Review of Wikaniko

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Review from Business Opportunity Watch Reviews
Issue 27 May 2009

WIKANIKO
Drew Mitchell t/a Wikaniko
7 Aldeburgh Avenue
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE15 8TA
Tel: 0844 313 8626
www.wikaniko.com

Welcome to the most innovative and creative eco friendly business in the UK today!

This site is your gateway to a myriad of resources, articles, tips, ideas, games, etc. Our task is to help you to reduce your footprint on the world, and reduce your spending as you go greener.

Along the way, you will pick up some stunning ideas plus incredible insights as to what is happening to our world today.

Join us on an incredible green journey, and reduce your carbon footprint whilst saving money!

Buy eco friendly products! In the Wikaniko shop you will discover one of the most comprehensive ranges that you could ever come across under one roof.

Over 650 products - totally degradable bags, fantastic natural cosmetics, natural toiletries, soaps, creams, organic cotton wool etc, energy saving devices, sustainable greetings cards, interesting and creative water saving gadgets, organic gardening products, seeds, etc all at your fingertips!

The Wikaniko eco business opportunity is for everyone.

You can simply purchase eco friendly products online as a green shopper, or you can become a distributor. However, we recognise the need for those who want to purchase green products, learn more about the environment, get a little more involved, and receive up to date news, ideas, tips, articles, etc. So you can become a Wikaniko Club Member (and receive your become greener products at a discount too).

Review:

Wikaniko (as in "We Can Eco") is a UK multi-level marketing opportunity which began on 1st September 2008.

Multi-level marketing companies are normally run as a limited company. Unusually, this one is run as a sole-trader.

The owner, Drew Mitchell, has useful experience for running an mlm company since his background is in training. For six years he's been the managing director of a training company offering classroom, in-house and e-learning courses for workplace health and safety training.

Wikaniko sells a range of environment-friendly products which are delivered locally to customers via the company's network of distributors. To avoid "increasing everyone's carbon footprints". there are no centralised meetings which distributors are expected to attend. Instead, learning is carried out online. In addition, Team Managers can arrange home meetings and there is comprehensive support available from the support team at head office.

The fee to join is very reasonable at £48 and this includes a small starter pack, access to your on online replicated website and access to training and support.

If you buy £48 of products per month from Wikaniko then you qualify to receive commissions on the purchases of people you introduce to Wikaniko. The company makes a profit by buying the products at cost and selling them to you at wholesale price. You make your profit on the wholesale price by selling at the retail price. Each product has a different profit margin and this is stated with each product as a certain number of points.

As a Wikaniko distributor, you would receive commissions on the following:

• product purchases made by distributors you recruit to Wikaniko; and
  
  
• product purchases made by distributors recruited by the distributors you have recruited (i.e. your "team"); and
  
  
• product purchases made by Customer Members you introduce to Wikaniko i.e. people who want to buy Wikaniko products but who do not want to be in the business opportunity; and
  
  
• products you purchase personally either for your own use or for resale to friends, family and your retail customers i.e. personal sales

The commissions you receive depend on the points value of the products purchased and the commission percentage for the type of sale. For example, for personal sales you would receive 33% of the points value for sales up to £199 a month, 37% for sales from £200 to £399 a month, 41% for sales between £400 and £999 a month and 45% for monthly sales of £1,000 and over.

As a Distributor, you receive override commissions of 4% on sales made by people you have recruited (i.e. people on your level 1). When people you have recruited start to build their own teams, you also receive a further 1% commission on sales made by people they have recruited, from levels 2 to 5.

As you move up the organisation, your override commissions increase: at the top level of National Distributor the override commissions are 5% at levels 1 through 5.

The company also has a loyalty scheme reminiscent of Green Shield stamps (which eventually transformed into the Argos shopping catalogue chain), whereby customers receive virtual stamps to stick into their online books when they shop online. Once the books are full they can exchange them for further goods.

In a short space of time, this company has set up an impressive operation. There's even a Green Room on their website where you can play eco games such as Climate Challenge where "The future is in your hands! You are president of the European Nations and must take global climate change from 2000 to 2100".

For me, though, as a reviewer who has looked at hundreds of multi-level marketing schemes over the years, the most impressive thing about Wikaniko is that it is all geared up to enabling the average person to make a profit starting from scratch, whether or not they succeed in recruiting other people into their team.

