Home shopping club Selling and socializing combine at popular parties

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It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that bling.

At least, not at this party.

“Bling-bling! Bling-bling!” Angela Walsh shouts raucously as a slender blonde models a flashy cubic zirconia ring.

“It’s like playing dress up,” Karen Upton-Bean explains to a visitor as a half-dozen women try on Lia Sophia costume jewelry at Changes Salon in Bangor. “We’re like little girls again.”

And girls will be girls – especially at the ubiquitous home party, in which women, and a few daring men, come together at a friend’s home (or, in this case, business) to eat, drink, gossip and shop. Of course, everyone feels obligated to buy something so their hostess can get loads of free merchandise.

It’s a decades-old concept, a descendant of the venerable Tupperware party. But a new generation of products has emerged, and what was once a quick way to earn spending money and get a few plastic storage containers has blossomed into a full-blown industry. According to the Direct Selling Association, a trade group that represents the leading firms that manufacture and distribute goods and services sold directly to consumers, the industry generated $29.55 billion in sales in 2003 – 28.5 percent of that at home parties.

“We’ve actually been growing for 19 consecutive years,” said Amy Robinson, the DSA’s director of communications. “In recent years, a lot more people are taking note of it because there’s been a lot of expansion in different types [of products]. I think there are a lot of products that appeal to a lot more people.”

In eastern Maine, on any given night, someone has cleared out her living room to make room for 10 to 15 of her closest friends, a spread of food, a sales rep and a display of Tastefully Simple gourmet condiments and mixes, Pampered Chef kitchen gadgets, Lia Sophia jewelry, Southern Living home accessories, cosmetics and toiletries by The Body Shop, Discovery Toys, Arbonne personal care and weight-loss products, Petra Fashions lingerie, Silpada sterling silver jewelry, Mia Bella candles, Longaberger baskets, scrapbooking items or various adult “toys.”

Melanie Sachs, 35, of Hampden is a veteran home partier. She holds an annual Discovery Toys gathering during the holidays to raise money for Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Center in Bangor. On average, she goes to two or three parties a year.

“In the suburban mom area, this is how you get your major shopping done and see your friends,” Sachs explained over coffee one afternoon in Bangor. In an earlier e-mail, Sachs laid out the rules:

1. You go to your friend’s party, because she will then feel obligated to go to yours.

2. Rule No. 1 is less relevant if your friend has many different parties in a row.

3. It is also acceptable to ignore Rule No. 1 if it is well known that “you do not do” Longaberger-Pampered Chef-scrapbooking-Mary Kay, etc.

4. Children are not invited, unless specifically said otherwise by the hostess. After all, isn’t that the point?

5. Food is always served.

These parties are hugely popular for several reasons. Depending on how much her friends buy, the hostess earns a certain amount of free merchandise and a discount on the rest. In return, she puts out a spread of food and drinks to sate her generous friends.

And the consultant makes money. Some earn enough to buy a few cosmos on Friday night. Others make enough to pay the mortgage, finance their kids’ first year in college and have enough left over for a new Mercedes.

It’s a phenomenon. A subculture, if you will, with a language all its own. Guests will say, “She’s having an Arbonne” or “I’m going to a Southern Living.” Some do it to appease their friends, but others go because they truly love the product. At the Lia Sophia party, half the women in the room owned every piece of jewelry in the catalog – and it’s a 50-page book.

Consultants, on the other hand, have their own catchphrases. They speak of incentives and buying plans, teams and friendship. They say things like, “We’re selling an experience.”

And they are.

On a recent snowy evening, women filled the family room in Jodi Steele’s Bangor split-level, sipping margaritas and beer, eating chips and guacamole, and trying on Silpada sterling silver jewelry. Steele’s friend had a Silpada, and she liked it so much, she decided to have her own. Most of the guests were her colleagues at a Bangor investment firm who usually get together once a week anyway.

“It’s really so many things wrapped into one. It’s social, it’s shopping,” Steele, 37, said. “I thought it’d be fun, and the jewelry’s beautiful. Oh, and there’s free stuff, too.”

But not everyone sees the appeal. Steele’s colleague Cathy Smith bought several pieces of jewelry, but she wasn’t exactly overjoyed about it.

“I think [the parties are] a pyramid scheme,” Smith said. “I think they’re selling junk for a high price, but you buy it because they’re your friends. I think everybody does because they’re nice.”

For Steele, the kindness of friends paid off. At the end of the night, she had earned $200 in free jewelry.

For Silpada consultant Debbie Neuman of Bangor, the rewards are twofold. She’s able to earn a little extra spending money, but the parties also serve as a networking opportunity for her “day job” as the director of Target Technology Center in Orono.

“This is something I never thought I’d do, but I fell in love with this,” Neuman said.

Her friend Julia Munsey of Bangor brought her into the fold. Munsey heard about Silpada from a friend in Ohio, checked out the Web site and admired the designs, which resemble jewelry in the Sundance catalog. When she told Neuman about it, they decided to give it a go.

“Neither one of us thought we would be in the home party business,” Munsey, 39, said. By day, she works as the marketing director for Veazie Fabric Craftsmen, which manufactures tension-fabric sculptures. “I didn’t believe it. You work two to three hours a week. You’re making $300. I’m like, ‘Sweet!'”

For those who pursue it as a career, the rewards are even sweeter.

Karen Upton-Bean, the Lia Sophia consultant, earns full-time wages working part time – to the tune of $75 an hour. She is able to spend time with her family, she loves the jewelry she sells, she has zero overhead, and this month, she and her husband are traveling to Belize on the company.

“On an average show, I can make $300 a night – legally,” she said, laughing.

Stephanie Campbell, 34, of Hermon spent a recent Sunday laying out mirrors, cotton swabs, hair ties and cleansers for a Body Shop facial party. While a half-dozen women sipped coffee and ate snacks in the kitchen of Rachelle Pattershall’s Orrington home, Campbell described the appeal of the business.

“I work 10 to 12 hours a week, a lot of the time I’m home … and I have an 18-month-old daughter,” said Campbell, who became a consultant a little over a year ago when her husband was stationed in Iraq. When he returned, she decided to stay on. “I also go to college. I’m a mom, but I can also do other things. I’m a person. This way, I can also feel like I’m providing for my family.”

When Gina Lenard of Gorham became a Tastefully Simple consultant in 1999, she was “a stay-at-home mom who could not afford to be.” She and her husband were in debt “trying to survive, not just keeping up with the Joneses.” The flexibility of direct sales appealed to Lenard, and in the evenings, she threw tons of parties. She took her show on the road, selling gourmet mixes and condiments at craft fairs. Along the way, she recruited other consultants.

“It was kind of easy because the food was so awesome,” Lenard said.

Today, she’s one of the top reps in the country. She has 900 consultants working under her, though she doesn’t have to answer to them, and they did $8.5 million in sales last year (that’s a lot of beer bread at $4.99 a pop). She’s out of debt. She makes well over six figures. And she is able to work in jeans and sweats. But most important, she loves her job.

“If people treat it like a business and put as much into it as they would a job [where they work for someone else], the payoff is unbelievable,” Lenard said. “I know who I am. I feel like I actually have a greater purpose, which is helping people achieve their dreams.”

For more information on home parties, visit www.dsa.org.