NZ Skeptics Articles

The rundown on Stampin'Up: The stamp MLM that is hitting mainstream news for the wrong reason

Bronwyn Rideout - 28 August 2023

Website | AUS/NZ website | Facebook

Country of Origin: Las Vegas, Nevada, United States; now headquartered in Utah.

Year Founded: 1988

Founded by: Sisters LaVonne Crosby and Shelli Gardner

Source

Year MLM established in New Zealand: Incorporated on November 1, 2006. According to the Companies Register, Stampin’ Up! has only had directors based in New South Wales and Utah, none from New Zealand:

Generally sells: Card-making and scrapbooking supplies such as rubber stamps, stamping dies, inks, markers, and paper.

“Cult” products: No product in particular due to continual retirement of products. Although the Stamparatus may reach that status as it is being discontinued due to potential copyright violation (touched on below) and demonstrators are getting salty…

Methods of selling: Online orders. You do not need to buy via a specific demonstrator’s online landing page and I do not see evidence of inventory loading in the same way hair and beauty MLMs are notorious for; as in, I do not see demonstrators buying multiple versions of the same colour markers or dies in order to have stock available to sell. As discussed below, there is a Facebook page for the reselling of retired product lines.

Name for workforce: Everyone is officially called a Demonstrator although Hobby demonstrator is an unofficial designation to describe people in your downline who are only in it for the discount. From there, there are eight demonstrator titles which are earned based on a combination of personal commissionable sales, the number of people in your downline, and the number of people in your downline who are leaders in their own right. The titles are pretty simple: Bronze, Bronze Elite, Silver, Silver Elite, Gold, Gold Elite, Platinum, Platinum Elite

Is ongoing purchasing/selling required to maintain active status: Yes. In each quarter, demonstrators must sell a minimum of 300 Commissionable Sales Volume. Now, due to tariffs, VAT, and GST, how this is calculated is different in each country and changes each quarter. For example, at one point NZ had a CSV factor of .5454; for the MLM, that means that in order to earn 300CSV, New Zealand demonstrators had to sell $550.06 of eligible product over three months.

Is there a commission?: Yes. As always, it can get a bit complicated once you have a downline and how much commission you can claim from that. Of course, the working example they give is for someone at the rank of Gold Elite. For those at the Bronze level, the instant income (or discount if the demonstrator is buying solely for themselves) is 20%, so if the customer is paying via cash or cheque, the demonstrator only sends 80% of the net sales total (the catalogue price minus GST). If payment is made via credit card or debit, SU will remit the 20% back into your bank account as a deferred payment

Source | 2021 NZ compensation plan

So, if that 300CSV was all you sold, then over three months you would get $110 in instant/deferred income.

There is also a payout volume, which for NZ is 1.4114. This factor is not applied to your immediate bonus on your personal CSV but rather after the 2% and 7% calculations are made on assorted team commissions and volume rebates after the demonstrator has met the minimum requirements for receiving commission at their level.

Income Disclosure Statement?: None that I could find. Total number of demonstrators varies between 40,000 and 50,000. Across multiple posts on Facebook since 2020, SU states that demonstrators reaching the one, two, three, or four million dollar career-to-date sales are not representative of the typical SU member are are only achieved by 0.001 percent.

Price Guide: There is an annual and midwinter catalogue available in both print and digital. The prices can vary a bit between products. Whether they are competitive to products available in NZ is a matter of taste but Stampin’ Up is losing ground when it comes to price.

Source | A set of 23 stamps from Stampin’ Up priced at $53.

Source | A set of photopolymer stamps from an online storefront based in NZ, $25

Like many an MLM, the story of Stampin’ Up! (SU) begins in Utah. As children, sisters LaVonne and Shelli moved with their family from California to Kanab, Utah. After marriage, both sisters would relocate to Las Vegas with their families for business opportunities as the husbands, who knew each other before their respective marriages, operated a custom home building business. While they were stay-at-home mothers, both sisters were reported to be involved with other MLMs, of which Tupperware is the only one that is named outright although they did research the business models of Tupperware, Mary Kay, and Discovery Toys when developing their sales model.

While they were close to bankruptcy within two years, they obviously were able to turn the tide or else they wouldn’t be the multi-million dollar company they are today. By 1992, they made enough to hire their own employees, including an illustrator which allowed them to make and sell their own designs rather than license the products of other companies. Between 1992 and 1997, they returned to Kanab, Utah and began manufacturing the stamps and by 1997, stopped selling for other companies altogether. LaVonne also left the company to be a full-time mom while Shelli stayed on and carried the business through until 2015 when she stepped down as CEO to join her husband on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormons) in Honolulu, Hawaii. Shelli’s daughter Sarah is now the CEO while Shelli keeps at least one foot in the mix as a board member, attends incentive trips, and promotes SU products on her blog, Sometimes, the self-promotion can border on the tasteless, such as the accidental death of LaVonne’s grandson.

