PM-International & Fitline – dubious MLM of food supplements

PM-International was founded in 1993 in Germany by Rolf Sorg. According to the company's website it's one of Europe’s largest direct marketing companies in the areas of health, wellness and beauty.

Rolf Sorg, the founder. What's the deal with those freaking hand signs and MLM nowadays? "L" for losers?

The company markets nutritional supplements (the FitLine series) and skin care (the FitLine skin series). All in all PM-International runs a very typical MLM business selling overpriced products and having an army of independent sales representatives doing all the dirty work for the company. This way the operation of the company itself is legal and everything goes by the books... or should we rather say in the gray area of empty bookshelves.

PM-International has been operating also here in Finland for several years. It has a highly profitable business which sold about 15 million euros worth of products profiting about 1.8 million euros in 2018 alone. And this is only the sales of the Finnish branch. 

Financial information of PM-International Finland Oy.

However, despite the company has been indisputably profitable the same doesn't apply to the network marketing side of the business. According to researchers the fact is that the vast majority of people – about 99 % – doing MLM lose money.

Quoting The Case (for and) against Multi-level Marketing By Jon M. Taylor, MBA, Ph.D., Consumer Awareness Institute:
"Our studies, along with those done by other independent analysts (not connected to the MLM industry), clearly prove that MLM as a business model – with its endless chain of recruitment of participants as primary customers – is flawed, unfair, and deceptive. Worldwide feedback suggests it is also extremely viral, predatory and harmful to many participants. This conclusion does not apply just to a specific MLM company, but to the entire MLM industry. It is a systemic problem. 

Of the 350 MLMs I have analyzed for which a complete compensation plan was available, 100% of them are recruitmentdriven and top-weighted. In other words, the vast majority of commissions paid by MLM companies go to a tiny percentage of TOPPs (top-of-the-pyramid promoters) at the expense of a revolving door of recruits, 99% of whom lose money. This is after subtracting purchases they must make to qualify for commissions and advancement in the scheme, to say nothing of minimal operating expenses for conducting an aggressive recruitment campaign – which (based on the compensation plans) is essential to get into the profit column."

During the years of operating here in Finland PM-International has under gone heavy criticism and deservedly so. In the early 2019 the company attempted to polish its public image by making a sponsorship deal with Finnish Athletics Federation.

Having athletes as marketing tools is of course a clever way to gain visibility and to support the marketing of food supplements. However, Finnish media didn't exactly play along with this. YLE headlined a news article about the deal as "Young athletes get the euros they need for coaching, but at what price? New partner of Finnish Athletics Federation is a nutritional supplement company accused of misleading marketing, questioned by nutritionists".

Finnish Iltalehti on the other hand brought up PM-International's legal threats towards Juhani Knuuti (MD, PhD) after he had criticised the company on his blog in 2016. As a result from being threatened with legal actions Knuuti had published another blog post about the said legal threats he received. 

A representative of the company, Thorsten Nigge, approached Knuuti via WhatsApp message threatening him with a "bunch of expensive lawyers". Knuuti offered to correct any wrongful information presented on his blog if only the company could point out any incorrect information. As you might suspect he hasn't been sued and neither has the company provided any proof of Knuuti having misinformation on his blog.

Juhani Knuuti

Cheyenne Järvinen removed the lid of the can of worms

Cheyenne Järvinen is a Finnish celebrity mostly known from yellow press and her social media channels. Having a reasonable amount of Finnish followers she has also attracted attention of some MLM reps of PM-International, especially after publishing criticism towards their business and Fitline products.

Cheyenne Järvinen – a pyramid scam hater, hated by Fitline's misleaders.

An article on Helsingin Sanomat lets us know that in the late 2019 Järvinen had shared a post on her Instagram of her friend's request to Fitline reps asking them to stop contacting her/him basically referring to their products as snake oil sales.

During the following weeks Järvinen received over thousand emails from people telling about questionable actions and methods of Fitline representatives. In addition she got her phone filled with screencaptures people had sent to her related to the subject.

Järvinen who has also personal experience of MLM business decided to start sharing information about the dubious ways Fitline reps were operating. Years ago Järvinen was recruited to market JuicePlus but she quit soon feeling deceived – I guess she learnt what most of MLM really is about.

She has also published an hour and a half lasting video on YouTube revealing dirty details of Fitline business in Finland (the video is entirely in Finnish). The video includes also audio evidence of some top reps talking to their downlines and making bullshit accusations towards Järvinen. According to the them Järvinen is envious, malicious, has financial difficulties and thus (for some unexplained reason) has only bad intentions towards Fitline. Some Fitline rep goes even as far as claiming that Järvinen has some mental problems.

All in all, the reactions of those Fitline reps remind a lot how brainwashed MLM misleaders usually act and behave. I myself have been called various things ever since I started blogging about scams. There has also been at least one police report filed against me about defamation. And I only happen to know about it because the person in question approached me and told me that. However, I wasn't ever contacted by the police or by any lawyers.

Like Juhani Knuuti also Järvinen found out that Fitline was often sold with misleading sales pitches by the representatives. Not surprisingly, Järvinen noted that the network marketing part of the business also had the very characteristics of a pyramid scam, where the focus is on growing the network and the products are an unwanted necessity.

The activity of Cheyenne Järvinen didn't get unnoticed by the CEO of PM-International Finland, Jussi-Pekka Teräs, who approached her with the following message (translated from Finnish):
"According to our understanding you have maybe against your better judgement began to spread hate speech against our company and our sales representatives in your social media channels and you have also infringed the trademark."

Järvinen responded to Teräs with series of questions about Fitline and the questionable acts of the MLM salespeople.

Teräs ended the conversation by letting Järvinen know that he was going to have the company's legal department investigate the "hate speech" and the trademark infringement. Järvinen told to Helsingin Sanomat that the accusation of trademark infringement was about the word "Fitline" being mentioned on her Instagram account.

More to read:
An article by Helsingin Sanomat about the YouTube vid by Cheyenne Järvinen