This will be all too familiar for those of you who are married. (To my knowledge, all but 3 Businesspundit readers are male)
Nine years later and it's Yellets, 51, who is having the last laugh. She doesn't drive a pink Cadillac, but she has long since left her high-pay, high-stress day job and last year pulled down $120,000 as a "kitchen consultant," doing two or three home parties a week and also collecting commissions on the sales of consultants working for her.
Now the rest of the world is catching up to Yellets. Last year, home parties accounted for $8.3 billion in American sales, according to the Direct Selling Association. Marketers have discovered that there's almost nothing you can't sell at a home party, whether it's scented candles, scrapbook supplies, golf clubs, Canadian pharmaceuticals, or battery-powered "marital aids."
Warren Buffett's purchase of Pampered Chef validated the home-party industry. Now it seems like they have parties for everything. I'm just waiting for a company to try this when the target market for their product consists mainly of men.
