Are Neal’s Yard scammy / schemey? Whenever I go in the shop it seems to be a mix of legitimate stuff like moisturiser and bath oils (it’ll smell and feel nice, fair enough) and more dubious homeopathic tinctures and stuff. I guess that lends itself to the MLM approach really
Went down a true crime rabbit hole around the Jodi Arias trial a few years back and a huge component of that was this MLM company that she and her exthat she killed were a part of. Something about selling dodgy legal insurance to your family members. They brought a bunch of the heads of the company to testify in the trial and I remember one of them yelling that it wasnt MLM but horizontal marketing or some ludicrous euphemism.
Also there was an HBO series called Murder on Middle Beach about this guy investigating his mum’s death which appears to have been because of this MLM-esque dinner tables club thing his family got involved in that turned really ugly. Not such a great series but that aspect of it was quite fascinating tbh.
In the 90s a former housemate got involved in a water filter pyramid scheme. Me and a mate foolishly agreed to a meeting and she brought the person higher up the pyramid to the meeting. It was a really hard sell and the guy was well trained in overcoming objections. Got arsey with us when we said no.
This is a tangent but a very entertaining one; someone I knew when I was much younger is involved in that Onetaste (alleged) sex cult that’s being investigated by the FBI. He took me to task for describing it as “the fingering cult” on Twitter then called me and I got a 40-minute, super polished sales pitch on why it’s empowering and life changing and definitely not a cult. That was a fun Saturday night,