It Works! Global
A 25-year founder-owned wrap and supplement brand that fell roughly 89% from its 2014 peak and was sold in January 2026 for $30 million of stock - after which its website, its back office, its income-disclosure page and every distributor’s replicated site began redirecting to the buyer, with no published migration terms.
The last income disclosure that exists anywhere is 2022, showing $87 a month gross at the rank where 85.13% of distributors sat - and the plan that produced it has since been retired with no migration, conversion or grandfathering terms published anywhere.
Can you actually make money with It Works!?
No. Not because the numbers are bad, though they are, but because the deal on offer today is not written down anywhere. The compensation plan people signed was retired rather than merged. The only current US plan on file is the acquirer's own, versioned 10-04-2026, and neither company has published a migration, conversion or grandfathering document saying what a legacy rank, a genealogy position or a residual stream turns into.
The last published economics were already inside the cost of participating. The 2022 disclosure put 85.13% of all distributors at the entry rank, with an average monthly gross of $87 - $1,044 for the year - against a modeled $795 to $1,315 to hold the $35 renewal and the 80 BV autoship. The company states in terms that its figures are gross before any expenses are deducted, and that expenses can run to several hundred or thousands of dollars annually.
No median has ever been published, in any year, and with a $15,441 high sitting inside that bottom rank the average is doing work a median would not do. There is no disclosure at all for 2023, 2024 or 2025, the 2022 page now redirects, and every distributor's replicated storefront redirects to the buyer. The whole business cleared in January 2026 for $30 million of stock, with no cash.
The good parts belong in the same breath. Cancellation is at any time in writing for any reason, the renewal is $35 rather than punitive, resalable kits are repurchased under contract, and statutory refund rights apply in six states and territories. The acquirer's plan also activates on four personal customer points rather than on self-purchase volume, which is a genuine structural improvement on the one it replaced.
kit price is from a single secondary review and is not confirmed in any company document; then $35 a year to renew, and an 80 BV monthly autoship - modeled at roughly $55–$90 - or 150 PBV a month to stay commission-qualified
- A published migration document. What a legacy rank converts to, what happens to a genealogy position, whether a residual stream survives, in writing from one of the two companies rather than inferred from which domain a link now resolves to.
- A current income disclosure. The last one located anywhere covers 2022 and its page now redirects, and the acquirer does not appear to publish a US disclosure at all, so the plan a person would join today has no published outcome attached to it.
- A median, alongside the average. Every statement It Works! ever published gave average, high and low and never a median, with a $15,441 high sitting inside the rank that held 85.13% of the field.
- A Fast Start that pays for customers. In the current plan, $1,840 of the $2,875 available - 64% of it - is paid for enrolling Partners with Ultimate Kits and for those Partners doing the same thing again.
That call is computed, not chosen - the rule reads three of the nine published dimension scores and is printed on the methodology page. It describes this company's plan and the figures it publishes about the people already in it. It is not a prediction about you, and nothing on this site is advice.
Legal status
LEGAL - no court or regulator has found It Works! to be a pyramid scheme, and no FTC enforcement action, complaint, consent order or civil penalty against the company could be located in any source reviewed. The file contains an FTC warning letter dated 24 April 2020, sent as part of the COVID-era sweep of multi-level marketers, which quoted earnings claims from the company’s own corporate social accounts as well as from distributors and required both to cease them within 48 hours - a compliance warning, not a finding of liability. It contains a Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council monitoring inquiry decided 30 October 2019, which is voluntary industry self-regulation carrying no fine, no injunction and no admission. It contains a putative independent-contractor misclassification class action filed 19 July 2023 in California, whose docket, certification status and outcome could not be verified - a filed complaint is an allegation and nothing more. And it contains a Better Business Bureau pattern-of-complaints alert currently displayed on two live profiles with a C+ rating and no accreditation, which is a private ratings body’s finding rather than a regulator’s. No state attorney general action and no foreign regulatory action were found - which is not the same as none existing.
Confidence: Medium
Primary sources fetched directly where possible. Everything we could not verify is listed at the bottom of this page by name.
Follow the money
A Florida weight-loss and personal-care company founded in 2001 by a former high-school teacher and his wife, built on a topical body applicator - the Ultimate Body Applicator, relaunched in 2021 as the Skinny Wrap - and later a broad supplement, coffee and skincare range, sold through US independent distributors on a unilevel plan with generational overrides at the Diamond ranks and above.
The single most important structural fact is that this is a post-peak business that shrank by roughly an order of magnitude before it changed hands. Revenue on record ran $27 million in 2010, $456 million in 2013 and $538 million in 2014, the peak on record. On 26 January 2026 the business was sold in a deal entered and closed the same day, and the buyer guided to over USD 60 million of additional revenue in 2026. That is roughly an 89% fall - and the qualification matters, because it is a comparison of a 2014 actual against a 2026 forward guide. No audited or company-confirmed revenue figure for any year between 2015 and 2025 could be located, and the buyer disclosed no trailing revenue in the deal announcement, its year-end report or its first interim report afterwards.
