Selling beauty door to door

??Woman finds her calling selling beauty products for Arbonne International.When Liz Barlak first discovered one of her friends was selling beauty products on the side, she was skeptical.

The Burbank resident considered herself a stay-at-home mother, not a work-from-home vendor.

Then again, the family budget was tight.

“My husband and I lived really frugally,” she said. “I had to budget just to buy a new blouse.”

Thirteen years and two Mercedes-Benz cars later, Barlak has built a small empire for herself selling beauty products from Arbonne International, a line in the spirit of Mary Kay or Avon.

The cars are a bonus from the company.

“Mary Kay has their pink Cadillac, we give out white Mercedes,” she said.

Barlak recently acquired her second Mercedes when she was promoted to national vice president, one of about 12 in the state.

For Barlak, Arbonne offered the opportunity to make money while still focusing on her family.

“Your hours are your own, you choose the people you work with,” explained Donna Weiser, the friend who first introduced Barlak to the company. “In the mornings, you get to wake up when you’re done sleeping.”

To become a vendor for Arbonne International, individuals fill out an application and pay a small fee, Barlak explained. Then it is a matter of finding others who are interested.

Instead of going door-to-door or throwing parties, Arbonne vendors work on a one-on-one basis, Barlak said.

“You really start out with your friends,” she said. “And then it’s a matter of who do they know and who do they know.”

Arbonne stands out from other beauty companies because it emphasizes healthy skin, Barlak said.

“We don’t have any harmful ingredients in the products,” she said. “We would rather have somebody have awesome skin than cover their skin with a thick coat of makeup.”

For the first seven years as a vendor, Barlak made little progress, she said.

“I had no plans on taking it to this level,” she said. “It took me seven years to learn to get out of my own way.”

The key to success was simply not feeling sheepish.

“Once I started believing in myself, things took off,” she said.

Now Barlak spends her time training other women to become vendors.

“We’re basically teaching other people how to build the business that we built,” Weiser said. “It’s different from corporate America -- if someone wanted your job you’d probably have them fired. Here, we’re trying to help them.”

Arbonne vendors prefer seeing someone join the program rather than purchase the product through the vendor. Barlak gets a commission from every product purchased by anyone who has signed up for Arbonne because of her, no matter whether they buy it from her or directly from the company.

People Barlak introduces to the company have the option of going into business for themselves, or simply using the system to purchase wholesale beauty products.

“This is definitely a plan B for a lot of people for who plan A wasn’t working,” she said. “This gives you a lot more freedom with your time and what you want to spend it doing.”

More information on Arbonne International is available at https://www.arbonne.com.