How Lia Sophia, Tastefully Simple and Pampered Chef are Taking Over Women’s Social Lives

Exploit your friends for fun and profit!

“Don’t feel like you have to come,” Carol said sincerely as we passed each other at day care. But I needed to ensure she’d come to mine. So on a warm evening, I strolled down the block to her house, packed with 26 women, not one of whom I knew. All were sipping wine, munching Wheat Thins, and playing a get-to-know-you game (note to self: Tell Jenn we will not play a get-to-know-you game), which involved writing down your name, your favorite food, and the room in your house you most want to remodel. It was relevant; the “consultant” worked for AtHome America, which offered country-style home decor, including signs with sayings painted on them, such as “It’s never too late to live happily ever after” and “Prayer changes things.”

There was exactly nothing in the catalog I wanted. Not the willow branches with tiny white lights on them. Not the beehive-shaped lemonade dispenser. But how could I just leave? Months later, at another neighbor’s purse party, I felt obligated to buy merely because I’d eaten three of the chocolate chip cookies the hostess had set out as a snack. In the case of Carol’s party, stakes were much higher. If I didn’t buy, Carol might not buy at my party next week. I had to give in—for Jenn’s sake.

I knew how much Jenn wanted this to work. In 2009, she’d been laid off from her marketing job. Like so many in this crappy economy, she’d struggled to figure out how to bring in a few extra bucks while staying home with her girls. We’d spent lunch after lunch gaming options—she ended up chairing a fund-raiser for her moms’ group, just to list something on her résumé besides “Manufactured 379 peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.” Then, last fall, a Lia Sophia advisor wooed Jenn—she could be home days, work four or five parties a month, and make $12,000 a year … at least. All she had to do was buy the $149 starter kit—some jewelry to display, order forms, catalogs. Once she made that back, she’d be golden. So I put down my Wheat Thin, picked out a $19.99 item and handed over my credit card. As a result, throughout the entire holiday season, my kitchen counter sported a foot-and-a-half-tall black metal dip-bowl holder shaped like a stick-figure reindeer.

IN TRUTH, THE NUMBER of AtHome dip-bowl holders or Pampered Chef pizza cutters or CAbi jeans that a gal’s sold isn’t how she makes the big bucks (or the rare guy, if he joins the team at Man Cave, selling beer mugs, grill brushes and brats). Sure, thousands of Lia’s 25,000 advisors make $20,000 to $50,000 a year by just doing parties. (According to Robinson, jewelry companies kill during recessions: “Instead of spending $200 on a new suit, a woman can buy a new necklace and feel like she got a new suit.”) But if Jenn aspired to someday be like the Lia advisor who brought home $4 million in 2010, she’d need to start recruiting, and pronto.