The price is the sentence a prospective participant should read twice. USD 30,000,000, settled entirely in newly issued shares through a directed set-off issue with no cash, plus an earn-out of up to USD 4,000,000 over five years also payable in paper. That is roughly half of one year’s forward revenue, for a 25-year-old consumer brand together with its inventory, its intellectual property, its distributor agreements, its customer agreements, its distributor database and its customer register. Healthy direct-selling assets transact at multiples of earnings, in cash or cash and stock. An all-paper deal at half of forward sales is the signature of a seller with limited alternatives and a buyer unwilling to put cash at risk on the asset’s durability.
What happened next was established here by direct observation on 29 July 2026 rather than from any company statement, because no company statement exists. itworks.com returns an HTTP 302 to the acquirer’s US site. The distributor back office does the same. myitworks.com/Legal/Income/ - the canonical address of the It Works! income disclosure statement - redirects to the acquirer’s US site, so the disclosure no longer resolves at its own address. And individual distributors’ replicated storefronts redirect to the acquirer’s generic US homepage rather than to any page crediting that distributor. The products survive as a brand-shop category inside the acquirer’s catalog, under the acquirer’s checkout. The only current US compensation plan on the acquirer’s public file library is its own, versioned 10-04-2026 - issued after the acquisition. The two plans were not merged; the legacy plan appears to have been retired.
That leaves the gap this grade turns on. Neither company has published a migration, conversion or grandfathering document. A distributor’s asset in this industry is a position in a genealogy under a specific set of rules; when the plan is replaced, rank is re-mapped at the acquirer’s discretion rather than by contract, the qualification metric changes from volume to personal customer points - which can strand builders whose volume came from their downline’s autoship rather than from personal customers - and residual streams tied to legacy generational bonuses have no guaranteed equivalent. The earn-out gives the acquirer a five-year incentive to grow sales, but no corresponding obligation to protect any individual’s income. The acquirer’s Q1 2026 interim report says only that it acquired the operations during the quarter and had not yet achieved full synergy effects: no distributor counts, no attrition data, no comp-plan commentary. Equity research on that quarter noted that the contribution from acquisitions seemed lower than the analyst had assumed.
Where distributors sat in 2022 - the last disclosure that exists
It Works!’ own 2022 income disclosure statement, as a share of all distributors. Income figures in that document are gross, before any expenses are deducted, and no median is published in any year. The published percentages sum to 100.02 through rounding and are reproduced here unaltered.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Distributor kit (required to enrol) The plan and the policies reference a Basic Kit and a Business Builder Kit without stating a price anywhere. This range comes from a single secondary review and is not confirmed in any company document. The Business Builder Kit is also the trigger condition for the Diamond Bonuses paid up five upline ranks. |
$99–$199 one-time |
— |
| Annual renewal Due on the anniversary date under the 1 March 2024 distributor agreement; non-payment within 30 days cancels the agreement automatically. As renewal fees in this industry go, $35 is genuinely low and it belongs in the credit column. |
$35 annual |
— |
| Monthly autoship to stay commission-qualified The plan requires an 80 BV monthly subscription, or 150 PBV of personal volume, or the kit purchase. The BV-to-dollar ratio is not published, so this dollar figure is modeled from current member prices - roughly one to two core products a month. |
~$55–$90/mo recurring |
— |
| Skinny Wrap (the signature product) Formerly the Ultimate Body Applicator, relaunched under this name in April 2021. The only independent adjudication of its claims described the depicted results as very modest and acceptable, and asked that they be disclosed as temporary. |
$78 retail / $55 member per unit |
~30% spread |
| TFXX (ThermoFight successor) The predecessor product is the one whose substantiation a self-regulatory body examined in 2019 and found satisfactorily conducted with reliable, statistically significant results - conditional on disclosing that study subjects followed a strict diet and exercise regimen. |
$64 retail / $45 member per unit |
~30% spread |
| It Works! Greens Multi At or above premium-retail benchmarks for a functionally comparable greens powder. The retail-to-member spread of roughly 30% is also the ceiling on a participant’s margin when selling at full retail price. |
$57 retail / $40 member per unit |
~30% spread |
| Keto Coffee One of several coffee SKUs in the current catalog at $64–$71 retail. Coffee is the category where the price gap against open-market alternatives is widest and the differentiation argument is hardest to make. |
$64 retail / $45 member per unit |
~30% spread |
| 30-Day Drop System Kit The largest bundle in the current catalog. Kit bundles generally carry subscription pricing between $31 and $130 a month, which is the practical shape of the autoship a qualified distributor holds. |
$253 retail / $125 subscription monthly bundle |
~50% spread |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
A former high-school teacher and basketball coach who started the business in 2001 and built it to a reported $538 million of revenue by 2014. No regulatory action, fraud judgment or criminal proceeding against him could be located in any source reviewed, and the trade press consistently described the company as debt-free and family-owned across its whole life - both of which cut in his favor relative to the median founder profile in this category. Trade press reported in July 2015 that he bought a private island for $14.5 million. That is a fact rather than an allegation, and it is recorded here only as context on where the margin went during the peak years, because the same year’s disclosure commentary put distributor expenses at roughly $1,000 annually against $937 of average gross income.
Co-founded the business with her husband in 2001 and has been a fixture of the founding narrative - teacher’s wife, spare room, first wraps - that a prospective distributor will meet in almost every recruiting presentation. No regulatory action, fraud judgment or criminal proceeding against her could be located. The Better Business Bureau officer list is not a corporate filing and may not reflect the January 2026 change of control; it is recorded here as indicative rather than authoritative.
