Scout and Cellar Review: Is it a Scam?

Founded by Sarah Shadonix, the Scout and Cellar is an MLM company that sells wine. They labeled their wines as clean-crafted meaning there is little to no artificial flavors or chemicals added to their products.

Wines are not the usual product that you see with other network marketing companies. However, it was a great idea, after all, especially if the founder has a background about both MLM and wine as well.

Sarah Shadonix is a lawyer who worked as a Distribution Channel Manager in Wine Country Connect. She is a wine lover who then used her passion and experience to put up her own company.

 

What is ‘Scout and Cellar’?

Scout and Cellar is an MLM company that focuses on selling clean-crafted wines that is based in Texas. It is a new company founded in 2017 and has been distributing wine around different States. It also earns money from recruiting sellers and affiliates. 

Clean-crafted wines are processed with less artificial additives. They avoid processing their wines from fruits that have been using pesticides. They add little to no sugar in their manufacturing process as well.

It is basically a “healthier” wine that prevents toxic materials from entering your body and causing fewer hangovers.

Sarah Shadonix found out that these preservatives put toxic substances in your body. This is what inspired her to make a healthier wine product that allows you to enjoy it with different varieties.

Scout and Cellar sell wines from sparkling wine, red wine, and white wine. Their bottles come with a piece of detailed information on what food accompanies their wine well. The information also includes the history of the bottle and the company itself. 

They sell their wines from $18 to $50 a bottle, depending on the type of wine that you purchase. They also offer promos or bundles where you buy a bunch of their wines for a lower price.

They offer these package deals from 4 bottles for $88, 6 bottles for $186, and a dozen for $430.

MLM is a hard path to take when you want to make money. Most of the people that venture into this kind of business do not succeed. You will need to have training on how to properly run it before you make it to the right path. 

 

Do you want to Join Scout and Cellar? 

In order to join Scout and Cellar, you have to sign up first and buy their Business Kit. 

It costs $249 that includes 6-bottle insulated wine carrier, Pulltaps corkscrew, winemaker, 1.5 ounces measure pouring spout, an original Vacu Vin wine saver, four bottles of wine, and of course, your replica of a website that you own for a year. 

After the first year, you pay a $99-dollar subscription fee if you want to keep the website running. I will discuss the website later on.

 

Membership levels

Scout and Cellar have divided their membership into six ranks. Each rank has different levels of investment and goals that you have to attain in order to move to a higher level. All of the goals that you accomplish have rewards along with ranking higher up.

1. Frist is the Consultant Rank, where you are basically a registered member. Your job is to distribute their products. This is the rank that you get to after paying the $249 sign up fee.

2. Next is the Second Consultant, Rank. This is where you start recruiting other people for your downline. You are required to have a $200 worth of personal sales and another $500 sales from your downline to attain this rank.

3. Executive Consultant comes next. This rank requires you to have a $300 personal sales and $800 from your downline.

4. Associate Manager. You must have a $400 personal sales and $1500 sales from your downline team.

There are additional requirements in order to attain the Associate Manager rank. This has to do with the binary commission structure. It is a strategy where the person recruits two more for commission and the two will recruit two of each so on and so forth. This requirement is also needed for you to rank up from here up to the higher ranks.

Senior Manager. To get to this rank, you should have come up to $500 personal sales and $3000 sales from your downline team.

Lastly, the Executive Manager that requires you to have $600 personal sales and $2000 sales from your downline team.

 

Commissions and other Bonuses

‘Scout and Cellar’ gives you three different ways of earning commissions.

The first one is from retail sales, where you get more money for more sales. 

The second one is the residual commission, and then the extra bonuses. Let us discuss each in a simple way.

Retail Sales

This is where the customer gets a direct compensation on the sales that they can get for the company. There are different percentages in commissions, depending on how much you have sold.

• Sales under $499 receive a 12% commission.
• Sales from $500 to $1499 receive a 15% commission.
• Sales between $1500 up to $2999 receive a 20% commission
• Sales above $2999 have a 25% commission.

These are pretty good commissions because of the way they are rated by how much you sell. With that being said, it is not an easy job to make those sales. You always have to work hard for customers to buy your product.

