Beachbody


Beachbody LLC is a privately-held American multi-level marketing company that uses direct response infomercials, e-commerce, and individual sales consultants to sell home-exercise videos and dietary supplements. The company was founded in 1998 in Santa Monica, California. Their products include P90X.

Team Beachbody

Team Beachbody encourages members of the general public to enroll as "coaches". These customers-turned-salespeople register online as a "coach" and sell fitness packages using Beachbody products and programs including workout DVDs, food supplements and meal plans and in turn earning up to 25% commission for each sale. Carl Daikeler, a co-founder described coaches as serving as "walking billboards and salespeople who want to help their family and friends..." and that the "average lifespan" of a coach is three months. In 2013, CNN reported that within two years of Team Beachbody's launch, sales of the parent company's products rose more than 60%.
An article by Michelle Ruiz for Cosmopolitan's website in 2015 reports that the "pyramid setup" garners criticism from some who call Team BeachBody a "scheme" and that anyone can register online as a coach. The article also quotes Marion Nestle PhD, a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University, as saying "It never ceases to amaze me that anyone would fall for anything like this.... It's about making money."
An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer by Anna Orso in 2018 profiles Team Beachbody coaches and reports that coaches earned an average of $2,600 per year and that more than half of all coaches earn nothing. The company claimed that their pyramid-like sales structure is not an illegal pyramid scheme.

P90X

P90X, or Power 90 Extreme, is a commercial home exercise regimen created by Tony Horton in 2005 and was developed as a successor to the program called "Power 90". It consists of a training program that uses cross-training and periodization, combined with a nutrition and dietary supplement plan.
The program was launched in 2005; it was heavily marketed through infomercials and celebrity endorsements.
In 2010, P90X sales dropped off dramatically; however, it still represented half of Beachbody’s $430 million revenue in 2010 and had sold over 4.2 million copies.