The agreement was entered and closed on the same day. The structure was hybrid: an asset purchase of the US business - inventory, distributor agreements, customer agreements, IP, the distributor database and the customer register - plus a share purchase of 100% of the Irish international company. The fixed price was USD 30,000,000, settled entirely in newly issued B-shares through a directed set-off issue of 1,843,840 shares at SEK 145.62, with no cash. An earn-out of up to USD 4,000,000 over five years, contingent on sales performance, is also payable in shares. Total dilution to the buyer was 4.83% of shares and 2.24% of votes. The buyer guided to over USD 60 million of additional revenue in 2026, which values the whole enterprise at roughly half of one year’s forward sales.
The research asked specifically whether private equity had ever owned, recapitalised or taken a minority position in the business. Nothing was found across trade press, deal databases or the buyer’s investor materials, and the consistent description of the company as debt-free and family-owned argues against a recapitalisation having happened. The January 2026 announcement names no institutional seller. This report therefore asserts no private-equity involvement at any point - the honest position is that none was verified, not that a search proved a negative. The Pentecost family separately operates a holding vehicle, Pentecost Group, whose website could not be retrieved; the relationship between that vehicle and It Works! equity is not established here.
Registered address
Palmetto, Florida, USA
908 Riverside Drive, Palmetto, Florida - the address on both Better Business Bureau profiles, the first opened 25 April 2011 and the second 16 May 2013. The operating decisions no longer sit there. Since 26 January 2026 the business has been a subsidiary of a listed European direct seller already reviewed on this site, and its chief executive is the decision-maker for the combined group; the acquirer’s chief marketing officer holds the product-portfolio decision and has said publicly that the group will evaluate which of the acquired products suit its test-based nutrition strategy. The founder retains the title It Works! President and Founder, which is a brand-continuity role at a subsidiary of a foreign listed parent. One genuine consequence of that change is positive: the parent is audited and reports quarterly, so a prospective participant can now read group revenue, margin and profit figures that were never available while the business was private. The parent does not, however, break out It Works! separately, publish a US income disclosure statement, or disclose distributor counts or attrition. Florida Division of Corporations filings confirming the post-acquisition officers and registered agent could not be retrieved, so the officer list on the Better Business Bureau file - which still names the founders - may be stale.
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who legally owns it? |
CONCERN
Since 26 January 2026, a Nasdaq First North–listed Nordic direct-selling group that already appears on this site under its own review. The US business was bought as assets and the Irish international company by share purchase, for USD 30,000,000 entirely in stock. The founder retains the title of President and Founder.
|
| What does it really cost? |
WATCH
A kit reported at $99–$199 and unconfirmed in any company document, a $35 annual renewal, and an 80 BV monthly autoship or 150 PBV of personal volume to stay commission-qualified - modeled at roughly $795–$1,315 for a full year, before samples, events or travel.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
RED
Not since 2022, and that statement’s canonical page now redirects to the buyer. It showed 85.13% of all distributors at the entry rank averaging $87 a month gross with a low of $1, no median in any year, and expenses explicitly not deducted. The acquirer does not appear to publish a US income disclosure at all.
|
| Regulatory action against the company, ever? |
WATCH
No FTC enforcement action, complaint, consent order or civil penalty was located, and no state attorney general or foreign regulator action was found. The file contains an FTC warning letter dated 24 April 2020 from the COVID-era multi-level-marketing sweep, which quoted the company’s own corporate accounts on a $15,000 bonus - a compliance warning, not a finding of liability.
|
| What is the BBB posting? |
WATCH
A pattern-of-complaints alert reading "Business has failed to resolve underlying cause(s) of a pattern of complaints," displayed on two live profiles at C+ and not accredited. That is a private ratings body’s finding, carrying no legal force and no penalty. 34 complaints in three years is a low absolute number; the signal is recurrence, and the BBB publishes no date for the alert.
|
| Is the plan you would join today published? |
RED
No. The legacy plan was retired rather than merged, the only current US plan on file is the acquirer’s, versioned 10-04-2026, and no migration, conversion or grandfathering document has been published by either company. Rank re-mapping therefore happens at the acquirer’s discretion rather than by contract.
