Review of SMC

I joined up with SMC a few years ago.  I was in California on business and was up really early in the morning and put on the TV.  Of course at 4 AM, there was not much on except infomercials.  As I was surfing through the channels I came upon Tom Bosley, and if you grew up in the '70s, you gotta love Mr. C from Happy Days. Anyway, he does add a bit of credibility to this get rich quick system.  I watched most of the infomercial, but did not buy.  A day or two later, I was up early again, and watched the infomercial again and I guess I was reeled in.  I was at a time in my life where I wanted to make a few extra bucks on the side.

First off, it was fairly expensive to buy their "startup kit" -- but it did look promising -- and just like most of these systems, you can return it for a full refund [minus cost of shipping].  When I received the package, I read all of the booklets they gave and watched the video. I even watched the video a second time with my wife.  I made up a business plan and dreamed of how much money I was going to make.  What I liked about it was that it was not really a system, but provided you with access to products to sell.  That was something I could sink my teeth into -- it was sales regardless of if you followed their system or not.

They assigned a "coach" for me.  However, all this guy was was just a salesperson trying to sell me additional items to help me sell their items.  His sales schtick was "you need to spend money to make money" however, I had already dished out a few hundred bucks for this kit, have yet to make a sale, and he wants me to spend a few hundred dollars more.  No thank you.  He also asked me for my income, which I did not appreciate.  I got P.O.'d and emailed SMC and figured out the email of their president and cc'd him as well.  He got back in touch with me quickly and "assigned" me a new sales rep (I mean "coach") who tried to soft sell me. I had already decided that I would need a few catalogs, and decided to purchase them through this coach, since I was able to receive a bigger discount this way.

I did try to sell a few items to people at work, however, after the first item I sold was sent broken, I quickly lost faith.  Besides that, after the shipping and handling to the East Coast, plus the additional fees for small orders I also quickly found out that I would have to do some bulk sales to make any money on this thing. However, person-to-person selling has never been my forte, and I was planning on using SMC to make money on the web.  SMC did offer a "discounted" website through one of their partners.  However, it was expensive.  I found another much, much cheaper web provider that allowed me to build a custom website and they would upload the entire inventory of SMC onto my website.  Of course, I went with the later option.  However, after spending many hours customizing the website to my own liking, SMC sent out an email saying that they would cut off the membership of anyone that was using non-authorized websites to sell their items (since they were not making any money off of the website sales and hosting).  You would figure that they make tons of money off of selling their items at a premium (with you doing the selling for them), that they would promote this since they do promote you putting their stuff for sale on eBay. Well, anyway, I closed down the site and cancelled my membership.  So they lost any future sales they might have had if they would have let me continue with the website.

What I liked:

• They provided you with real products to sell
• You could sell their items in person, via mail order or on the Internet
• Sales materials such as full color catalogs & brochures were available
• Kind of provided personal "coaches" to help you out - although some coaches are really there to help you
• Start up kit with instruction booklet and videos
• Endorsed by Tom Bosley

What I did not like:

• You needed to sell in bulk to make back any profit, since they take so much out of the price
  • Their percentage of the price
  • Shipping and Handling is very high, especially to the East Coast
  • They charge an additional fee if the order is not high enough
  • Taxes
  • Start-up and annual SMC fees
  • The overhead (catalogs, web fees, etc.)
• The sales coach that was only trying to sell
• They made me shut down my website selling their items (which I spent money to set up, and spent valuable time customizing)

In conclusion, I think that it was a good learning experience for me.  It introduced me to the world of drop shipping.  Looking back on it now, I probably would not spend the money to join them again. In my research, I found that there are other drop shipping type companies out their that I do not have to join, and I can negotiate better percentages on the items I sell. However, if you are either first getting into this type of business, this might be a good option since there is much you have to do - but just remember, you will be receiving a smaller percentage with them.

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Last modified: 02/16/08