ShopWithMe fails to provide company ownership or executive information on its website.
ShopWithMe operates from the domain (“shopwithme.biz”), privately registered on April 14th, 2021.
On June 30th BehindMLM reader Melanie noted a Direct Selling Magazine article. The June 28th article represents ShopWithMe was launched by Christian Wiesner.
Christian Wiesner starts the new social commerce revolution with Shopwithme!
The founder of Shopwithme GmbH, headquartered in the federal capital, is Dr. Keywan Grashoff, mother of Christian Wiesner.
Wiesner’s name appears as a “representative” on ShopWithMe’s website.
Contact details provided confirm ShopWithMe is incorporated in Germany. The corporate address provided however belongs to Regus, a virtual office merchant.
Christian Wiesner is known to BehindMLM as founder and CEO of WellStar.
In 2015 BehindMLM covered a spat between Wiesner and Kari Wahlroos.
Wahlroos joined WellStar in 2014 and quickly rose to the rank of Crown Ambassador. Wahlroos was frequently cited as one of WellStar’s “top leaders”.
Then in late 2015, Wahlroos bailed from WellStar to front the notorious OneCoin Ponzi scheme.
This did not sit well with Wiesner.
Wiesner accused Wahlroos of engaging in “criminal behavior”. Wahlroos turned around and, in a public letter, provided insight into WellStar’s business operations.
The real issue here is that, as Wellstars No1 and the most successful leader, I have decided that this company will never deliver on the promises you make.
I have had countless discussions with you to fix the endless problems and you never deliver. All we have been told by you, for over 18 months, is ‘recruit more’ and ‘sell more tickets’.
The administration of Wellstar remains a disgrace.
Products flaws. A product returns system that does not work. Non-existent of customer support, terrible partner support.
How many times did my team have to show the problems with you trying to claim that we were at fault?
I loved the product concept and I like you personally yet professionally as a CEO you do not deliver so the company is a mess.
We both know that so many leaders have quit because they don’t earn any money so you have to launch a new country every 3 months.
BehindMLM reviewed WellStar in January 2016. What we found appeared to confirm Wahlroos’ account.
Whether it’s language-barrier issues, the fact that WellStar was founded twelve years ago – whatever the reason – WellStar as an MLM opportunity is in desperate need of an overhaul.
Problems arise with a lack of disclosure on the WellStar website, spanning retail prices, affiliate membership costs and basic compensation plan information.
As to the compensation plan itself, there’s a lot of information presented but not much of it makes any sense.
We identified autoship recruitment at the core of WellStar’s business model, which would indeed make it a pyramid scheme.
As reported by BehindMLM readers, WellStar would go on to collapse in mid to late 2020. The company’s website disappeared in early 2021.
As of mid 2021 Wiesner was amid a WellStar shell company mess. This would eventually result in the insolvency of WellStar GmbH & Co. KG, ordered by a German court on February 15th, 2022.
ShopWithMe surfaced a few months later.
I suspect Wiesner’s WellStar shell company shenanigans are why his mother is being credited as ShopWithMe’s founder.
Read on for a full review of ShopWithMe’s MLM opportunity.
ShopWithMe’s Products
ShopWithMe has no retailable products or services itself.
ShopWithMe provides access to an ecommerce platform, populated with products from third-parties.
In an official ShopWithMe marketing video, Wiesner claims products offered span beauty, fitness and wellness.
ShopWithMe’s Compensation Plan
ShopWithMe’s compensation plan pays on product orders by retail customers and recruited affiliates.
Like any ecommerce platform, ShopWithMe earns a commission from merchants whose products feature on its platform.
A percentage of that commission funds ShopWithMe’s compensation plan.
To keep things simple, unless explicitly otherwise stated, “customers” hereafter refers to both retail customers and recruited affiliates.
ShopWithMe Affiliate Ranks
There are seven ranks within ShopWithMe’s compensation plan.