|
| Can you get your money back? |
OK
You can cancel at any time in writing for any reason. The policies commit to repurchasing resalable kits from a terminating distributor - the wording covers kits, not accumulated autoship inventory. Statutory refund rights apply in Maryland, Montana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Wyoming and Puerto Rico, and those are broader than the company’s own general policy.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
CONCERN
Historically a miner, with cash bonuses to five upline ranks triggered by a kit purchase plus the recruit’s own 30-day volume threshold. The current plan is more customer-anchored - activation on four personal customer points, direct-sale rates rising 10% to 30% - but 64% of its Fast Start is still paid for enrolling kit-buying Partners.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Enrol and hold the business for one year | $134–$234 kit at $99–$199, unconfirmed, plus the $35 renewal |
| Stay commission-qualified every month for a year | ~$660–$1,080 80 BV autoship modeled at $55–$90 a month from current member prices |
| Cover the full qualification cost from retail margin alone | ~$2,650–$4,400 of retail sales at the roughly 30% retail-to-member spread, before shipping and samples |
| Beat the entry-rank average from commissions | more than $1,044 a year gross $87 a month at the rank where 85.13% of distributors sat in 2022, expenses not netted |
Read this twice
This arithmetic comes from two published documents and one modeled input, and the modeled input is flagged. Published: the $35 annual renewal in the 1 March 2024 distributor agreement; the 80 BV monthly subscription or 150 PBV alternative in the compensation plan; the 2022 income disclosure showing 85.13% of all distributors at the entry rank with an average monthly gross of $87 and a low of $1; and the current catalog, where member prices on core products run $31 to $58. Modeled: the dollar value of 80 BV, because the company does not publish the BV-to-dollar ratio anywhere in the public plan document. On the member price list, one to two core products a month puts the autoship at roughly $55 to $90, so a full year of qualification costs roughly $795 to $1,315 including the renewal. Set that against $1,044 of gross income at the entry-rank average and the typical participant is inside the cost band before a single sample, event ticket, flight or advertisement. The company corroborates this from its own side twice over: the disclosure commentary in 2015 acknowledged distributor expenses of around $1,000 a year against $937 of average gross income, and the current disclosure footnote says expenses can be several hundred or thousands of dollars annually. Three fairness points belong here. The 80 BV can in principle be met by genuine customer orders rather than self-purchase, and someone with a real Loyal Customer base is not spending that money at all. The $35 renewal is genuinely low by the standards of this industry. And cancellation is available at any time, in writing, for any reason. The problem is not that the entry price is punitive - it is not - but that the ongoing qualification cost sits on top of the typical gross outcome rather than under it, and that no disclosure published since 2022 lets anyone check whether that is still the shape of it.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
Thirty per cent retail on a customer spending about $65 a month, against the roughly $90 a month it costs to stay qualified. Two warnings the slider cannot show: the legacy plan was retired rather than merged and no migration or grandfathering terms have been published, so the payout rules modeled here are the last documented ones rather than the current ones; and the most recent income disclosure is 2022, which put the 85.13% at entry rank on an average of $87 a month gross. Your own subscription cost of $90/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
Current catalog prices verified 29 July 2026 against typical open-market equivalents at comparable positioning. Comparators are bands, because formulations and serving counts differ and because the honest criticism of this range is not that the products are bad but that nothing in them is hard to buy elsewhere for less. Note that the body wrap has no true open-market equivalent with an evidence base behind it - the comparison there is against the category, not against a matched product.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| Skinny Wrap - $78 retail / $55 member | Drugstore or salon body-contouring wrap kit, comparable count | ~$15–$30 |
| TFXX thermogenic - $64 / $45 | Green-tea and caffeine thermogenic from a mainstream supplement brand | ~$18–$32 |
| It Works! Greens Multi - $57 / $40 | Third-party-tested greens powder, same servings | ~$20–$35 |
| Collagen Ultra - $53 / $37 | Hydrolysed bovine or marine collagen, same grams | ~$18–$28 |
| Keto Coffee - $64 / $45 | MCT-and-butter instant coffee sachets from an open-market brand | ~$22–$35 |
| Simplypure shampoo and conditioner - $47 / $33 each | Salon-brand sulphate-free shampoo and conditioner | ~$16–$28 each |
| It Works! Cleanse - $62 / $44 | Two-day herbal cleanse from a mainstream retailer | ~$15–$25 |
| 30-Day Drop System Kit - $253 retail / $125 subscription | Assembling the equivalent from open-market components | ~$60–$110 |
| 80 BV monthly autoship to stay qualified - ~$660–$1,080/yr | Buying only what you use, when you use it | $0 |
| $35 annual renewal | No renewal, no rank, no qualification month | $0 |
| Total as sold ~$1,000–$1,500 in year one |
Total, built yourself ~$200–$450 of comparable consumables |
Price-to-value
Roughly a two-to-three-times premium at the individual SKU level, which is what third-party commentary reports and what the list price supports. That premium is defensible in principle if the product does something the alternative does not - and for exactly one item in this range there is real evidence, because a self-regulatory body examined the thermogenic substantiation and found it reliable and statistically significant. It is much harder to defend for a greens powder, a collagen, a shampoo or a coffee. The structural gap is bigger than the per-unit one: the $35 renewal and the 80 BV monthly autoship convert a product preference into roughly $800–$1,300 of committed annual spend, against an entry-rank average of $87 a month gross. And the products can now simply be bought from the acquirer’s brand shop by anyone, with no kit, no renewal and no qualification month.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Product-first distributor
joins mainly for member pricing, buys what she uses, two or three friends as Loyal Customers
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 14% | −$210 |
| 6 mo | 16% | −$330 |
