.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} It was an “Aha!” moment. Sharon Hicks was standing in the checkout line at a grocery store with her reusable bags and watched as people left the store, each carrying armloads of full plastic bags. At that moment, she decided the best way to educate people about environmentally friendly products and practices was to start a business that sold those products through home parties.

“Everybody knows they need to be more aware of the environment, but making those changes can be so intimidating,” said Hicks, owner of Green Goods for the Home, “but by being in a person’s home, you make it fun and not intimidating, and it’s just a way to bounce ideas off each other.”

Home-party businesses are a fast-growing segment of the direct-sales industry, and the ranks of consultants are increasing as companies offer products beyond Tupperware, including pet products, jewelry and even beef jerky.

“There’s just about anything under the sun you can buy through direct selling,” said Amy Robinson, a spokeswoman for the Direct Selling Association. “There’s so many more options now.”

Home-party businesses made up nearly 29 percent of total U.S. direct-selling business sales, estimated at $32.18 billion in 2006, according to the Direct Selling Association. This is up from 27.2 percent of total direct sales of $30.47 billion in 2005.

“The majority of sales are actually person-to-person (selling),” Robinson said, “but most of the new companies coming into the industry are party plan, and certainly as those companies continue to grow, I think we’ll see growth in the party plan area.”

Direct selling is the sale of a product or service away from a fixed retail location and includes an independent salesperson selling to an individual or a group, or a customer placing a direct order with the company following a face-to-face solicitation. Tactics include in-home product demonstrations, parties and one-on-one selling. Typically salespeople in home-party businesses are called consultants.

Though direct sales have increased steadily over the past 10 years, Robinson said it still only makes up about 1 percent of total U.S. retail sales.

Several companies have gone with the home-party business model because it allows for a more personal connection with consumers than can be provided in a retail store, Robinson said. “It’s someone that knows the product inside and out,” she said, “probably because they use it themselves.”

For start-up companies, she added, “it’s a really great way to get your product to market because you don’t have to have that major investment in inventory that you have with a traditional retailer.”

In return, consumers are attracted to home parties because they are set up as social occasions with friends.

Having hosted her first party in early November, Hicks is still figuring out what products to carry and how to structure the consultant program. She rushed to get the business off the ground in time for the holidays, and is featuring green holiday products including LCD Christmas lights and locally made soy candles, in addition to jewelry made from recycled fashion magazines, reusable bottles and bags, and flushable diapers. But she still is determining what the initial consultant package will include and the incentives for hosting a party and being a consultant. She expects to begin adding consultants in Greater Des Moines next year and might expand to other parts of the United States in the future, while retaining a focus on products made regionally.

“I’m getting a good reaction so far,” Hicks said. “I think because it’s different. It’s something new and they’re seeing the need.” Currently she is balancing this new business with her other business, Health Career Resources LLC, a recruiting firm for physicians, nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants, which she runs out of her home.

Though Hicks is one of a handful in Iowa to start a home-party business, many have turned to consulting for other companies for supplemental income or a full-time career. The majority of direct salespeople nationwide (85.2 percent) are women.

After attending a Tupperware party six years ago, Rachel Goranson decided to purchase the $100 Tupperware starting set to try consulting. At the time, she was working 50 to 60 hours a week as a programmer for Christian radio station 99.5 FM, had just lost her first child and wanted to pay off $10,000 in credit card debts. Working part time hosting about four parties a month, she was able to pay off her debts in a year and decided the money was too good not to turn consulting into a full-time career.

“You think about getting a discount; that’s why a lot of people join to begin with,” Goranson said, “and then once you start to realize what the money is like, then you stick around.”

At the director’s level, Goranson makes at least $50,000 a year, half of which comes from hosting two to three parties a week and the rest from coaching about 50 consultants under her. She receives a 25 percent commission for all her home-party sales, and if she reaches a certain level of sales for the month, she can get up to 35 percent commission. Her average sales from a party total $600. And she has received nearly every Tupperware incentive, including bonuses that paid for a flat-screen television, a piano, trips with her husband to Miami, New York and Las Vegas in the past 18 months, a lease on a car and a laptop computer.

“I’m an incentive person,” Goranson said, “so if I have a little goal each month to work towards, it makes my business boom.”

It also has given her the flexibility to care for her children, now ages 3 and 5, and has allowed her husband to quit his job and start a consulting firm in the past year.

Goranson credits the flexibility and incentives with causing a boom in the number of consultants. Her team has doubled in the past two years as Tupperware restructured its business model. Tupperware now has more than 1,000 consultants in Iowa.

It took her about two years to build her business, she said, but now she does not have trouble booking several parties a week, even though some consultants have a reputation for being too pushy in their sales tactics. “I feel like as long as I am considered to be the type of person people want to work with, people are willing to recommend me to their friends,” she said. Tupperware also offers sales training through its Web site and by experienced consultants.

Tupperware made the home-party business model popular, but now it’s used to sell a vast range of products.

Suki Sanford became a pet-products consultant through Shure Pets last March to feed her love for animals and desire to get out of the house more – she’s a mother and works full time from home in addition to her consulting work. The company started in 2002 and today has more than 1,700 consultants nationwide and 30 in Iowa, selling everything from shampoo to toys for dogs, cats, horses, ferrets, rabbits and other animals.

Becoming a consultant took an initial investment of $99, Sanford said, and she receives a 25 percent commission from her total party sales. Though she sees an opportunity to make this a full-time business in Greater Des Moines, with only one other pet-product consultant in the area, she has decided not to go that route, so that she can be home in the evenings with her two children. “There’s thousands of people selling candles, Pampered Chef, but this is just something different,” she said.

But she added, “Personally for me, it’s been challenging because I don’t have a huge base. If I worked in an office, I could start talking to people who I worked with in the office, but I haven’t worked as hard as I could to get parties.” Two of her parties have been for friends and another for someone who contacted her through Craig’s List.

The parties she has hosted also have been poorly attended. “It’s challenging finding the people willing to spend the money on their pets. The first party I invited everybody I knew, including people who didn’t have animals,” she said. “Forty-two people were invited, and five showed up. That’s normal from what I hear about parties.” Still, with five people, she had $400 in sales. For another party, the host invited 10 people, and two showed up.

But the advantages, she said, are “to get out of the house, and you could make it your own business and set your own hours.”