I still remember the winter vacation party held in the Spring Festival in 1997 at my classmate Ji Min's house, I was a little late that afternoon, and when I walked into the living room, I found a group of classmates gathered around very lively, and classmate Ah Jian was spitting on a piece of paper waving circles, rubies, jadeite...... This is how a whole bunch of technical terms came to my mind for the first time. Ah Jian was still a junior at Tianjin University of Technology at the time, and he had just joined a direct selling company called Meishan, and the feeling that he couldn't wait to launch after joining was something that many people who came to him would never forget.

The establishment of Meishan is actually quite related to Meilu. At that time, a Malaysian Datuk pulled Meilu Diamond, Xu Weiguo and a high-level Sunni to create Meishan. Meishan is known as Xiaomeilu, naturally it can't get rid of a lot of Meilu birthmarks, not only the products, but even the packaging are extremely similar, and even the award title is the same as Meilu before 1998. It is also a very poor company, the difference is that before 21%, Meishan was a cumulative system, while Meilu was a monthly zero. In addition, the award requirements for Meishan are also very low, basically Meishan's silver medal income is equivalent to 9% of Meilu, Ruby income is equivalent to 12% of Meilu, gold diamond is equivalent to Meilu's row diamond, and that's it. Since Meishan is a cumulative system, the income of Meishan dealers is even more unstable than that of Meilu. Of course, with the "airplane cannon" (i.e., after success, you can buy a car, a house, a yacht, an airplane...... Add to that the perfect prospect value, and it's all negligible.

At the same time, in terms of market strategy, Meishan has taken a completely different path from Meilu. Since 1998, after the "one-size-fits-all" direct pyramid scheme, Meishan abandoned its previous dealers and went underground overnight, embarking on a road where the countryside surrounds the city and the spark can start a prairie fire. In 2004, after many years of lurking, Meishan suddenly sprung up in many cities. A former Meilu Gold Medal and later Meishan Jade proudly boasted to me that in 2004 they had more than 800 gold and diamond households across the country. You know, 2004 is the most glorious years of Meilu, that year, Meilu in China produced a total of more than 900 diamonds, after-tax turnover of 17.2 billion yuan, and Meishan is only more than one billion, the gold content of Meishan gold diamonds can be seen since then.

In the treacherous direct selling industry, there have been many twists and turns in Meishan, which has "come from behind", and the most tragic one is that Liao Zuming, one of the troika of Meishan, suddenly left and created another truth. In 2007, due to the "bloody case caused by an article", the two companies and their affiliated dealers finally fought hard, so that the old enemies of Meilu and Meishan had to temporarily withdraw from the battlefield filled with gunpowder, which is a later story.

I'm an introvert and a person who isn't good at words, and I didn't hear the beginning, so naturally Ah Jian didn't make me too much trouble. But since then, I finally learned that there is such a thing as MLM in this world. However, before April 21, 1998, MLM was not a street rat that everyone shouted and beaten. At that time, in China, there was no clear definition of what MLM was, and the common people naturally did not understand it.

Broadly speaking, there are three stages of direct selling development in China:

The first stage was the period from 1991 when Avon entered China until April 1998. It can be said that the entry of Avon has brought a new concept to the Chinese - it turns out that things can still be sold like this! Since then, all kinds of standardized and non-standard pyramid schemes have sprinkled all over the land of China like sunshine and rain. During this period, the biggest impact was the MLM swing machine. The swing machine, which costs less than 100 yuan, is sold at a high price of 5 or 6,000 yuan, and a high percentage of commission is promised to members, which has an impact all over the country for a while. According to media reports at the time, at the peak of the incident, hundreds of thousands of illegal pyramid schemers gathered in Tamsui, Guangdong alone, which caused serious social problems in Changsha and Haikou, and became a well-known news event throughout the country, which eventually led to the "April 21 direct pyramid marketing ban" in 1998.