| 1 yr | 17% | −$520 |
| 3 yr | 17% | −$1,200 |
| 5 yr | 17% | −$1,900 |
Part-time wrap seller
10 hrs/wk, a Loyal Customer list plus some enrolling, holds the 80 BV autoship
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 9% | −$480 |
| 6 mo | 12% | −$820 |
| 1 yr | 14% | −$1,400 |
| 3 yr | 15% | −$3,600 |
| 5 yr | 15% | −$5,500 |
Full-time builder
30+ hrs/wk, kit-based enrolling, events and travel, driving the Diamond bonuses
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 4% | −$1,200 |
| 6 mo | 7% | −$2,300 |
| 1 yr | 10% | −$4,100 |
| 3 yr | 13% | −$9,800 |
| 5 yr | 13% | −$14,000 |
Methodology note. ANCHORED to It Works!’ own 2022 income disclosure statement: 85.13% of all distributors at the entry rank with an average monthly gross of $87 and a low of $1; Executive at $407 average, Ruby $660, Emerald $1,186, Diamond $2,806, Double Diamond $5,367, Triple Diamond $9,551, Presidential Diamond $13,481 and Ambassador Diamond $23,226; Ambassador Diamond representing 0.14% of all distributors and taking on average 48 months to reach; 4.50% receiving zero income; and the statement’s own words that these are gross figures before any expenses are deducted and that expenses can be several hundred or thousands of dollars annually. Anchored also to the published cost side: the $35 annual renewal, the 80 BV or 150 PBV monthly qualification, the roughly 30% retail-to-member spread and the current member price list. MODELED by us: the dollar value of 80 BV, because the BV-to-dollar ratio is not published; the kit at $99–$199, which comes from a single secondary source; the expense side beyond renewal and autoship, because the company names expense categories without ever costing them; the share of each cohort in cumulative profit; and the cohort definitions, which the company does not segment. Two further cautions specific to this report. First, no median has ever been published in any year, so these medians are ours and not the company’s - with a $15,441 high sitting inside the bottom rank, the published average is not a safe proxy for the typical outcome. Second, and more importantly, the disclosure these tables rest on is now four years old and describes a compensation plan that has since been retired. Nothing here models the acquirer’s plan, because no income disclosure for it exists.
Where you are actually allowed to promote this
Platform policy reads, not verifications. Check every one before you spend a dollar - enforcement changes faster than the written policy does.
Red flags and green flags
Red flags
151The whole enterprise cleared for $30 million of paper, with no cash
2Roughly an 89% fall from the peak on record
3The entire web estate now redirects to the buyer
4The compensation plan participants signed up for has been retired
5No migration, conversion or grandfathering document exists publicly
6No income disclosure statement for the three most recent full years
7No median has ever been published, in any year
8Entry-rank gross income sits inside the cost of staying qualified
9A Better Business Bureau pattern-of-complaints alert, live on two profiles
10Recruitment-triggered cash bonuses in both the old plan and the new one
11A documented gap between the written policy and the observed practice
12GLP-1 medicines are compressing this category structurally, not cyclically
13Mandatory arbitration with an express class-action waiver
14The repurchase obligation is worded around kits, not inventory
15The buyer has expressly reserved the right to cull the product line
Green flags
91A self-regulatory body substantiated one core product claim
2The wrap claims were not found false
3Twenty-five years founder-owned, and described throughout as debt-free
4A low entry price, a low renewal, and cancellation at any time
5A genuinely strict written compliance policy
6A real non-distributor customer class existed
7It published unusually granular income disclosures for many years
8The parent is listed, audited and reports quarterly
9The acquirer’s plan is more customer-anchored than the legacy plan
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Publication of a migration document specifying exactly how legacy rank, genealogy position and residual income convert into the current plan, with any grandfathering terms stated - the single largest available upgrade, because it is the absence that caps this grade.
- A current US income disclosure statement covering 2025 or 2026 under the new ownership, ideally with a median, a net-of-expenses figure and a cohort-based first-year retention and earnings breakdown, plus a disclosed customer-to-distributor ratio.
- Resolution of the Better Business Bureau pattern-of-complaints alert with the rating moving into the A range on either profile, alongside a dismissal or defense verdict in the July 2023 misclassification action with the docket public.
Downward
- Discontinuation or material culling of the It Works! product line by the acquirer - already expressly reserved in its chief marketing officer’s statement that the group will evaluate which acquired products suit its strategy.
- Evidence that legacy distributors lost rank, residuals or genealogy position in the migration without compensation, or failure of the five-year earn-out or a write-down of the acquisition in the parent’s audited accounts.
- Any FTC, state attorney general or foreign regulator enforcement action as distinct from the 2020 warning letter, class certification in the misclassification action, or continued non-publication of an income disclosure into 2027.
Grade is D−. Real product substantiation on one item and a genuinely cheap entry, attached to a business that fell roughly 89% from peak, sold for $30 million of stock, and whose current terms are not published anywhere.
Start with what is actually good, because it is real and it is unusual. In 2019 a self-regulatory body examined the substantiation behind the ThermoFight X weight-loss claim and found the underlying study satisfactorily conducted, producing reliable, statistically significant results - asking only that future claims disclose that subjects followed a strict diet and exercise regimen. In the same decision it declined to call the body-wrap claims false, describing the depicted results as very modest and acceptable and asking that they be labeled temporary. The company was founder-owned for twenty-five years, consistently described as debt-free, with no private-equity recapitalisation traceable and no regulatory action, fraud judgment or criminal proceeding against either founder anywhere. The entry economics were mild by the standards of this industry: a kit reported at $99 to $199, a $35 annual renewal, cancellation at any time in writing, statutory buybacks in six jurisdictions, an express bonus-buying ban and a 70% rule. None of that is window dressing.
