Comment and Opinion

Omegatrend

[Some time in late 2008 the domain name omegatrend.com.au was acquired by an organisation called New Image International, based in New Zealand, and links to Omegatrend redirect to the new owners. To nobody's surprise, the new owners of the name run a multi-level marketing scam. This time they are selling colustrum, which is the first flow of milk from a cow after a calf is born. It cures almost everything. Of course.]

On June 11, 2004, I received the following email:

I would just like to know why this company has made it on your list. I have a family member interested in joining them and I'm trying to find out more about them both for myself and them. Do you have any articles or comments directly relating to Omegatrend or is it there simply because it is a multi-level marketing company?
I look forward to your response.

The short answer is "yes", it is listed here because it is a multi-level marketing business, and these operations are ipso facto scams and frauds. The long answer is that Omegatrend was created to cynically exploit some well-known facts about the MLM business and the psychology supporting confidence tricks.

The first of these facts is that the real money is made not by being in the pyramid, even at the highest levels, but by owning the pyramid. It is reported that Dexter Yager, the owner of International Dreambuilders, rakes in about $40 million each year from his Amway pyramid, and that's without ever selling a single bar of soap or showing a single plan. (Yager's sister apparently lives in poverty in a trailer park. He won't give her any money because she is a loser. Evidence of her loserness is the fact that she doesn't get $40 million each year.) Omegatrend was started by a group of Amway big pins who set out on their own to gouge the really big bucks. Despite years of telling people about the unmatched quality of Amway products, they were able, remarkably, to find products of equivalent or better quality from other sources. Of course, they had spent the same years telling people that the only way to riches was through being a worker in the Amway hive. These people did not get rich, so perhaps the big pins were "mistaken" about that too.

The Omegatrend distribution centre for the Sydney area is close to one of my client's offices, so I get to drive past it quite often. It certainly never looks as busy as it should be if the promises of multi-level marketing as the new paradigm of product distribution were coming true. I was told several years ago that it was only a matter of a year or two before this new channel was going to be moving 50% of all retail merchandise. It amused me to find out that Australia's smallest national grocery chain had total annual sales in Australia alone which were greater than the business that Amway was supposed to be doing worldwide, even allowing for the dodgy way that MLM companies report sales. (They report what the total sales would be at retail if all product ended up in the hands of consumers and none of it was bought for distributors' private use. Put another way, when you hear about an MLM company doing a billion dollars worth of sales, what they really mean is that $700 million of product was put into the channel and it may all still be sitting in garages.)

The psychology exploited by Omegatrend is the denial which people suffer when they have made a bad decision. This is allied with what is called "cognitive dissonance", where people's actions are at variance with their principles and they seek to resolve this dilemma by developing justifications for the actions. It seems to take most people about two years to realise that they are never going to make any money, much less the fortunes that they were promised were available to anyone who put in the work, and that they have been deceiving (even though unwittingly) anyone whom they have brought into the system. The constant boosting by the "motivational organisations" (the pyramid operators) places people who want to leave in the embarrassing position of appearing to have failed where others have prospered.

Omegatrend targeted dissatisfied Amway distributors by offering them what appeared to be a gracious way out. Their lack of success was not because they were losers or not fully committed, but because the system and product mix were wrong. The problems with bringing others into the system only to fail could be reversed by telling those others that there was a new organisation which was going to do things properly so that they could really fulfil their dreams. This was also the strategy used by Nu Skin when they opened in Australia, and almost everyone I met who offered me the Nu Skin introductory tapes had been an Amway distributor before but had made no money. Those tapes contained the same tricks to avoid the legal definition of pyramid selling as those I had heard from Amway and others. Like generic drugs which all have the same molecular structure but different brand names, multi-level marketing organisations are only differentiated by the name on the building and the stationery. They are all in the same business. That business is based on lies and the disappointment of the people they cheat.

It is interesting to speculate on why the name "Omegatrend" was chosen. One possibility is that it was named for Omega Centauri (see picture below), the largest globular cluster in our galaxy which, at 17,000 light years away, is just as attainable as success and wealth through membership of the lower levels of a pyramid scheme. Another reason could be that omega (Ω) is the last letter in the Greek alphabet, and the use of it in the name is a tacit admission that multi-level marketing is the last place you would look to find a successful business model. In certain forms of Christian iconography, the Greek letter omega is superimposed on the Cross. As there is a certain air of fundamental religion and cult about membership of a sales pyramid it could be that the founders of Omegatrend want to hijack the icon, with the hope that when people see it they will think about soap powder instead of salvation. Another possibility may have to do with pronunciation. The normal pronunciation of the word "omega" puts the emphasis on the first syllable, and the second syllable is an unaccented grunt (which linguists call "schwa", usually represented by an upside-down "e" character - "ə"). Everyone who I have heard say the name "Omegatrend" has put the emphasis on the second syllable - the word "me". This is consistent with the "me, me, me" principles of MLM promoters and other confidence tricksters.

Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 22:26:08 +1000
From: "Mars Browne and Don Wilson"
Subject: Omegatrend

OT update

No minimum purchase of everyday products that you WANT to purchase Use whatever service you benefit from....phone , credit card , mortgage, insurance, mobile phone, health insurance

with at least 12 business builders plus 1500 global points you get $2000 per month guaranteed

for 10-15 hour work per week

Tell me please if there is something better out there??? I am waiting for your reply

Regards

Don Wilson

$2000 was achieved by us within 7 months

I replied:

Congratulations! Someone has to win.

And got back:

Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 20:25:40 +1000
From: "Mars Browne and Don Wilson"
Subject: Re: Omegatrend

Its called "don't give up"

But really you would have to be stupid not to do it. OT leads the pack, why give all your hard earned money to the big corporations??

And whats really stupid is that you do it all your life and you think nothing of it go figure

don

Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 12:29:41 +1000
From: Michael Borg
Subject: Har! Har! Hearty Har! Har! So sue me for saying it

The above is the comment you made regarding the collapse of Omegatrend.

I have no idea what you find so satisfying or funny about peoples livelihoods being destroyed. I would say you know nothing about the business.

If you had paid attention to what I wrote you would have seen that I expressed sympathy for the people who were deceived into joining this scheme and who had subsequently lost money. It is also probably worth thinking about the idea that if Omegatrend had been such a good business to be in and that participants had in fact been able to make it their "livelihood" then it might have been moving enough product and money to keep the doors open.

I would like to say burn in hell but I sincerely hope that pain and misery find you before death. But then again, it's quite obvious that you are a pethetic and miserable individual in any case.

You are scum

Thank you. I always take it as a compliment when I am called names by pyramid scheme enthusiasts.