You may have thought to yourself, “it seems like just about anyone can be an influencer these days,” and you’d be correct. Young people are finding it easier than ever to monetize the now-marketable skill of content creation. The transition from long-form to short-form content created a higher demand for more content, and thus more digital content creators. 

Retailers had to take a more direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales approach due to the pandemic and have found success in a space previously dominated by the direct sales industry.

Adding to this increased regulation are measures being taken by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA). Like other regulators, such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the FDA is making a point of upping its game. While the FDA has always been an ardent protector of public health through its enforcement policies, they are adapting to new sales techniques by increasing their scrutiny of social media promotion.

As social media has become more and more a part of our daily lives, direct sellers have applied their relationship-building skills to these channels in order to expand their customer connections and pivot towards a new e-commerce strategy: social selling.

In the past weeks we’ve all been flooded with emails and scary news, much of it causing angst and confusion. Yes, this is pretty awful. But we will get through it. We will be temporarily banged up, but we will definitely get through it, together.

Momentum Factor CEO Jonathan Gilliam recently interviewed Peter Marinello, Executive Director of the Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council (DSSRC) to learn how the program will impact the compliance function of direct sellers.

One of the most challenging issues facing direct sellers today is the advent of the unauthorized Amazon seller. From former distributors who post their products for sale to larger aggregators who deliberately buy up product and offer them at a discount in their own “Amazon stores”, many direct selling companies struggle daily with this competitive menace.

As we approach the deadline for putting GDPR compliance in place, our team at Momentum Factor is receiving more questions about our interpretation of the regs, what we’re doing about it, and what our clientele can do to protect against regulatory risk in the EU.

Google is the front door to your business.  Are you keeping it safe from intruders? Go ahead, Google the name of your company now. I’ll wait. With direct sales continuing to move toward more of an online model, it’s never been more important to protect your company’s reputation online. However, before even looking at the results page, what words follow your brand name in the auto-suggested results? Do the words “scam” or “pyramid” or “lawsuit” appear anywhere?

The fact that legal challenges can have devastating consequences for direct selling firms does not come as news to veterans of the industry. Fortunately, our experts interpret recent legal challenges as reminders of the necessity of rigorous, up-to-date compliance and practices and policies, not as omens of a regulatory sea change. Class action litigation will force companies to continue to examine their business practices to ensure that they are in compliance with current FTC directives.