You may be sitting at your desk, well before your time, making sure the boss sees the commitment you have to the company. You may be sitting at home coding the next big app for the app-store. You may be calling your friends to sell them some dish soap, a sandwich box or a vibrator. You may be sat in front of a camera talking about the latest ephemeral star’s dress sense. You are doing it for yourself. Or are you doing it for someone else. The contrivance of a global recession has set the scene for Go-Get-It enterprise, the internet has given you the global reach but are youreally getting it.
In 1948, Earl Silas Tupper developed a new kind of container for keeping food fresh, but it was Brownie Wise who began a movement that would change the way we work. Brownie Wise began network marketing when she discovered that the best people to sell domestic products were the same people who used them. After WWII, many women who had been working on aluminium drives in the community and in munitions factories for the war effort were returned to the kitchen, for some this must have been a relief but for others it was an unwelcome return to domestic hum-drum and they missed the extra income for the little pleasures of the new consumer life. Brownie gave them some new purpose, selling Tupper’s plastic containers to their friends through party plans. And, while they were becoming new age entrepreneurs they were also turning their friends into Tupperware’s customers.
It didn’t take long for other brands to realise the potential of this business model and soon Avon began using the model for their range of cosmetics and the Avon Ladies were born. Now it is possible to buy anything from baby clothes and jewellery to sex toys at an invariably women-only party.
This use of social networks to act as the shop front for companies was taken to a new level when companies like Amway developed the model further by encouraging individuals to become their own boss and make huge incomes selling their products. Anyone who has attended an Amway meeting will find it difficult to remain unaffected by the hype of success. Amway and its peers focus on internal marketing to make sales of their products, their network of “independent business owners” (IBOs) are sold on the dream that they can make fortunes by selling to their social network and recruiting more to do the same. Anyone who has been approached to join this network will be familiar with their techniques, an experience that I share. Super successful evangelistswill tell you of how they were once builders or bank clerks but now live a life of plenty with huge incomes thanks to taking matters into their own hands. What Amway have done though, is to put the execution of their marketing plan into the hands of credible sales people with their own marketing budget; Amway makes the products while you do the marketing, sales and accounting for them from your own pocket.
The tech revolution seems to have democratised the marketplace and now anyone can become a successful ebayer, Amazon marketplace holder or sell your crafts on Etsy. This shift has reversed the Amway model by selling the network to enterprising individuals to market their wares and it is this global reach that gives them the power to make the rules.
Once Apple released the first iPhone the game would change again. Apps, small
programs that could be developed by individuals or small groups would be sold to smart phone users. Now the R&D department had been outsourced. Google now sell other peoples products in the name of entrepreneurship. The poster-boys of tech are selling their creations for millions. Young people are now being sold on the idea that in order to make it big they must make it for Google, while Google are making it hand over fist.This year’s Forbes list boasts 210 new billionaires with an increase of nearly a trillion dollars aggregate wealth over the previous year.
Youtube has “democratised” programme production by giving everyone the ability to create content for their advertising platform.
Recent advances in 3D printing means that we will soon be able to “print” products in our own home. This has already begun to bring with it huge opportunities for enterprising people to begin designing and producing goods to sell through online marketplaces. As the complexity of these products progresses it will be possible to download plans from the major tech companies to print your own phone or tablet and thus lower production and distribution costs while reducing the reliance on staffed retail outlets. But, just as with IKEA’s self-assembly it will also outsource the accountability of build quality.
The responsibility to staff has already begun wither as so-called “Zero-hour” contracts have hit the news recently in UK. The controversial employment contract means that employees are not guaranteed any fixed hours of work and must be on-call for when they are needed by the company. They are not just used by fast-food chains and supermarkets but Universities and energy companies have also realised the benefits of making salaries a more variable expense. And it is not just the UK; a recent protest to the president of MacDonaldsin the US by a lone employee highlights the emphasis on self-reliance even in the employment relationship.
The contrived world recession is laying the ground for an environment of resourceful self-reliance; UNION is now a dirty word and employers are developing commitment issues. And we are in danger of going back to the work-houses with one difference, we will have to buy the tech, the access and build the machines that will run it.
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