PROMOTERS: Fast-Buck Gospel

I don’t drink, smoke or play around. I’m just about perfect. —Glenn W. Turner, in a speech to prospective customers

Flamboyant and tireless, Glenn W. Turner is to salesmanship what Billy Sunday was to revivalism. Now 37, he has built a tiny door-to-door cosmetics firm into a multimillion-dollar empire by stirring life’s losers with a bewitching fast-buck gospel. “All we’re doing is showing people how they can make something of themselves,” says Turner, a sharecropper’s son who favors neon-bright suits, ivory-colored boots made of skin from unborn calves, and a rhinestone American-flag lapel pin the size of a calling card. Turner’s activities have also stirred investigations: attorneys general and other authorities in 30 states have started legal actions against him or his companies. The Iowa Supreme Court two weeks ago barred his major company from selling franchises in the state and condemned all such pyramid sales schemes as “a cancerous vice against which the public should be protected.”

Moxie and Mink Oil. Only five years ago, Turner gave up selling sewing machines to poor Southern rural blacks and became a distributor for a small cosmetics concern, but he soon wound up broke. He then got a $5,000 bank loan and started his own cosmetics firm, Koscot Interplanetary Inc., in Orlando, Fla. Even before he had a product, Turner had a small staff out recruiting distributors, who were asked to advance up to $5,000 to get in on the ground floor of a great proposition. Amazingly, the recruiters found people willing to pay. The money began to flow in, and Turner was on his way. He contracted with Kolmar Laboratories in Port Jervis, N.Y., to turn out the Koscot product line, which now consists of 104 items ranging from nail-polish remover ($1.25 a bottle) to mink-oil concentrate, used as a skin softener, which is priced at $10 for a two-ounce bottle.

Using Koscot’s rapidly spiraling income, Turner went on to found such companies as Fashcot, which sells wigs, Emcot, which makes pink and yellow colored fur coats, and Transcot, a trucking firm. One of his companies sells a success-motivation course called “Dare to Be Great,” which consists of a recorder with cassettes and a notebook crammed with such power-releasing hints as “Develop a Positive Mental Attitude” and “Remember Everybody’s Name.” Complaints about the course, which costs up to $5,000 to complete, have brought legal actions in eight states. In Davidson County, Tenn., five “Dare to Be Great” salesmen were arrested for violating a law against pyramid selling. Since Turner is sole owner of his companies, he does not have to report his total sales volume, but with his usual extravagance, he estimates it as running into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sales Blitz. The foundation of Turner’s empire remains Koscot, and the key to its growth is the “multilevel distributorship.” Koscot sells “distributorships” for up to $5,000. Distributors get a 65% discount on the list price of the products and generally distribute them through supervisors, or subdistributors, who get a 55% discount. Women called “beauty advisers” are hired to hawk the products door to door. Anybody who buys such a distributorship can also collect $1,950 for each friend or relative he recruits to buy another $5,000 distributorship—or $500 for each person he brings in to buy a $2,000 supervisorship. Thus, almost everyone tries to sell distributorships and supervisorships instead of cosmetics. Those signing up after the first sales blitz in any area often find it impossible to earn their money back. In desperation, distributors have been known to exaggerate their earnings to prospects and try to back up their claims by plunging into debt for big cars and expensive clothes.

No sales territories are assigned, and a Koscot franchise is anything but exclusive. In some instances, “there could be 1,000 distributorships in a town of 7,000,” says a spokesman for the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which has a fat file of complaints against Koscot. A few years ago, the New York attorney general’s office noted that only 79 of the 1,604 distributors and supervisors in the state earned more than $5,000 a year. If all the people in the New York program were to earn the $100,000 that Koscot representatives say they could, at least 150 million distributorships would have to be created in two years—eight distributorships for every man, woman and child in the state.

Fat Checks and Twin Midgets. The catalyst for turning prospective investors into true believers is the “Golden Opportunity Meeting.” Held in local halls around the country, these rousing sessions, led by flashily dressed men waving fat checks, raise tantalizing visions of big money and easy living for the frequently gullible audience. Often Turner himself will appear, accompanied by twin midgets who serve as his goodwill ambassadors. Sometimes balancing himself on two chairs. Turner spellbinds his listeners by recounting how he succeeded despite his harelip, his eighth-grade education and his early poverty.

For those not willing to sign a check on the spot. Koscot recruiters have a maximum prod: a free flight to company headquarters in one of Turner’s nine planes. On arrival they are fed, feted and shown a film of Turner’s life story punctuated with shots of tropical beaches and expensive cars. After all that, there are few holdouts.

In the absence of any statute against multilevel distributorships in most states, attorneys general have had to base their actions against Turner on infractions of the Fair Trade laws, franchise legislation or consumer-protection regulations —with some success. Beyond Iowa’s action against Koscot, company officials have been fined and forced to make restitution to distributors in many other states. Koscot still has cases in abeyance or on appeal in New York, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey, Connecticut and Wisconsin. Turner, who has hired Attorney F. Lee Bailey, has reached a truce with some states by agreeing to set a quota on the number of distributorships and emphasize selling products instead of recruiting.

For all his hucksterism, Turner seems to have a genuine sympathy for the handicapped. He has donated $1,000,000 to a retarded children’s center in his native South Carolina, and is a leading employer of the handicapped in Florida. As to the legal forces arrayed against him, Turner is unmoved. Says he: “Nothing can stop me now. I’m too strong.” His present plans range between exploring the possibilities of orange-flavored mouthwash and a line of cosmetics for homely dogs.