Late last year, Origami Owl transitioned from their retail mall location from the mall to the direct sales model, which is selling through independent designers.

In less that 2 months, It has grown past the 1000 mark. I joined the 3rd week of January and got my ID # 1186,  Days later, my friend signs up and she was #1200.  Everything looked normal to me.

I joined my upline’s upline FB page for her Team,  and witnessed the growth from end of January to mid-March to over a couple hundred  – 200+ new Designers in 2 months on her down line alone!

Then 1500, and soon after, a freeze came in March that was followed by a wait-list… and today there are reportedly 5000 on the wait list.  I do not know that for sure, but I do know that there are at least 4,565 because my latest Designer in Waiting got #4565.

The freeze was put in place not to “hype” anything up.  Yes, I could see how people could think that, as companies have done this demand vs. scarcity ploy as part of their marketing strategy.  Yes, it is exciting when there is a line of people as it must mean something is up and it may be something good.  Like the 2 hour wait at Fashion Valley’s Cheesecake Factory on a Saturday night?  People like to be where the “crowd” is, it makes them feel good to be a part of something so wanted, and because of this truth, some companies do create “a line” to create a “hype” but this Origami Owl freeze was definitely not a freeze to create demand.

Why is there a freeze with Origami Owl?

The truth was and is, the freeze was put in place because there wasn’t enough stuff to go around, people were waiting 2 weeks up to a month or more waiting for their charms.  It really made me upset.  It made many upset.  At the same time, it was quite understandable as some Teams were selling over $100,000 in lockets for the month!  So needless to say, demand superseded supply and a freeze needed to be put in place.

Also, with so much growth came demand for bigger and better infrastructure.  Home office needed to not only get supply up but they also needed to hire the hands to run the the home office, the hands to pack and ship, and get the right training to all new “owl babies.”  A responsible company should not keep “birthing babies” without feeding them and raising them with the culture and values they want to instill in their new ambassadors.  With Origami Owl, there were so many new Designers that they needed to equip then and do so quickly early on, with the company culture and correct message, if they wanted to have a better grasp of the message and branding these new babies were sending out to the public.  All this would not have been possible without a freeze at the rate that Origami Owl was growing at by mid-March, as growth was growing exponentially while everything else – such as supply and training – was heading the other way.

So I hope this has clarified a  little bit about whether or not the happenings of Origami Owl were manufactured hype by the company or if it really was organic.  I will personally say that it was not manufactured but the wait-list crowd has really intrigued a lot of people in the industry and the high numbers of the wait-list may have piqued interest and have caused them to be one of the 4500+ on the wait-list.  Wouldn’t you be a bit curious if you saw a line of 4500 people waiting for so something for so long? I know I would 😉