It's a sinking ship - Representative Miche Bag Employee Review

The truth: The executive team that was brought in after the original owners sold Miche to inventors was burdened with heavy hidden debt, a sea of old inventory, a back office system that didn't support the sales field, and this was just the tip of the iceberg of issues that was unveiled the last couple years of Miche's existence. The team worked tirelessly to turn the ship around and obtained investments to cover the costs to keep this little purse company running and pull itself out of debt. The marketing and sales team developed new products, vetted new manufacturing partners, deployed a training academy, created a new website and shopping cart experience, and launched a branding campaign. The CEO and CFO had to negotiate with Miche's fulfillment center out of California to liquidate all the old inventory in order to reduce expenses in housing and product management. The sales field was frustrated and stopped growing in size and in revenue, which made it more difficult to move the needle. The final straw was a slow beginning in Q1 2016 and a large incentive trip bill that came due for a cruise for all dream points earners . Reps could bank dream points to earn an incentive trip and they could bank them for years. In Q1 2016, Miche had the majority of dream point earners redeem their points all at once costing the company more than planned which forced the company to close operations and sell off its assets. Miche did hold up its promise to host the incentive cruise and paid for all the trip earners to attend. Miche was a vibrant and inspiring company in its hay day with an innovative invention of an interchangeable handbag that women loved and were proud to carry. It would have remained that way if the business were managed properly from the beginning or if the inventors were given full disclosure of its financial situation when the company was being sold. In April of 2016, the US patents were sold to Magnolia and Vine out of Minneapolis, MN and a new interchangeable handbag concept was developed using the Miche patent called the Versa Handbag. The interchangeable handbag lives on and the executive team hopes it will thrive for Magnolia and Vine.

Best experience of my career. Learned more than I ever could have imagined and met some of the best people on the planet.

Great conferences for Distributors, Excitement for new products released every month, Our reps and ourselves as Distributors (Founding Leaders) were treated very well when they were using distributors to sell and promote the products. But that changed and they made everyone a sales rep which earned no money.

Changes in business structure. Made all Distributors (who most had over $15,000 in inventory sitting there that they could not easily sell now) sales rep status. I went from making $30k a year and owning my own business to making a piddly commission that didn't amount to anything. This was a side business and when they changed to an all sales rep format the business went under. Made me kind of happy actually.