The economics of participating are where it turns. The 2022 income disclosure - the last one that exists anywhere - puts 85.13% of all distributors at the entry rank, where the average monthly gross was $87 and the low was $1. Annualised that is $1,044, against a modeled $795 to $1,315 a year to hold the $35 renewal and the 80 BV monthly autoship, before samples, events, travel or advertising. The company says in terms that its figures are gross before any expenses are deducted and that expenses can run to several hundred or thousands of dollars annually; its own 2015 commentary put them at roughly $1,000 against $937 of average gross income. No median has ever been published, and with a $15,441 high sitting inside the bottom rank the average is not a safe proxy. In the 2019 self-regulatory proceeding the company’s own regulator-facing figure was an average distributor earning $51 a month. Ambassador Diamond, where the headline incomes live, is 0.14% of all distributors and takes on average forty-eight months to reach.
And then the file simply stops. On 26 January 2026 the business was sold for USD 30,000,000 in shares, no cash, with a five-year earn-out also in paper, against a buyer guide of over USD 60 million of additional revenue - roughly half of one year’s forward sales for the brand, the IP, the inventory, the distributor agreements, the customer agreements and both databases. By 29 July 2026 itworks.com, the back office, the income-disclosure page and individual distributors’ replicated storefronts all returned an HTTP 302 to the acquirer’s US site, verified directly here. The only current US compensation plan on file is the acquirer’s, versioned after the acquisition, built on a different structure and a different qualification metric. Neither company has published a migration, conversion or grandfathering document. Equity research on the first quarter inside the group noted the contribution from acquisitions seemed lower than modeled. So a person considering this today would be joining an opportunity whose rules are unpublished, whose payout has not been disclosed since 2022, and whose product category is being compressed by GLP-1 medicines. That is the cap, and it is why the grade sits a band below its arithmetic.
Buy the one product with real substantiation, as a customer
If the thermogenic is what you actually want, it is now available from the acquirer’s brand shop like any other consumer good - no kit, no $35 renewal, no 80 BV autoship, no qualification month and no rank. That is the honest version of this relationship for almost everyone who currently holds a distributorship for the discount. The one claim in this range that an independent body examined and did not find empty is a claim about a product, not about an opportunity.
Before enrolling, ask for the migration terms in writing
Ask whoever is recruiting you three questions and get the answers in a document: which compensation plan governs the account you are being asked to open; what happens to rank, genealogy position and residual income earned under the legacy plan; and where the current income disclosure statement is published. If the answer to the third is a 2022 PDF whose canonical page redirects, you have learned what you need to know. A plan you cannot read is a plan you cannot underwrite.
Do the $87-against-$795 sum before you sign anything
Both sides of it are on the record. $87 a month gross at the rank where 85.13% of distributors sat, against $795 to $1,315 a year to stay qualified - and the company states that expenses are not netted. The question is not whether anyone can win; 0.14% reached the top rank and took four years to do it. The question is what specific reason you have to believe you are not the modal participant. Write it down and be honest about whether it is a plan or a hope.
Sell into the category without the plan
Search demand around weight management, GLP-1 side effects, protein and fibre intake, and what body wraps actually do is enormous and rising, and almost none of it is well served. Honest, sourced comparison content - including on the temporary-results finding, which a distributor is contractually restricted from discussing freely - is a merchant business with genuine demand. It requires no kit, no renewal, no monthly volume, no arbitration clause, and no permission to speak to a journalist.
Nine dimensions, weighted
Dimension profile
Further from center is better. Hover any point.
Hard caps that bind here
The lowest binding cap wins, regardless of the weighted arithmetic.
What we read
Every source below links to the document itself. Tier 1 is a primary record - the company’s own plan, policy or disclosure, a court filing, a regulator’s decision or an SEC filing. Tier 2 is a self-regulatory or secondary regulator record, tier 3 reporting or academic work, tier 4 an open-market price comparison. Where a document can be moved or withdrawn, an archived copy is linked beside it. If a link is dead when you try it, that is a correction we want.