Stationery/crafting/hobby MLMs are an interesting beast. It isn’t so much that a blind eye is turned to the practice of inventory loading, but rather it is a completely acceptable practice on two ends.

Firstly, the business-minded consultants are encouraged to hold classes and workshops which require them to purchase the supplies necessary to teach the latest in stamping or card making. Therefore, demonstrators understandably purchase a lot of supplies for personal use so limiting the number of products that are eligible for commissions, which many MLMs do, is nonsensical and many a crafter would say that is ridiculous. However, SU appears to influence this behaviour in other ways. Products are retired on a regular basis and once retired, demonstrators are not allowed to use them for teaching or instructional purposes; while there is usually a list of soon to be retired products available, picking up those items on discount or as part of your starter pack is a risky proposition. There is a resale market for retired products, but again, your use and promotion of these items is limited.

The second practice is the existence of Hobby demonstrators, who are a known and welcome entity in this MLM. Hobby demonstrators are consultants who aren’t in the MLM to build a downline or teach, but rather like the products enough that they are enrolled only to get the 20% discount for meeting the 300 CSV minimum spend per quarter. It is also not unheard of, and often implied in numerous Youtube videos by current and former demonstrators, for some demonstrators to sign-up, buy the starter kit, let their rank or title lapse, and then sign-up again. While there are “perks” to not doing this (especially for the upline), receiving nearly $300 worth of product for $189 (or more if there are sign-up bonuses) is a far more accessible discount for those who could give a toss about the business opportunity

But I wouldn’t be writing about an MLM if there wasn’t some sort of shenanigans going on and it’s not everyday that theft of intellectual property is near the lowest rung of the ladder. By and large, the New Zealand/South Pacific market is small and unaffected by many of these changes but there are a couple of demonstrators who appear to have made it big in the MLM.

In 2018, SU filed a lawsuit against Alibaba and several of its traders for copyright infringement and issued 143 takedown notices. In turn, SU was sued in 2019 by another company, My Sweet Petunia, over a patent for a stamping tool which My Sweet Petunia called the MISTI; SU’s was called the Stamperatus. As of 2023, SU have decided to remove their competing product from the market and is unavailable for sale in NZ

But all of this comes off as small potatoes in comparison to the murder of Jared Bridegan, the ex-Son-in-Law of Shelli Gardner.

It was after dropping off the twins at their mother’s house after such a midweek date in February 2022 that Bridegan was murdered. He was driving the same route home that he always did when he spotted a tire in the road. When exiting the vehicle to remove the tire, he was ambushed and shot; the toddler he had with his new wife were left unharmed in the car.

In the aftermath of the murder, Shanna’s and Mario’s past behaviour were put under a microscope; Mario had previously run afoul with the law over shooting cats with a BB gun and during her 2015 transformation, Shanna is said to have joked to a tattoo artist about finding someone who could shut Jared up. Shanna also claimed that Jared’s wife, Kristen, had requested that Shanna not talk to the media and uninvited her to Jared’s funeral. Shanna’s family were also criticised for not contributing to the $55,000 reward for information on the case and for hosting their own very happy-go-lucky and instagram worthy celebration of life for Jared, for the benefit of the twins.

The case finally broke in January 2022 when Henry Tenon, a tenant of Fernandez pled guilty to killing Bridegan and agreed to testify against Mario, who in turn was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in March. In a letter to demonstrators, the elder Gardner’s referenced the arrest but claimed that Shanna and Mario had been separated. Still, there was open speculation that a third person was involved in the crime.

A grand jury indicted Shanna in Bridegan’s death and Shanna herself was arrested on August 17th and faces four charges: first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony, and child abuse (as Bridegan’s toddler was in the car and a witness to the murder). The state of Florida intends to seek the death penalty against Mario and Shanna while Tenon, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder faces between 15 years to life in prison.

After the State Attorney made their announcements, both Kristen and Bridegan’s family made statements to the media. Kristen’s comment that the Gardners have kept the twins away from her and their paternal family have struck a chord with the public; some of whom are striking out at the MLM and even on LaVonne’s Facebook page. In turn, Shelli released her own statement to the press simply cautioning against further speculation at this time.

As the wheels of the American court system churn, the threat of a death penalty that looms over this case only serves to draw more attention onto PR blunders of the Gardners. While Shelli has not made any further blog posts, the public-facing social media posts at SU continue as if the family’s life was not being upended for the umpteenth time. The oft omitted LaVonne has even received some comments about the case on her restricted Facebook page.

While Stampin’ Up has been able to weather the speculation thus far, whether it will survive the court proceedings and whether the rest of the Gardner family will escape unscathed is unclear. As can be anticipated in modern true crime fandoms, the lives of Shelli and Sterling Gardner are being dissected as I write this.