dōTERRA Should Not Be Associated with Universities
They are the antithesis of what students should be learning
As you may know I am clinically obsessed with indoor volleyball, mostly as a player (my peak was the Huntington Beach AAA league) but also as a fan of Team USA and my favorite NCAA team (UC Irvine). That means that a few times a year we play BYU, whose men’s team is typically one of the top teams.
As do many teams, they have a local sponsor printed on their net. For the past few years at BYU, this has been dōTERRA, a multilevel marketing company based in Utah that sells essential oils.
Like all MLM companies, the actual product isn’t really the point. They sell “business opportunities”, basically persuading their customers that they’re not merely customers, they are distributors. This means locking them into required monthly purchases that they’re expect to resell to people — surveys show that almost none of these products are ever successfully sold; they’re consumed by the “distributors” themselves, or more often, given or thrown away. Tasty marketing persuades those “distributors” that they’re just inches away from recouping the money lost on those expensive required purchases. Surveys show that they never do.
And of course, essential oils are a bunch of crap. Maybe some people like the smell, but they have no other value, despite manufacturers frequently making a lot of false medicinal claims. dōTERRA has illegally done this themselves, and been warned by the FDA for doing so. The company and/or its representatives have also falsely promoted their products as a treatment for COVID-19.
So, yeah… BYU, rethink your partners. You’re teaching your students to celebrate deceptive and illegal business practices, to cheat customers, and to ignore medical science. And your great volleyball players should be able do what they do without being sullied by association. Do better.