- It Works! 2022 Income Disclosure Statement, United States (PDF, chart-income-disclosure-2022-color-US-EN)
It Works! 2022 Income Disclosure Statement (chart-income-disclosure-2022, US EN) - 85.13% of all distributors at the entry rank; entry-rank high $15,441, low $1, average $87 a month; per-rank averages from $407 at Executive to $23,226 at Ambassador Diamond; Ambassador Diamond 0.14% of all distributors at an average 48 months to reach; 4.50% receiving zero income; average monthly income across all distributors $304; income stated as gross before any expenses are deducted, with expenses described as potentially several hundred or thousands of dollars annually
- It Works! income disclosure landing page (myitworks.com/Legal/Income/)
- It Works! 2021 Income Disclosure Statement, United States (PDF, chart-income-disclosure-2021-us-en-001)
It Works! 2021 Income Disclosure Statement - entry rank 85.24% of all distributors, average $57 a month, low $1; 3.63% earning nothing; average monthly income across all distributors $202; identical gross-not-net and expense language, supplying the year-on-year trend
- It Works! Marketing, Inc. United States Compensation Plan, document reference cmp-compplan-us-en-009 (PDF)
It Works! Compensation Plan (doc ref cmp-compplan-us-en-009) - commission qualification via Business Builder Kit, 150 PBV or an 80 BV monthly autoship; unilevel at 10% on levels 1–2 and 5% on levels 3–5; 5% enroller bonus on personally enrolled distributors and Loyal Customers; $100 Fast Start; Diamond Bonuses of $80/$40/$15/$10/$5 up five ranks; generational overrides from Diamond upward; Loyal Customer three-month autoship and the $600 monthly Loyal Customer Bonus at 60 customers plus 3,000 PBV; rank maintenance volumes from 4,000 GV at Ruby
- It Works! Marketing, Inc. United States Compensation Plan, later document reference cmp-compplan-us-en-019 (PDF)
- It Works! Independent Distributor Agreement Terms & Conditions, United States, version 1 March 2024
It Works! Distributor Agreement Terms and Conditions, United States, version 1 March 2024 - §2.4 the $35 annual renewal due on the anniversary with automatic cancellation after 30 days; §3.6.4 the income-claims prohibition and the single exception for posting actual weekly bonus emails; §15 cancellation at any time in writing for any reason
- It Works!® United States Statement of Policies and Procedures, effective 21 July 2015 (PDF)
It Works! US Statement of Policies and Procedures, version 21 July 2015 - the prohibition on selling through blogs, chat rooms, social networks and online forums; replicated-website-only web presence; the media-contact prohibition; disease-claim ban and mandatory testimonial pre-approval; the 70% rule; the bonus-buying prohibition; §7.3 resalable-kit repurchase; §8.5 arbitration and §8.9 class-action waiver; state-mandated refunds in Maryland, Montana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Wyoming and Puerto Rico
- FTC warning letter to It Works! Marketing, Inc., 24 April 2020 (PDF)
FTC warning letter to It Works! Marketing, Inc., 24 April 2020, and the accompanying FTC press release on the multi-level-marketing warning-letter sweep - quoting the company’s own corporate accounts ("earning $500 a month", "she earned herself that $15,000 bonus") and distributor posts, and requiring both to cease all express and implied earnings claims immediately with a response within 48 hours; no enforcement action, complaint, consent order or civil penalty located
- FTC legal library entry - Warning Letter to It Works Marketing, Inc.
- FTC press release, “FTC Sends Warning Letters to Multi-Level Marketers Regarding Health and Earnings Claims They or Their Participants Are Making Related to Coronavirus,” 24 April 2020
- FTC business-guidance blog, “New FTC warning letters cite unsupported Coronavirus-related health and earnings claims,” April 2020
- DSSRC Case #7-2019 - Monitoring Inquiry, It Works! (decided 30 October 2019)
Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council Case #7-2019, monitoring inquiry, decided 30 October 2019 - the ThermoFight X substantiation found satisfactorily conducted with reliable, statistically significant results subject to a strict-diet-and-exercise disclosure; body-wrap results found very modest and acceptable subject to a temporary-results disclosure; earnings testimonials found materially misleading against an average distributor earning $51 a month; the company denying any violation and citing a robust compliance program
- IT Works! Global, Inc. - BBB Business Profile, Palmetto, Florida (file 0653-90096201)
Better Business Bureau profiles 0653-90096201 (BBB of West Florida, file opened 25 April 2011) and 0107-1294562 (BBB Serving Central Ontario, file opened 16 May 2013), both at 908 Riverside Drive, Palmetto, Florida, checked 29 July 2026 - pattern-of-complaints alert live on both, C+ rating, not accredited, 34 complaints in three years and 5 closed in twelve months; complaint themes covering billing and cancellation, efficacy, adverse reactions including elevated liver enzymes, refund delays, and undisclosed three-month subscription lock-in; no posting date published for the alert
- It Works Global - BBB Business Profile, file 0107-1294562 (BBB Serving Central Ontario)
- IT Works! Global, Inc. - BBB complaints detail (file 0653-90096201)
- Zinzino AB (publ) Year-End Report 2025 (PDF) - records the 26 January 2026 It Works! asset acquisition, USD 30m in 1,843,840 B-shares at SEK 145.62, USD 4m earn-out and the USD 60m+ 2026 revenue estimate
Acquirer’s Year-End Report 2025 and acquisition releases of 26 January 2026 (PR Newswire and Cision), plus its Q1 2026 interim report and third-party equity research on that quarter - deal entered and closed 26 January 2026; asset purchase of the US business plus 100% of the Irish international company; USD 30,000,000 fixed price settled in 1,843,840 B-shares at SEK 145.62 with no cash; earn-out to USD 4,000,000 over five years in shares; dilution 4.83% of shares and 2.24% of votes; guidance of over USD 60 million of additional 2026 revenue; "not yet achieved full synergy effects"; research noting the contribution from acquisitions seemed lower than assumed
Not established by this document: The third-party equity research note on the acquirer’s Q1 2026 (the “contribution from acquisitions seemed lower than assumed” observation) could not be located at a public, non-paywalled URL; the acquirer’s primary reports and the acquisition releases are cited instead.
