Unicity is a multilevel marketing company that sells meal replacement shakes and supplements in packaged “kits” that are designed to help you lose weight, improve your health, and transform your life.
The company is well known for its Twelve Week Transformation program, which combines a four item supplementation routine with weekly coaching sessions over the phone, guidance on developing an exercise program, and nutritional advice as well.
This comprehensive approach is more innovative than the usual package from an MLM– “take these supplements for a month and lose weight!”
While some people do buy individual products from Unicity, especially after going through the Twelve Week Transformation program, the real hook of this MLM is the package deal approach to health improvement.
So have I been involved? This explains everything:
All good? Let’s continue…
Analysis of data from internet search engine trends show evidence of a company that has experienced solid growth in the last decade, but has slumped a bit recently.
The decline in search engine traffic for Unicity is not precipitous, but current search volumes are tracking about half of what they were at Unicity’s zenith, four years ago. The good news is that current search volumes look stable, so the company is not likely to be on the verge of disappearing into obscurity like some flash in the pan MLMs.
Products
Though search engine traffic perhaps isn’t as promising as one might hope, the quality of the products offered by Unicity, especially in their Twelve Week Transformation plan, look pretty good.
The program, as mentioned earlier, consists of a 30 minute weekly coaching phone call, exercise advice that fits into your life, hobbies, and schedule, and nutritional guidance, but the centerpiece is the four part supplementation routine.
The four supplements included in the program are Unicity’s Balance, Matcha, Complete, and LiFiber.
Balance is a sugar-free beverage powder that is designed to help suppress your craving for simple carbohydrates and sugars. It also provides a wide range of vitamins and a hefty serving of dietary fiber.
This second point is one worth emphasizing, given the relationship between dietary fiber intake and weight.
Each serving of Balance contains four grams of fiber, which helps increase your feelings of satiety, or fullness. According to a 2001 scientific article in the journal Nutrition Reviews, an increase in dietary fiber intake of 14 grams leads to a 10% decrease in energy intake, thanks to the increased feelings of fullness.
So in this sense, even though Unicity Balance is essentially noncaloric, it can help you eat less by decreasing your desire to eat other food later in the day.
Matcha is a special type of green tea that’s especially popular in Japan. Unicity, of course, claims that it has secured a special type of Matcha tea that’s especially healthy, but no such distinction is needed to establish the health benefits of green tea.
Beyond the well-documented weight loss benefits of green tea (thanks to both the caffeine and other bioactive compounds), green tea also appears to have protective effects against cancer, heart disease, and inflammation, thanks to its strong antioxidant properties.
This much is attested to in a 2005 article in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. Unicity adds in a few other ingredients, like vitamins and additional antioxidants, but the matcha is the star of the show, and is the ingredient most likely to provide a health benefit.
Complete is a classic protein meal replacement shake. It contains a blend of whey protein, soy protein, and milk protein, alongside additional fiber (four more grams, which again, helps with feelings of fullness).
Meal replacement shakes are known to help increase fat loss and preserve lean muscle, which is helpful during weight loss because extra muscle mass helps burn more energy. According to a study in the journal Nutrition & Metabolic, whey protein in particular manifests this effect.
Finally, LiFiber is, as you’d guess, a fiber supplement that uses psyllium husk fiber, alongside some “prebiotic” nutrients for gut health, to deliver more fiber.
With a strong fiber component in three of the four components in the Twelve Week Transformation package, your dietary fiber intake should rise substantially, hence decreasing the amount of other food you are likely to eat.
Compensation plan
So, in all, Unicity’s products look like they are backed by some solid science.
But what’s the business opportunity look like?
For starters, it’s a minimum cost of $40 to join. There are additional startup kits you can purchase, but these are optional. As a distributor, you can get wholesale discounts of up to 40% (it varies depending on the product) and resell these products for retail prices and pocket the difference.
To be eligible for commissions, you need to maintain a monthly sales volume of 100 product volume consistently. This equates to about $180 of sales per month at wholesale prices.
That’s fairly steep, and that is just for the lowest rank. After your second month of 100+ product volume sales, you get a 5% rebate, which combines with the 5% commissions you are eligible to receive from downline sales.
You need to increase your ranking to increase the number of levels of distributors you receive commissions on, but the percentage always stays at 5%.
Recap
Reviewing Unicity poses a unique challenge.
On one hand, the Twelve Week Transformation program is pretty no-nonsense.
I can’t comment on the quality of the coaching sessions or the nutrition and exercise guidance, but the supplements are pretty reasonable and have some scientific research backing their ingredients. That’s more than a lot of MLM weight loss programs can say.
On the other hand, any time-based MLM program is bound to generate high turnover. What are the chances you keep your product volume higher after your first wave of customers finishes the twelve week challenge?
Moreover, the steep sales volumes and mediocre commission rates make this one a bit of a head-scratcher. Unicity provides no income disclosure statement, so it’s hard to evaluate how these two conflicting qualities balance out.
I’m not a Unicity hater, but when it comes to building passive income streams, there are better options.
If you’re simply doing MLM for the money, there are better ways to kill your day job.
You might like our coaching because it shows you the good life without peddling supplements to your family and friends.
http://bodynutrition.org/unicity-review/ http://bodynutritionorg.tumblr.com/post/162139729164
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