You can see that this is the case from the generous commissions on personal sales of 33% to 45%.

It is also notable that the total of the override commissions of the top tier in the mlm structure - the National Distributors - is only 26%. This compares to total commission levels of 60% and more in multi-level companies where all the emphasis is on recruiting other people into the scheme rather on than selling products.

Because recruitment-focused mlm companies pay out very high commission levels to their top recruiters, they have to charge high prices for the products or services they sell. This means that the average consumer would not buy such products. The only people who buy them are people who are in the opportunity hoping to earn money from it and they have to buy the products in order to qualify to earn commission from people they recruit. So you can see that recruitment-focused mlm companies which pay high commission rates hardly make any sales to people who are not in the mlm scheme.

Wikaniko, by contrast, is product-focused rather than recruitment-focused and this means that people on the bottom levels have a much fairer opportunity to make money with it.

Before looking at how Wikaniko prices compare to prices available elsewhere, it's worthwhile noting (in the same way as for the ei42 mlm opportunity reviewed in the February 2009 issue) that it is unusual for a network marketing company not to be offering exclusive products. The exclusivity aspect is normally important for multi-level marketing businesses for three reasons:

1. Exclusive products acquire a certain prestige in your customers' minds. This is important not only for retailing but also for attracting people to join your team; and
   
   
2. Your customers can only buy these products from you; and
   
   
3. You don't risk being embarrassed by a customer telling you that they can buy the same thing more cheaply elsewhere.
   

Wikaniko has some exclusive products with their own branding (e.g. a number of their cleaning products) but most of them bear the brand names of other companies.

I checked out prices available elsewhere for three non-Wikaniko-brand products as follows:

GP 4AA Rechargeable Batteries 1300MAH
Wikaniko price £5.00
Amazon price £4.13

Slug and Snail Trap Pack of 3
Wikaniko price £6.99
robharvey.com price £3.95

Environmentally Friendly Kettle
Wikaniko price £39.99
nigelsecostore.com price £29.99

So these products could be bought more cheaply elsewhere on the Internet. But a comparison of the product prices alone ignores the fact that Wikaniko products are delivered free to customer's doors. So you also have to take account of postage, which often amounts to between £3 and £5 and reduces or even eliminates the apparent price advantage.

No doubt, anyway, Wikaniko will acquire more of its own-brand, exclusive products over time so that customers will not be inclined to make price comparisons.

Coupled with its fair treatment of distributors at all levels, Wikaniko has an enormous advantage which I think will ensure its continued success - its very strong unique selling point of being eco friendly.

Don't think, though, that you can join Wikaniko, set up your website, do some marketing on the Internet and wait for the orders to come in and for distributors to join your team.

That won't happen.

Instead, what you need to do is to get out and promote the products. The company teaches you 12 ways to do this, which include delivery of Home Shopping catalogues door to door, distributing leaflets which concentrate on specific products, craft fairs and local shows, and also party plan events which would be particularly suited to the cosmetics. With such an innovative company, you should also be able to get a press release or two into your local paper.

And if you are the type of person who is prepared to "Go For It" by giving talks at your local clubs and groups such as Business Breakfast Clubs and the Women's Institute then you would probably find that you were welcomed with open arms by the organisers provided you did not try to present a sales pitch and instead gave a generally informative talk - based, for example, on the company's WiKanDoIt series of "weekly green tasks" where each week you are invited to make some small unnoticeable eco-friendly change to your daily life.

Shrinking violets won't do as well with Wikaniko as people who are keen to talk to everybody they meet about the company. But even if you are a shrinking violet you can still save money by buying your normal household goods from Wikaniko because you only pay wholesale prices instead of retail prices. If you are pleased with the products and you follow the WiKanDoIt series, then you might find that your shyness is overtaken by your enthusiasm for the project and you become an active distributor.

Even though it is such a new company, I'm giving Wikaniko our highest mark of 9 out of 10 because it's such an excellent idea and the company gives every indication of being very honestly run and very well run. Let's hope that the management have the strength of purpose not to be deflected from their intent by powerful distributors with pound signs in their eyes.

So Wikaniko gets my highest mark of 9 out of 10. (In 14 years of reviewing business opportunities, 9 out of 10 is rare. I've never rated anything at 10 out of 10 because that would mean it's a dead cert and there is no such thing as a dead cert in business.)

Well done, Wikaniko.

Rating:

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