 

Residual Commissions

The next is Residual Commissions, where you earn money from recruiting more people. This is a commission based on the binary commission strategy. You are required to hire at least two people for your two legs of distribution.

See, the money that you earn from this depends on where you are ranked in their compensation plan. As said on top, the higher your rank is, the more money you get. 

The binary commission works well when done correctly. You earn form your recruits and their recruits as well. In Scout and Cellar, for example, when you are in the rank of a Second Consultant Rank, you earn 3% from the first level of your recruit.

When you are at a higher position like the sixth rank, the Executive Manager receives 8% from their level 1. Again, the higher your rank, the more money you make.

This is the reason why sometimes it is said that the people on top of this system are the only people who earn money. While the people at the bottom lose their money.

 

Other Bonuses

These are just simple incentives depending on how hard you work. The money is not significant, and they only give these bonuses to motivate their distributors to perform well.

The money is given when you have done a great job as well as teaching your recruits to do better as well. These bonuses are just motivators, and they are not much, so you should not rely on them.

 

More on the Website

The website that Scout and Cellar give you is the same as the website that they give to every other distributor of theirs. This will provide you with less time and opportunity to direct your traffic.

See, original sites tend to be visited more. Unique sites are targeted by specific search engines because of, well, originality, and branding. You are also more likely to land ads and gain more income.

 

Pros

1. They sell wine at a reasonable price. As I have said, I have little knowledge about wine, but their prices are relatively low compared to those that you buy from other websites or in stores.

 

2. Good Promotion and Strategy. Wine is not a usual product to see in MLMs, but they did find a way to make it. By selling and labeling their wine as clean-crafted, they were able to succeed with wines.

 

3. Commission rates are reasonable. You are given a great deal on retail commissions that go up to 25% of your sales but you have to work extremely hard to sell it.

 

Cons

1. Not available internationally- not even in every State. Scout and Cellar are limited in the USA only. But that does not mean that you can buy them in all of the States.
There are a few states that do not allow shipping of wines. This includes the State of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, Alabama, Kentucky, among others.

 

2. Low Success Rate. MLMs have a very slim success rate. Statistics say that only 1% of people in business who venture MLM succeeded, leaving the 99% losing money.
This business has a lot of different factors that prevent your success- difficult ones too. For example, you have to put up wine-tasting events and convince people to buy your product.
Especially those who are close to you, you have to bother them and convince them to purchase wine bottles.

 

3. Hard to order. When you are in the business, you cannot sell the wines yourself. Your buyers must visit the website and place their orders there. If they forget to put your name down as the consultant, then you will end up losing your commission.

 

4. The wine is not different from the cheap wine that you get in Walmart. Users who have tried the wine claim that there is “nothing special” about the taste of the wines.

 

5. The company is not a famous wine brand, so you might find it challenging to sell it to people. Moreover, they do not teach any marketing skills that make it even more challenging to make sales.

 

Would I Recommend Scout and Cellar?

I would not recommend Scout and Cellar. Although it comes with a legit product that they sell, and they have high compensations, I still think you will not make any money from it.

First of all, Scout and Cellar being an MLM, is a factor that you should consider. There is a low success rate in MLMs, and it would not be any different for Scout and Cellar. 

You are going to selling wine to your family and friends as there is no other way to sell these products.

To make sales, you need to know Internet marketing as that would make things easier.

 

Conclusion

I hope you have considered that ‘Scout and Cellar’ is not for you. They are a multi-level marketing company that makes it difficult for you to find success online.

Do not get me wrong; I do not mean that you can never make money online, but it is going to be difficult with this program. If you want a legitimate way to make money online, there are other ways to do this. 

Of course, there would be no easy way to earn money online. You still have to invest your time, money, and hard work to succeed in every business. But with the right business strategy, you can make a lot of money if done right.

If you want to be successful online and earn money on autopilot, then there is a proper way to do it. I recommend a course that teaches you the basics of how to earn money on the internet. You can get started with affiliate marketing. 

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If you have any experiences with the Scout and Cellar website then do share it with us in the comments section as it would definitely help out readers!

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