Meilu was officially opened in China in 1995, but before that, Meilu had already occupied the market opportunity by applying for cards in Hong Kong and continuously penetrating the mainland. Later, Lixin Century also wanted to take this path, and as a result, together with Wuhan Xintian, it was designated as one of the top ten MLM cases in China in 2004, completely bidding farewell to the Chinese market and direct selling licenses. I forgot that it was 2004, and it was no longer the era of demons.

The second phase was the period between the 1998 direct selling storm and the 2006 direct selling legislation. It was at this time that the reputation of Meilu Company, which had plummeted, and several other transformation companies began to change their names to direct sales. Although the name has been changed, the common people still stubbornly believe that it is just a legitimate pyramid scheme, which has added endless troubles to our later 3S work (i.e., recommendation, sales, service). The MLM companies that were not allowed to transform also followed, but this time they went underground. But no matter what, the big ship of Meilu still set sail slowly, and the market gradually began to heat up again, and finally reached the peak of history in 2004, and since then, the situation has been getting worse. And I was "born" in this "turbulent era" of war.

The third stage does not need to be repeated. After the direct selling legislation in 2006, many former "mountain kings" were recruited one after another, and those who had nothing to do wanted a piece of the pie. At present, the so-called mainstay of most of the Meilu team may still be in the "mad dog stage" (that is, the usual state when newcomers first join, they are emotionally excited, and they generally bite when they see people - referring to explaining Meilu's career - biting people will be contagious) The new Meilu is a matter of the future. The new American road and the old guys of the American road will never be able to communicate.

This is roughly what the social pattern of direct MLM before the official electrocution of Meilu Road.

There is such a fragment in my memory: On an early spring afternoon in 1997, at the end of the corridor on the second floor of the school's materials hall, Cheng Shengke, a student from the plumber class, squeezed me into a corner. Cheng Shengke, a native of Fujian, has a good brain, is good at calculations, and when he was still in college, he did business and opened a restaurant, and in the mid-90s, he only knew how to study on campus, this is a great man. Because just half an hour ago, he had just done a comparative experiment on a shampoo for me, and I knew that there was such a good shampoo in the world, and that he had just returned from acting as an agent for a business called Meilu in Fujian......

Centec: "Make up your mind, do this business with me?" ”

Xiao Fei: "I...... I...... I haven't passed level 4 yet. ”

Centec: "It's big international business! ”

Xiao Fei: "How much money can you make?" ”

Centec: "How much do you want to earn?" ”

Xiao Fei: "......"

There was a stalemate for about half an hour, and finally I had to beg for mercy and say, "If I do direct sales in the future, I will definitely do Meilu." "At that time, I just wanted to study hard and cherish the last time in my life when I could still calm down. Business, for me, who was born in a scholarly family, is simply unrelated. Five years later, I really did Meilu, "fulfilled" the promise of the year, and then went to DD, and then to diamond, but Shengke can no longer find it. Now when I see a lot of college students doing Meilu, I want to laugh.

You can start a business, but college students are not suitable for Meilu. Because this business requires you to have a certain amount of spending power, enough funds to support the initial investment, stable values, rational judgment, rich experience, extraordinary will, strong ambition, and an independent and sound personality. And in the end, you have to cultivate into an all-rounder who can do everything from heaven to earth, and countless people will go forward and blood on this wrong road to "success...... Those who can survive more than three years in this industry without losing money are talents, and it is highly recommended that HR personnel of major companies can hire these talents directly without interviews. In a word, this business seems to have a low starting point, but it is the field with the highest requirements for personal quality in all industries. In this regard, Yang Feng, the ruby of Meilu for ten years, summed it up most incisively:

You are asked to be confident in the face of death and life!

You are required to stand tall in the wind in every way!

It is required that you always be strong in the midst of rebellion!

Ask you to solicit on the street without blushing and heartbeat!

It is required that you have the universe in mind and not explode itself!

Ask you to be penniless and pretend to be chic!

Ask you to eat a lot of money if the product is expensive!

Ask you not to get a leaf in the flowers!

I also believe that wild lilies must have spring!

I don't know what kind of sin I have created, but Meilu has caught me like this! Maybe I was a little white snake in my previous life, and it was the leader who kindly let me go......