How is Herbalife Nutrition Breaking Records During a Global Recession?

How is the largest nutrition company in the world performing against a global pandemic that severely interrupts the value of their distribution strategy? The Herbalife Nutrition multi-level marketing (MLM) structure relies a great deal on a distribution model that brings value through; (1) Frequent Interaction (2) Results Shared To Customers (3) Personal connection with customers (4) Hyper-localization (5) Brick & Mortar community done mostly through what they call nutrition clubs. Theoretically, that should be severely interrupted by the “COVID-19 Effect” where face-to-face interactions, physical shopping and communities are being replaced by digital interactions, ecommerce, and isolation. This is where business theory and actual business results diverge in the anomaly that is Herbalife Nutrition. That’s because they just achieved another record net sales quarter and this growth was broad-based globally, as three of our six regions (including North America), along with 24 countries, set new quarterly net sales records. This is all pretty astounding, which begs the question of how they are doing it?