Verve/Vemma: Scam, or Legitimate Business Opportunity?

Students in BHS are trying to make money with the energy drink, Verve.

There’s a lot of “Get-Rich-Quick-schemes” out there, and most of them don’t actually work. Most of these schemes are called Pyramid Schemes, which are illegal. A Pyramid Scheme is defined as: a system of selling goods in which agency rights are sold to an increasing number of distributors at successively lower levels. The only thing keeping Vemma from becoming a pyramid scheme is the selling and buying of a tangible object with value.

Verve, is an energy drink made by the company, Vemma (Vitamins, Essential Minerals, Mangosteen, Aloe). Vemma was first introduced to elderly people, because it was claimed to prevent cancer, but they wanted to market a different drink to the younger generation; specifically college students. Their idea was to help college students make quick, easy money, but more than college students took advantage of the money making opportunity.

Wyatt Wentland, a Junior here at BHS, has been involved with Vemma for two months now, and has actually been successful with it. He’s even cut hours at his job at Subway to focus more on Vemma.

“It took me a good month of working on it for over an hour every night just to break even”, said Wentland, “I worked really hard.”

Vemma is very popular in the Maple Grove, and Champlin schools. Almost everyone from those school districts know about it. However, only 6 students from BHS are involved with Vemma, and not many people have heard of it.

“I know not that many people know about it in our school, but the reason I still do it, is because I get paid to drink an energy drink that is very healthy for me. You can’t get much healthier than what’s in Verve/Vemma.”, said Wentland.

One of the newer members of Vemma from BHS is Junior Christian Gruye, who’s been with Vemma for a month and a half.

“Although I haven’t profited from it, yet, I like the products. They’re healthy, and I use them on a daily basis”, said Gruye, “I’m also making money while hyping the product.”

More than 95% of the people involved with Vemma, in fact, make less money in a year than a person making minimum wage working 20 hours a week. That’s less than $14,000 a year, and the average American makes $48,000 a year.

Vemma has a point system where you sell some product, and get points which can get you free product, or money. Vemma also uses a referral process where you have people sign up, and you make an x amount of money per person that joins your team.

“I heard about Vemma from Wyatt Wentland, which means I’m his referral. That means everybody else under him got points from me signing up for Vemma.” Gruye said.

Vemma itself has legitimate product, and it’s a legitimate business, but the way they’ve been marketing to teens and college students is as legally close to a pyramid scheme as you can get. The main point is that the amount of effort you put in will result in a higher income. The odds are of you making more than the average American with just marketing Vemma/Verve, however, are slim to none; approximately 1%. You could spend your time working at a regular job making minimum wage, and still make more than 95% of all the members of Vemma, or spend all of your time hyping a product that you use, when in reality, you could just buy the product, and have a steady job.