Our first major assignment for our semester one advertising class was called Buyer Beware. For the assignment, we got together in groups of four and were asked to come up with a product or consumer issue that we felt was worth investigating and maybe digging up some information on to inform our fellow consumers. Obviously, this idea is most beneficial for products or companies that seem a bit “fishy”.
As the project started up, lots of the other groups had some really solid ideas and we were sort of stumped. Panic began to set in. Then my group member, John, remembered an idea that our instructor Kent had brought up briefly in class. He had been mailed a little information packet for something called “Wealth Builders” and felt it seemed somewhat strange. It had all the makings of one of those “get rich quick” schemes and looked more than a little bit sketchy. We decided it was definitely worth checking out.
We were right.
Wealth Builders is a name chosen for this particular venture by a company known as Planet Antares. Even the name sounds suspicious! Like are they those crazy looking dudes from Star Wars or what's the deal here? Anyways, the company put on a seminar at a hotel in the city and John volunteered to go and check it out. His findings were very interesting, to say the least.
It turned out that the company was marketing this as a “franchise opportunity” in the vending machine business. Basically, the company asks for a minimum level investment of $23 000 (for two machines) and over $80 000 as a ceiling (for eight machines). The company then boasts about how the rest is entirely up to you and they wont be around to nag or bother you when you run your own business. All the while they say you will make boatloads of money while working at your own pace whenever you want.
In reality, this is just corporate speak for saying that the company will take your money, snicker, and then abandon you entirely.
Right away the amount you are required to invest seemed ridiculous. Earning this sort of money back simply by selling chips and Coke from a machine seemed incredibly hard to picture. Our research would prove that it simply was not possible and there were a number of reasons as to why this is just not a worthwhile investment for anyone.
First off, the seminar itself was like some sort of bizarre brainwashing exercise. Everything was very fake and glossy, almost overwhelmingly so. You could tell that it was not Planet Antares first rodeo at trying to rope (that’s a bad pun) people into investing in this little scheme. They had hired very professional and polished speakers and all of the promotional material had countless references to success stories and how much money could be made. In addition, the people there were mostly elderly and/or recent immigrants who did not seem to speak much English. This is a perfect group to try and take advantage of with a “The Canadian Dream” type of promise.
The promotional materials make use of a great deal of generic rhetoric and information that is at best misleading, at worst false. They play on stereotypical ideals such as wealth, happiness and freedom to tug at the potential investors emotions as well as their wallets. This is furthered by the fact that images of money are shown on nearly every single page.
There are a number of biographies of people who have been successful with the products and not until you read to the bottom of a totally different page is there a tiny little section indicating that these types of results are not ordinary and cannot be expected. This theme is also evident in the fact that generic slogans about making money and being successful are bolded and in huge type at the top of the page to draw in the eye, while the actual information is hidden in much smaller writing as if the company doesn’t want you to really read it. Well let’s be honest with each other, they don’t.
If the evil aliens from Planet Antares actually did get some poor people to move past this initial seminar and invest in their vending machines, these people would run into countless problems.
For starters, the fact that the company leaves you completely on your own, while initially seeming like a positive, quickly becomes a major problem.
Finding a location for the machine is, possibly, the most difficult aspect of the entire ordeal. We discovered from simply calling around that pretty much all of the best locations in the city already have contracts with major companies like Coke or Pepsi for their vending machines. The company does make brief mention of this and suggests “small businesses” as the best place to put the machines. While it may be possible to convince these places to allow you to put your vending machine there, the fact is that there just is not enough traffic at places like these to generate the income needed to break even. It’s a common sense principle. A small amount of money is going to equal a small profit in your machine.
While doing our field research, we found that at places where you could put the machines such as community hockey arenas, swimming pools and small office buildings, people simply don’t use the machines all that often. In interviews I conducted, people said they would only spend one or two bucks on anything at the machines when they came out and would only use them if there was absolutely no other alternative available. They said they spent only about five bucks a month on the machines at a maximum and many seemed to feel that vending machines were a “dying breed” and wouldn’t use them at all.
At peak hours on a weekend at the Cindy Klassen Recreation Complex, less than $10 was put into the machines over a two-hour period. There just isn’t any money in this business. Period.
As if the fact that you making hardly any money weren’t enough, the investor is also left with a number of other things they must pay for out of their own pocket. These include transportation of goods, fuel costs, business licenses storage space, postage for distributing any sort of promotional materials, cost of buying the products for your machine etc. In addition, while a warranty is offered, you are asked to pay an outrageous amount to ship your machine away to be repaired. This renders the warranty useless.
All of these things amount to a tremendous amount of stress on the machine owners and it becomes clear that while Planet Antares intimates that you can just sit on your hands and watch the cash come in, a tonne of time and energy is required. For example, buying all of the food and beverages for your machine is a massive undertaking, especially when you consider that you have to locate your own providers and no pricing guarantees are provided. This is important to note because, while the company seem to imply a connection with major brands such as Hostess from all the images on their promotional materials, they have absolutely no affiliation with these brands and the owner has to pick and choose there own products. Our researched showed that it would cost a tonne to fill our machine; certainly as much if not more than you can expect to get back.
The same is true for maintaining the machines. The machine owner is completely left to fend for him or herself regardless as to whether they have any degree of mechanical expertise because there is no one to turn to for assistance.
Does all of this seem like a good enough reason NOT to invest in this company to you? If not and you want to do some research of your own, good luck. The company has bought out so many web domains that the entire first two pages of a Google search on them will bring up results painting the company as a bunch of saints who everyone should love and give all of there money to because they are just so reliable. This shocking over-saturation of the Internet has made it virtual impossible for the average person to find an accurate reports on the companies shady dealings without setting aside their whole day.
As the icing on the cake, I made contact with a man on Kijiji.com who was trying to sell two of these machines. When I asked why, he was very vague and clearly lying through his teeth about how they had worked well for him. It was clear that they had been a nightmare and he was desperate to get them off of his hands. Luckily, Red River College students are both too bright and too poor to fall for something like this! Clearly she doesn't have the greatest GPA...
Overall, our group found that this Wealth Builders scheme was a complete SCAM and something that no one should ever consider investing in for the following key reasons:
They ask for a huge amount of money up front and then abandon you.
They trick you into investing using persuasive rhetoric and misleading information in their promotional materials.
It is impossible to find a location where you can generate any kind of sufficient income.
The warranty is a joke.
You have to fill and maintain your own machines, which costs a bundle and takes even more of your own time.
They have highjacked the Internet so you can’t find out any real information about them.
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY…
No one uses vending machines nearly enough for you to make the money to offset all of this.
But How? And Why?
Overall, through a combination of primary and secondary research from all group members, we have found Wealth Builders to be something that all consumers should BEWARE of.
Plain and simply, we did this because it is important that we as young consumers, who are fairly inexperienced, understand how to see past the glitz and glam of operations like this and look deeper. The number one thing that we hoped to pass on, and that we learned was to always do your homework. A little bit of time spent on research can save you a whole whack of cash at the end of the day. We should all know by now as CreCommers, cash is hard to come by...
I sincerely hope that my classmates learned as much from our group and our presentation as I did from all of theirs. I know things now that I can take and put into practice in the future and for that I am really thankful. This project has been a super fun experience and a great way to help each other out on something that is relevant not only for our advertising class but for our lives in general as we move forward.
Until next time, all you buyers out there…
BEWARE.
