Private | |
Industry | Multi-level marketing, [1] perfume |
Founded | 1975 |
Headquarters | Chamblee, Georgia |
Website | scenturacreations.com |
Scentura also known as Scentura Creations is a perfume company based in the city of Chamblee, Georgia, within the Atlanta metropolitan area. It is a multilevel selling company which manufactures inexpensive imitations of designer fragrances. Independent salespeople are sent out, often in pairs, to sell perfume door-to-door, in parking lots, malls, or in other retail stores. [1]
Perfume is a mixture of fragrant essential oils or aroma compounds, fixatives and solvents, used to give the human body, animals, food, objects, and living-spaces an agreeable scent. It is usually in liquid form and used to give a pleasant scent to a person's body. Ancient texts and archaeological excavations show the use of perfumes in some of the earliest human civilizations. Modern perfumery began in the late 19th century with the commercial synthesis of aroma compounds such as vanillin or coumarin, which allowed for the composition of perfumes with smells previously unattainable solely from natural aromatics alone.
Chamblee(SHAM-blee) is a city in northern DeKalb County, Georgia, United States, northeast of Atlanta. The population was 9,892 at the 2010 census.
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. Georgia is the 24th largest in area and 8th-most populous of the 50 United States. Georgia is bordered to the north by Tennessee and North Carolina, to the northeast by South Carolina, to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by Florida, and to the west by Alabama. Atlanta, a "beta(+)" global city, is both the state's capital and largest city. The Atlanta metropolitan area, with an estimated population of 5,949,951 in 2018, is the 9th most populous metropolitan area in the United States and contains about 60% of the entire state population.
Larry Hahn is the founder of Scentura Creations. The company itself began in 1975 as W.M. Industries Inc. (WMI). WMI was a door-to-door retail business which sold products such as luggage, toys and perfume.
In a 1984 motivation film, Hahn described his early experience:
Fifteen years ago I slept in my car, and I had no finances, I had no education, and I just said one day, if I could hook myself to the proper vehicle to get a break in life and make some money, I would help other people.
In 1975, with loans from friends, Hahn purchased his first product: 31-piece sets of bakeware. For several years Hahn trained new recruits himself. By the 1980s there were thousands of distributors.
Johnny Whitworth, a distributor of Larry Hahn, [2] left the company to start his own perfume company, World Perfume in Dallas, Texas.
World Perfume is a perfume company based in Dallas, Texas. The president of the company, Johnny Whitworth, was once a distributor for Scentura. World Perfume distributors buy perfume from headquarters and recruit salesmen with newspaper ads. Door-to-door salespeople are paid based on their sales commission, with no salary.
Every manager and perfume salesperson must first sign an independent contract. [3] Scentura representatives state that because these are independent contractors, Scentura is not responsible for either the ads or the tactics used by salespeople. [4] [5] [6] [7] Linda Fucci, a former administrative aide to Hahn and distributor, stated that "The independent contractor concept was preconceived before the first truck load was ordered in. It was already planned out before we ever opened up." [2]
An independent contractor is a person, business, or corporation that provides goods or services under a written contract or a verbal agreement. Unlike employees, independent contractors do not work regularly for an employer but work as required, when they may be subject to law of agency. Independent contractors are usually paid on a freelance basis. Contractors often work through a limited company or franchise, which they themselves own, or may work through an umbrella company.
Scentura distributors recruit salespeople by placing classified advertisements in the employment section of the newspaper under the heading of "Management". Turnover tends to be very high. [8] [9] Training is from six to eight weeks.[ citation needed ]
There are reports that new salespeople are offered a salary upon completion of training and are later disappointed to discover that the salary contract requires a quota of sales as a condition of payment. They soon discover no one takes the contract and opt to be a reseller of the rendition fragrances where they earn money from the profits of perfume sales. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] The only income is from selling knock off perfume door-to-door or in parking lots. [3] Employees are also sometimes encouraged by independent distributors to lie about the products they are selling. [17] [18] Independent salespeople have been in trouble with police for soliciting without a permit. [19] [20] [21] [22]
In 1999 Scentura Creations, Inc sued Daniel J. Long, a former distributor, for $31,236.44, the cost of perfume which had been delivered to distributors recruited by Long. In 2001, the Illinois Appellate Court ruled that the contract between Scentura and Long was a "pyramid sales scheme", violated the law and was unenforceable under the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act. The appellate court ruled that Long was not liable for products in the possession of other distributors. [23] [24]
Illinois is a state in the Midwestern and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth largest population, and the 25th largest land area of all U.S. states. Illinois has been noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, and is a major transportation hub. Chicagoland, Chicago's metropolitan area, encompasses over 65% of the state's population. The Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois Waterway to the Illinois River. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, and the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports. Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics.
A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable and often illegal.
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