Friday, August 7, 2015

JM Ocean Avenue: Why did Ocean Avenue merge with a suspect scheme out of China called JM International?

Ocean Avenue *was* a nutritional supplement based MLM that started in roughly 2012. After a rough tossle with Visalus due to some people jumping ship, which culminated apparently with a theft of laptop from Ocean Avenue office in 2013, Ocean Avenue apparently merged with a Chinese company called JM International in 2014, according to a member:
OK JM International did a take over of Ocean Avenue back in 2014.
JMOA is part of Joy May who is owned by Joe Zhou, Bruce Fang and Jackie Zhang – JMOA is a $2 Billion company based out of china.
The Ocean Avenue managment stayed after the take over but it was not a happy merger and although Hop Rocket was initially going to be part of JMOA, it was decided that the US team would relinquish their interest in JMOA and everyone in the US office wanted to move to Hop Rocket which soft launched just 1 week ago.
Comment posted by Dottie Lotto on 6-AUG-2015
But who/what is JM International? Seems all we know are some Americanized names, and "it's out of China". (The 2 billion can't be trusted as it's unclear it's revenue, profit, products sold, cumulative or single year, etc.)

So who is JM International? If you search for JM International, , you will find ONLY "JMOA" (JM Ocean Avenue). In fact, you can't even find what JM stands for.

What's really interesting is how the "board of directors" change depending on which site you access, as you can't tell which is official and which is not. Some pages include Tim Richerson and Fred Ninow, others included two other Chinese names (Peter Li and Gary Ren).

However, after a bit of searching, I found an alternate domain, jmtop.com, which appears also to be a global corporate site. However, what's REALLY interesting is for a company allegedly started in China, it has NO CHINESE WEBSITE. It has Hong Kong and Taiwan, but none for Mainland China.

JM Ocean Avenue "select country" page as of 7-AUG-2015 ... No China? 

Next stop... Youtube, as I need to find the CHINESE name of this allegedly Chinese company, so I can research it on Chinese media. Searching for "JM International" found an alleged official channel, and following videos:



So we now know that the Chinese name for JM International is 中脉国际

So what does the Chinese Media Say about them?



With a bit of search, we found their Chinese website, jmtop.cn, which is where we got what JM stands for... "Joymain".  They used to go by "Joy Life Global", but that's been abandoned.

There is absolutely NO MENTION of "JM Ocean Avenue" on the Chinese website. In fact, they even keep a different JM Logo altogether.

This is their ORIGINAL logo:



This was the Joy Life logo (no longer in use, can be still found):



This is JM International Logo (no longer in use, can be still found, such as on Youtube)

This is JM Ocean Avenue Logo (jmoceanavenue.com, but also jmtop.com)



And this is current JM's Chinese Logo (jmtop.cn) :


What exactly does JM sell, besides nutritional supplements? According to their website, magnet everything... mattress tops, pillows, comforters, shirts, supports, even $11500 USD lounge chairs.


There are reports that the magnet enhanced underwear are selling for between 4000 to 6500 RMB (link in Chinese) (644 USD to 1045 USD). Downlines are encouraged to buy a pack of 8 (29800 RMB) to join and recruit additional downlines who do the same, and they will be rewarded with commission for the sales (15% for first level downlines, then 3% for lower levels).   (You can buy them from JMOA now as "JMR4 series")

The magnet blankets and whatnot are available now from JMOA as "JMS3 series".

Yet other products marketed by JM includes magnet tea mug, magnet seat cushion, magnet cooking pans, magnet hot water pots, and so on.

At least one victim claimed to have spent millions of RMB to join at "diamond level" (link in Chinese) and did not get the promised returns. Company claims they have refunded the victim. However, the victim continues to insist that she put in over 4.7 million (link in Chinese), not 1.6 mil claimed by the company. She also refused to sign settlements that proclaimed she has nothing further to do with the company.

Various government agencies around China are looking into this issue, according to news.

Analysis by MLMSkeptic

Taking the above data points in aggregation, it seems to explain why JM Ocean Avenue would want to distance itself from JM China, even had JM China change its logo. Multi-level sales is illegal in China as it's considered a type of pyramid scheme. Direct sales is allowed.

Keep in mind that news reports have described multi-level commission and even heavy front-loading (forcing new members to buy large packs that cannot be explained as "self-consumption"... who buys 8 pack of $1000 USD each underwear for personal use?)

Even assuming this is created by "rogue reps" it certainly does NOT bode well for the company in China. However, JM had apparently cleaned up its image in 2014 from these news reports. I can not find any further mention of alleged pyramid sales in China. However, it's also interesting that 2014 is also when JM merged with Ocean Avenue.

Are the prices just as outrageous out of China as it were in China? The answer is... not that crazy. I have a hard time looking for the prices as they are rarely public, but a few sources I managed to find shows that the "knee protector" (i.e. a knee brace with magnets) is about 45 quids, or $70 USD, retail.  Given that knee brace can be purchased at any proper pharmacy such as Walgreens or CVS for between $15 and $25 USD it's still way overpriced, but not as outrageous as it was in China, assuming products are prices roughly at the same "level".

So where does that leave you, the JMOA rep?

If you believe in quackery such as magnet therapy, then by all means, push it on your friends and family. Have them overpay for stuff 300%-700% more, even at the non-crazy prices.

But this JM merger is hardly "joining forces". JM needs to take its MLM act out of China, and you've been volunteered by your OA leaders to be the guinea pigs.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing!

    According to a friend of mine, involved in JMOA outside of China, the reason for no Chinese link yet:
    1) By preventing Chinese from building/registrate worldwide the next few years, distributors in other countries could benefit from this short-time protection.
    2) When it's repealed, there will come a Chinese JMOA-link.

    (He states that because of extreme growth in China, combined with tens of JMOA offices worldwide, Amway could be surpassed within a few years.)

    Kind regards,

    Ben K

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Beware of empty promises. "Extreme growth" in China selling 1000 dollar undies and 15000 lounge chairs, really. There's just a whiff of you know what.

      Delete
    2. They are thieves, i have encounted a terrible lost from JM. Chinese can never be trusted

      Delete
  2. Absolutely!, I'm not buying into the propaganda

    Ben K

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hello, I write about scams on occasion, and this was very helpful in the article I am writing.It gave me much insight.

    ReplyDelete