I have a totally off the wall question, and I'm hoping someone on here can help me. When MAC compiles its annual sales data, does it use sales from MAC to Nordstroms (for instance) as a sale, not counting the final sale to the customer, or does it ignore the sale to Nordstroms and count the final sale to the customer?

I'm not asking in terms of accounting....more in terms of # of lipsticks sold or whatever.

Does that make any sense?

I don't know forsure but this is how I think through your question:

Here at the counters (and I assume everywhere) MAC keeps hold of their hires, IE the department store in which they are selling doesn't get to choose who is hired. Therefore it makes me think its like a separate entity within each store and therefore would just count final sales to the customer.

As I prefaced before---I have NO POSITIVE IDEA and that's just my "best guess". If you wanted a definitive answer you may try MAC/EL head office but I'm not sure they'll give you results.

OK, that was my thought too.

Just to explain my weird question - I saw a statistic that said that Mary Kay sold 25% more eyeshadow than MAC last year. Now, we all know that's unrealistic - MAC is the #1 eyeshadow brand in the country. Here's how they get around that.....Mary Kay keeps track of what consultants order. They have no way of knowing if those consultants ever sell the product. So, their "sales" are what consultants order. Meanwhile, MAC seems to measure actual sales to customers, not just what Nordstrom holds in inventory. Tricky, huh?

Ahhh I see.

Hmmm but I wonder. I love MAC whole heartedly but I know A LOT of people who use and swear by Mary Kay--the whole home based business thing, and the people I know never seem to want to check out MAC. Their loss!! lol but I could almost see that being true......

As for counters though, what about taking RTV's of un-sold limited etc. into consideration?

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more on the MK side... MK counts the product that they sell to the reps, not the product that is actually sold to the customer. I am not a MK rep, but I have had great success with MK and MAC e/s

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~Julia
sdpfeiffy on MUA