The Juice Wars

Nearly a decade passed since my experience with Amway had soured me on MLM's.  But still, that logical business model still made perfect sense to me.  I had often been heard saying 'If I could just get someone to build an Amway business for me!'... but alas, that could never be.

Daniel was a friend of mine who had attended a few Amway meetings with me back then called me out of the blue, excited about a 'miracle juice' called Xango.  It was my first 'miracle juice'... 

He was telling me all these amazing testimonials about people being healed of this and that... I think one person had psoriasis or something... I forget.  But he was jazzed about the stuff, and going on and on about it.  He told me what was in it, and I started doing my own research into this 'Mangosteen' miracle juice.  Granted, it did seem like some powerful stuff.  Very high in anti-oxidants, vitamins and the like.  Around that time I also ended up having an amazingly painful back/shoulder spasm after about a week of overworking to make a deadline.  Like knives digging into my shoulder kind of pain.  Not good for someone who has to lean over a drafting table all day...

I went to a chiropractor, I popped pain pills... not much helped.  NO, this is not the part where I tell you Xango made me all better... This is the part where I went to an Alphabiotics center where a guy named Steve basically poked, pushed and pounded my spine for about two hours... Acupuncture, acupressure and chiropractic techniques like I'd never dealt with before.  So how does this fit into the 'juice wars'?  Well, he sold me a bottle of Xango to help with the inflammation.  I woke up the next day swollen.  The day after that, I felt great.  Did that have anything to do with the Xango?  Don't know.  But it did pique my interest a bit.  That is, until I went to the Japanese market.

There I stood in a Japanese store face to face with a bottle of Mangosteen juice.  And not nearly as pricey a bottle of Mangosteen juice as I paid for at the Alphabiotics center either.  Next to that bottle, was a bottle of Goji.  A bottle of Noni.  A bottle of Acai.  A bottle of Mangosteen, Goji, Noni and Acai mixed together... A plethora of 'miracle juices', all for less than any MLM you could shake a stick at would ever sell them for...  So the concept of my plunking down more than I had to for this stuff from an MLM... well, let's just say it wasn't first on my list of things I wanted to do.

A couple years later, Daniel and his wife Erika moved closer to us, up in Orange County.  Laguna Beach to be specific.  And she met another gal who was into yet another 'miracle juice' called Monavie.  She wasn't particularly moved to get into another juice, especially so soon after the whole Xango thing flopped for them...  but then her friend told her about some actor from General Hospital who was having a Monavie meeting at his house.  Well, far be it for her to miss out on a chance to hang out with a real live actor, so she went.  And she got sold on joining Monavie.  She dug the product too.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not harping on ANY of these great juices... They are all really good products with lots of health benefits... And to prove it, she gave a bottle to my wife.

As I mentioned  in my other blog, my wife had had excema on her hands and arms for years, cracking, bleeding, itching, scaling... it was not pleasant.  After two days of drinking Monavie, it was GONE.  Nothing the doctors, or nutritionists could give her, be they pills, lotions, powders, cremes... nothing worked, but two days into drinking that 'miracle juice', and it was GONE.  God bless it.  Well, not willing to buy into another MLM, we decided to start buying the Monavie from Erika.  Eventually we even signed up to order it directly from the company.

But then I found myself at Costco, staring at another bottle of Acai berry juice called 'Fruita-vie'.  It was 9 bucks.  I had a case of Monavie at home that cost me $120, and I could buy this stuff for less than 40 a case?  I cancelled my autoship.  We're still not out of Monavie, but when we do run out, we'll be trying the Fruita-vie instead.

The juice wars for us weren't nearly as painful as it might have been, had we actively tried to build a Monavie business.  What with all the competition in the MLM Fruit Juice wars... Xango, Monavie, Noni, Goji, Zrii, Mandura, Zija, Limu Plus, Xelr8, Efujion... it seems like there's a new one every month... well, I can't see where you'd ever get someone to leave one juice company to shill for another, so you cut off HUGE numbers of possible prospects right there... And the fact that this juice or that juice... frankly, ANY juice can be produced for far less and sold in Costco or Walmart... to any struggling warrior in the Juice Wars... it can be just too much of a temptation to stop losing money every month and buy your 'miracle juice' from the big box store.

Or the Japanese Market, for that matter.