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Awakend’s prelaunch started about two months ago.
Earlier this month, Awakend co-founder Danelle Meoli said that the company was breaking sales records.
The problem with that claim is that Awakend hasn’t sent out a single product to either retail customers or affiliates it has recruited.
And even though Awakend has no retail customers, they are now doing a promotion to get more people to join.
The FTC calls a pyramid scheme any MLM company that doesn’t make a lot of money from retail sales.
MLM prelaunches have some flexibility in this area, but as stated, Awakend is about to start more than two months of prelaunch.
During that time, distributors can only do one thing: find new distributors. Even though no products are being shipped, you can still get paid for recruiting people.
To make a point, Awakend is a real-life pyramid scheme that doesn’t sell anything.
According to the above ad slide, Awaken will give
$2500 to its top recruiter
It gave $1000 to its second-best recruiter and $500 to three other “winners.”
Note that the Awakend promotion starts on October 8 and has no end date. On the flyer for Awakend, it says “when Zenith ships!”
Awakend’s Zenith is the most popular weight loss supplement. Zenith is in the middle of a patent dispute lawsuit that is still going on and should be over by March of next year.
Zenith does not yet have a date for when it will be shipped.
To win Zenith’s recruitment promotion, you have to bring in affiliates from the Starter Pack and the Founders Pack.
When you get a Starter Pack affiliate ($260–$500), you get one share. When you get a Founders Pack affiliate ($1295–$3495), you get five shares.
Awakend’s post-launch business model isn’t any better than its prelaunch, which was all about recruiting and was said to scam customers out of millions.
We just looked at Awakend and noticed that you have to buy 100 PV every month.
Active: This means that you have had at least 100 PV in the last 5 weeks.
This 100PV order must be for one person (does not include customer CV).
The best way to stay active is to have a Subscribe and Save order worth 100 PV.
This makes it possible for Awakend to be used as a way to get people to join autoships after launch, whenever that will be.
A real MLM opportunity isn’t built on going all out on recruitment for months before a launch and then focusing on recruitment through autoship after the launch.
It’s a direct violation of the FTC Act because it’s a pyramid scheme.
Also, it makes it likely that most Awakend affiliates who sign up hoping to make money from recruiting will lose money.
Since Elomir did this with their Axis Klarity launch a few months ago, I hope this “we have no product to ship” prelaunch isn’t the start of a new MLM trend.
If that’s the case, the FTC might want to think about how long it waits to start an investigation into pyramid schemes.