Along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:
- Affiliate – sign up as a ShopWithMe affiliate
- National Success Coach (NSC) – generate 400 PV and buy five tickets
- International Success Coach (ISC) – recruit thirty NSCs
- Gold Executive Leader (GEL) – recruit fifty NSCs
- Gold Executive Director (GED) – recruit one hundred NSCs or three ISCs
- Gold Executive President (GEP) – recruit one hundred and fifty NSCs or five ISCs
- Chairman Executive (CE) – recruit one hundred and fifty NSCs or five ISCs
The following is a marketing slide from an official presentation by Christian Wiesner:
Most of it doesn’t make sense but I was able to follow the 400 PV NSC xx ISC rank qualification criteria. I have no idea what all the other stuff is and Wiesner doesn’t explain.
“Tickets” refers to ShopWithMe marketing events, hosted by Wiesner.
ShopWithMe marketing event tickets are €9.95 EUR and €4.95 in the Baltic countries.
Wiesner states the price difference for the Baltic countries is because “people have very little income there”.
Personal Customer Commissions
ShopWithMe affiliates earn a commission on purchases by personally referred customers.
You can earn on any customer buying products on the shopwithme platform up to 21%.
Your Commission is depending on the rebate status level the Customer is buying at Shopwithme.
“Rebate status” criteria is not provided.
Residual Customer Commissions
ShopWithMe pays residual customer purchase commissions via a unilevel compensation structure.
A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):
If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.
If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.
ShopWithMe caps payable unilevel team levels at ten.
You can earn another 42% on PV (Provision Volume) of all Customer orders of up to 10 levels of SBOs of your team.
Specific commission rates across the ten unilevel team levels are not provided.
Momentum Bonus
The Momentum Bonus is available to new ShopWithMe affiliates, across their first twelve weeks with the company.
The Momentum Bonus is made up of commissionable sales volume.
PV stands for “Personal Volume” and is sales volume generated by an affiliate.
GV stands for “Group Volume”. GV is PV generated by an affiliate and their downline.
The Momentum Bonus is paid out using the same unilevel team as “Residual Customer Commissions” (see above).
There are four tiers to the Momentum Bonus, based on PV and GV generation:
- Bonus Start (generate 160 PV) – receive a 20% Momentum Bonus on level 1 and 5% on levels 2 and 3
- Advance Start (generate 320 PV and 1200 GV) – receive a 25% Momentum Bonus on level 1, 5% on level 2, 10% on level 3 and 5% on level 4
- Power Start (generate 400 PV and 2800 GV) – receive a 35% Momentum Bonus on level 1, 5% on level 2, 10% on levels 3 and 4, 5% on level 5 and 2% on levels 6 and 7
- Turbo Start (generate 480 PV and 4000 GV) – receive a 40% Momentum Bonus on level 1, 5% on level 2, 10% on levels 3 and 4 and 5% on levels 5 to 8
The Momentum Bonus is paid out weekly. ShopWithMe however don’t specify the whether PV/GV requirements are recurring over a set time period or accumulated.
If I had to guess I’d assume Momentum Bonus PV/GV requirements are weekly or monthly recurring ove the twelve-week qualification period.
Bonus Pools
ShopWithMe rewards NSC and higher ranked affiliates with a share in six rank-specific bonus pools:
- qualify at NSC and receive a share in a 1% Bonus Pool (2% if NSC qualified for within 12 weeks of signing up)
- qualify at ISC and receive a share in a 3% Bonus Pool (6% if ISC qualified for within 12 weeks of qualifying at NSC)
- qualify at GEL and receive a share in a 4% Bonus Pool (8% if GEL qualified for within 12 weeks of qualifying at ISC)
- qualify at GED and receive a share in a 5% Bonus Pool (10% if GED qualified for within 12 weeks of qualifying at GEL)
- qualify at GEP and receive a share in a 6% Bonus Pool (12% if GEP qualified for within 12 weeks of qualifying at GED)
- qualify at CE and receive a share in a 7% Bonus Pool (14% if CE qualified for within 12 weeks of qualifying at GEP)
Bonus Pools are funded as a percentage of ShopWithMe’s company-wide commissionable sales volume.
Note that ShopWithMe does not provide rank qualification criteria.
Joining ShopWithMe
ShopWithMe affiliate membership costs are not disclosed.
ShopWithMe Conclusion
Although it’s presented as an ecommerce business…
Shopwithme is the 100% Turnkey Social Commerce Business, helping anybody to participate in the Social Commerce Megatrend without any Business experience & traditional business risk!
