Direct Selling by the Numbers
Calendar Year 2004
Download the DSA Fact Sheet
Industry Statistics
(Calendar year 2004 unless otherwise noted)
Salesforce Demographics
(* indicates data from DSA's 2002 National Salesforce Survey)
See data from prior years
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Estimated 2004 U.S. Direct Sales: $29.73 Billion
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Estimated 2004 U.S. Salespeople 13.6 Million
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1-, 5- and 10-year growth rates
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Comparison with Retail Growth Rate
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Percent of Sales by Major Product Groups
Personal care products
(cosmetics, jewelry, skin care, etc.) |
30.8% |
Home/family care products
(cleaning products, cookware, cutlery, etc.) |
30.5% |
Wellness
(weight loss products, vitamins, etc.) |
16.1% |
| Services/other |
14.3% |
Leisure/educational
(books, videos, toys, etc.) |
8.3% |
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Location of Sales (2003 data; reported as a percent of sales dollars)
| Face-to-Face Selling | 73.1% |
|---|
| In the home | 61.9% |
| Workplace |
6.7% |
| Temporary location | 3.9% |
| Other locations |
0.6% |
| Remote Selling | 26.9% |
|---|
| Phone |
15.6% |
| Internet |
10.8% |
| Other remote selling |
0.5% |
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Percent of Sales by Census Region (2003 data)
| West |
24.8% |
| Midwest |
23.1% |
| Northeast |
16.1% |
| South |
36.0% |
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Sales Strategy (method used to generate sales, reported as a percent of sales dollars)
| Individual/Person-to-Person selling |
69.8% |
| Party plan/group selling |
27.8% |
Customer placing order directly with firm
(in followup to a face-to-face solicitation) |
1.6% |
| Other | 0.8% |
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Compensation Structure by Percent of Firms (multilevel
vs. single level)
| Percent of firms | 84.3%/15.7% |
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Compensation Structure by Percent of Sales Dollars (multilevel
vs. single level)
| Percent of sales dollars
| 76.1%/23.9% |
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Compensation Structure by Percent of Salespeople (multilevel
vs. single level)
| Percent of salespeople |
82.7%/17.3% |
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Gender (2003 data)
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Age
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Marital Status
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Education
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Independent Contractors/Employees (2003 data)
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Hours per week (2003 data)
| Less than 30 hours per week/30-39/40 or more
| 85.1%/7.6%/7.3% |
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Average Percent of Time Spent on…
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Main Reason for Becoming A Direct Sales Representative
| Additional income |
36% |
| It's your business and making money through direct sales in important to you |
31% |
| Discount/wholesale/free products |
29% |
| Other |
4% |
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Percent of Salespeople by Distributorship Type
| One-person distributorship: female |
71.9% |
| One-person distributorship: male |
16.7% |
| Two-person distributorship |
10.3% |
| Multi-person distributorship |
1.1% |
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