transparency is huge for us—at Traveling Vineyard we reward our Wine Guides for growing and running their businesses, and we don’t hide how we do it! There are many ways to get paid—from submitting personal volume from tasting events, to shopping cart orders, and more. Our Career Plan also rewards you for adding new team members and helping them grow their businesses!” Transparency my ass! WHY DID IT TAKE ME SO MANY CLICKS TO FIND THIS?
That aside, let’s read some of their MLM financial statements:
“Perhaps the best way to really boost your income potential with the Traveling Vineyard compensation plan is to build a team.” If the best way to make money is to recruit people, then it was never about the product was it?
“There are 14 levels of our Career Plan; each is based on building active, strong teams. The best part is that when your team members succeed, get paid, and grow teams of their own, we reward you not only for your personal volume, but for managing and motivating them as part of a successful team!” Usually here is where I put the obligatory pyramid screenshot, but it was really nice of them to paint the pyramid with words for us.
“We don’t have any sales minimums to maintain your status as a Wine Guide. We have a $15.95 fee that you pay each month to remain active, but we do not require that you sell every month to continue to be a part of our Wine Guide community!” In other words, you don’t have to make money, but they’ll gladly take yours!
“…part of your Success Kit it is our Sommology Kit which teaches you all the basics of wine tasting, food and wine pairings, and what you need to know about our wines, specifically.” This one cracks me up because I can teach you all of this for FREE on my blog. No $59 Success Kit required.
I randomly found the 2017 Income Disclosure on their website. It says it was uploaded in April 2020, so I’m assuming it hasn’t changed in four years. What’s crazy is that this information is public and people still sign up thinking that they can be part of the 0.48% that can earn decent money from Traveling Vineyard.
It says the top 25% of the 0.04% of people earn around $123,623. Let’s put into perspective exactly how many people that is. Only 0.04% of wine guides are at the top level of the company. Let’s go ahead and say that there are 100,000 wine guides total. That means 40 people out of 100,000 wine guides are at the very top level of this pyramid. Only 25% of those of those 40 people are earning $123,623, which is 10 people. Ten people seems low, right?
Now we’re going to look at the 2017 numbers. It says that TWO people are at the top 0.04%, which is insane because for one, they did their math wrong and two, now you have an even lower chance of getting there. That’s two people out of 4,529 which is actually 0.00044%. They’re fudging their zeroes! So we’re looking at the two people on the top and one of them is earning $123,623. What is the other person earning? If we take the overall average listed, we can find out by using a simple equation: ($123,623 + x)/2 = $116,935. The second person is earning $110,247.
The bottom 72.42% is earning an average of $350 annually, which is pretty bad. Then you see that the bottom 25% is earning an average of $30 ANNUALLY. Remember that the lowest starting cost is $59 and then $15.95 per month for the website. If you earn $350, you’re making a profit of $99.60 and if you’re in the bottom 25% of the bottom of the pyramid, you’re LOSING $220.40.
Think about the last time you’ve been in the top 0.0004% of anything. You’re more likely to get audited by the IRS (0.004% chance) or become an astronaut (0.00066% chance) than be at the top of this MLM.
Mary Kay is the same as any of the wine MLMs except for the fact that they sell makeup. I really liked this book because it gave a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to be in an MLM. If you’ve never joined one and never plan to like me, it’s extremely insightful and thought-provoking.