Shopwithme is developing & introducing revolutionary new tools and technologies to make social commerce referrals fast, fun, and easy.
Members can save 1000nds of Euros a year for minutes of simple & fun Online Sharing Activities!
Shopwithme Shop Owners can earn on thousands of Wellness, Beauty & Personal Care Fitness Products & many More without ever investing Money into a Warehouse, Customer service, or complicated product approvals and imports.
Simply by Inviting New Members to your Shop, who can save up to to 90% on their favorite Products for inviting their friends = more New Members to your shop!!!
Since most of our customers will buy the Products on monthly Reorder, you can build a very substantial passive Income very part time, with zero cost for warehouse & Staff!
…ShopWithMe is a continuation of Christian Wiesner’s failed WellStar “sell tickets!” model.
To quote again what Kari Wahlroos brought this up in 2015:
I have had countless discussions with you to fix the endless problems and you never deliver. All we have been told by you, for over 18 months, is ‘recruit more’ and ‘sell more tickets’.
I didn’t know what that meant at the time but having sat though one of Wiesner’s ShopWithMe presentations, buying and selling tickets is basically all he talked about.
Buying five tickets apparently qualifies you as a National Success Coach.
Buying ten tickets qualifies you for “Stage 2”, a meet and greet at a local ShopWithMe event.
Buying one hundred tickets between you and your downline qualifies you for “Stage 3”, a dinner with Wiesner.
How Wiesner describes the Stage 3 dinner is… odd.
Stage 3 is a CEO dinner, right after the event. Going to dinner with Ghazala and Christian.
Exactly, you heard it. This is something normal people only dream about.
This is a very, very exclusive dinner table. You normally have to be Triple Champion to dream about sitting there.
And right after the event when everybody needs to go home, you will tell them, “Oh I would love to go home with you but the CEO asked me for private dinners [sic]. So sorry I can’t come with you.”
Meet and greet is a glass of champagne. Fifteen minutes, chitty-chatty, photo photo and that’s it. Thank you very much and goodbye.
Private dinner right now is really expensive. Really expensive.
If you don’t have one hundred tickets, don’t call yourself a leader.
You’ve got to promote one hundred tickets in your team, and you’ll be invited to a CEO dinner.
Riiiiiiiigh………..t.
Wiesner characterizes ShopWithMe marketing events as “tours”.
I went back and looked at what sense I was able to make of WellStar’s compensation plan in BehindMLM’s original review.
Rank names and payout structures have changed but most of the problems noted back in 2016 are still present.
Whether it’s language-barrier issues, the fact that WellStar was founded twelve years ago – whatever the reason – WellStar as an MLM opportunity is in desperate need of an overhaul.
Problems arise with a lack of disclosure on the WellStar website, spanning retail prices, affiliate membership costs and basic compensation plan information.
As to the compensation plan itself, there’s a lot of information presented but not much of it makes any sense.
Replace WellStar with ShopWithMe, and six years on all of that holds true.
It’s a pretty poor reflection of Wiesner’s executive style, but understandable if he’s solely focused on selling tickets to events where he’s the center of attention.
It’s worth noting that at no point during the 47 minute “leaders” ShopWithMe marketing presentation I sat through, did Wiesner mention retail sales of any kind.
ShopWithMe is all about recruitment and selling tickets. The exact things Kari Wahlroos complained about in 2015.
Heck, I couldn’t even verify ShopWithMe’s ecommerce platform even exists.
Wiesner claims that ShopWithMe affiliates will be able to build “full time income with only 1 hour a day effort”. That’s obviously not achievable, and in the US would be a prime example of an FTC violation.
For now ShopWithMe is being pitched to countries Wiesner can get to on his “tours”, namely Europe.
SimilarWeb currently pegs the majority of traffic to ShopWithMe’s website as originating from Germany (32%, down 84% month on month May to June).
Algeria (19%), the US (14%), the UK (11%) and Pakistan (9%) are other countries ShopWithMe is being promoted in.
Regardless of where it’s being pitched though, ShopWithMe is shaping up to be round two of the pyramid scheme Wiesner started with WellStar.
WellStar ended with widespread financial losses and shell companies collapsing on each other. Expect no different when ShopWithMe inevitably implodes.