- Zinzino AB (publ) press release, “Zinzino announces merger of It Works! into the Zinzino family of businesses,” 26 January 2026 (Cision)
- Same acquisition release distributed via PR Newswire, 26 January 2026
- Zinzino AB (publ) Interim Report Q1 2026 (PDF)
- Zinzino AB (publ) Annual Report 2025 (PDF)
What we could not get
- It Works! revenue for any year from 2015 to 2025 - no audited, company-confirmed or buyer-disclosed figure exists, so the roughly 89% decline in this report is peak-to-forward-guidance rather than peak-to-actual and is labeled as such throughout
- The current active distributor count - the widely repeated "over 150,000" figure is undated, company-supplied trade-press content, and no active-seller count from any period after 2015 could be verified; a count that rises while revenue collapses usually describes a cumulative enrollment roster rather than active sellers
- Whether distributors were migrated or grandfathered, and on what terms - no migration, conversion or grandfathering document from either company was located, and no company statement confirms whether the two plans were merged or the legacy plan simply retired; the conclusion here is inferred from live-domain behavior and plan versioning
- Any income disclosure statement for 2023, 2024 or 2025; the median earnings figure in any year, which the company has never published; and any net-of-expenses earnings figure, which the company explicitly does not calculate
- The distributor kit price - the $99–$199 range comes from a single secondary review and appears in no company document; the plan and policies reference a Basic Kit and a Business Builder Kit without pricing either. The BV-to-dollar ratio in the legacy plan and the credits-to-dollar ratio for kits in the current plan are likewise unpublished, so every autoship figure here is modeled
- The docket number, court, certification status and outcome of the July 2023 independent-contractor misclassification class action, and the substance and outcome of It Works Marketing, Inc. v. Martin (M.D. Fla. 8:24-cv-00329, filed 2 February 2024, an arbitration matter with the company as plaintiff) - no characterisation of either is offered here beyond the fact that they were filed
- The date the Better Business Bureau pattern-of-complaints alert was posted or last updated - the BBB displays no date on either profile and archived snapshots were unreachable, so this report states only that the alert is currently displayed
- Private-equity involvement at any point, which was searched for and not found; event and convention costs, for which no pricing schedule exists; Trustpilot ratings, both profiles returning 403 to automated retrieval; Florida corporate filings confirming post-acquisition officers and registered agent; and whether the acquirer has issued replacement policies and procedures to former It Works! distributors - the most recent policies located are dated 21 July 2015
Not advice
This is independent analysis for decision-making, not legal, financial or investment advice. Allegations reported by third parties should be verified against primary court and regulatory records before any decision.
Researched by Claude. Reviewed by an editor.
Every report is researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, from the company’s own plan documents, policies, terms and regulatory file - then reviewed before publication by Rob Fore, who checks the sources and the stage-label on every allegation.
- Nine weighted dimensions, published with their weights
- The editor checks the evidence and cannot change the number - the build rejects any page whose grade does not reconcile to its own arithmetic
- Every affiliate position we hold is disclosed on the report it touches
- No company has paid for a grade, and no report carries an affiliate link
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It Works! - frequently asked
QIs It Works! still in business in 2026?
QHow much do It Works! distributors actually earn?
QIs It Works! a pyramid scheme?
QWhat happened to It Works! distributors after the acquisition?
QWhat is the FTC warning letter and the BBB rating about?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - It Works!’s own compensation plan, its policies and procedures, its terms of service, its income disclosure statement where one exists, and its regulatory and self-regulatory file. It was scored against nine weighted dimensions that are published in full, with their weights, on the methodology page.
Before publication it was reviewed by Rob Fore, who checks every source link, every figure against the document it came from, and every allegation against its stage-label - an investigation is not a finding, a warning letter is not an enforcement action, and a filed claim is not a verdict.
The editor does not set the grade. The published score is the weighted composite of the nine dimension scores, and the build refuses to emit a page where the two disagree by more than 0.06. A grade moves when the evidence moves it and not otherwise.
Rob Fore has marketed online since 1996, wrote Online MLM Marketing (2014), and is CEO of Listech Inc, the Nevada corporation that publishes this site. He holds affiliate positions in companies graded here - including LiveGood, which this site grades D, SendOutCards, which it grades C−, and the Home Business Academy, which it grades B−. Those positions are disclosed on the reports they touch, and changed nothing on this page.
About the author and our conflicts · Contact the editor · Corrections: corrections@opportunitygrade.com
Tell me if this grade changes
It Works! is graded D- as of July 29, 2026. Grades move when the evidence moves - a new income disclosure, a regulatory action, a rewritten compensation plan. Leave your address and you will get one email if this one does.
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Corrections
Every factual claim on this page is sourced, and the ones we could not stand up are named in the unable to verify list above. If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather hear it from It Works! than from a reader.
Write to corrections@opportunitygrade.com. Point at the specific sentence and send the document that contradicts it - a plan document, a filing, an income disclosure, a policy page. We will check it against the primary source, correct the page if it is wrong, and say in the report that it was corrected and when. A grade moves if the evidence moves it.
This address reaches a person, not a form. We do not require a takedown demand, an NDA or a lawyer to accept a correction, and we do not remove a report because a company disputes its conclusion - only because the underlying facts turn out to be wrong.