Thirty-One Gifts Is Closing Its Doors in December, but Why Is the Brand Disappearing?

Current and former consultants at Thirty-One Gifts are spreading the word that the direct sales company is closing its doors. The news that Thirty-One is closing was a surprise to many who had either worked with the company or purchased its products.

Naturally, it led many of those people to wonder why the company was shuttering and whether they had released any statement explaining the news. Here's what we know about the closure, and how word of it is currently spreading.

The only reason we actually know that Thirty-One is closing is because word of the closure is spreading on platforms like TikTok and Reddit. As of this writing, the company has not publicly announced that they are shuttering, but they seem to have told consultants who are currently working for them that the company will be closing down on Dec. 31. Of course, consultants will still have the products they already purchased, but they won't be able to order any more.

We don't know for sure exactly why the company is closing its doors, but one Redditor suggested that it was a combination of low sales and private equity debt.

As a TikTok user pointed out, this announcement will leave many of the people who sold on behalf of the company down a source of potential income just as the holidays come around.

In a comment on Reddit, one consultant wrote: "The field was given about a 30 minute warning yesterday 10/22 that there would be a webinar at 12:30 pm ET. The founder/CEO Cindy Monroe did a pre-recorded video explaining that the company would close effectively 12/31. The field has only been given broad strokes on how the next 8 weeks will go as consultants’ websites will go dark on 12/16."

While we don't know exactly what happened inside the company, it seems pretty clear that the announcement was not something that had been planned for weeks. Thirty-One's fairly sudden closure definitely leaves many people in the lurch, even as others were commenting that they actually put out good products, but had not released anything new in several years.

While many people enjoy working for companies like Thirty-One, there are also plenty of stories of companies like this preying on people who are convinced to buy the company's products and then discover that it is more difficult to sell them than they'd been led to believe.

Multi-level marketing can be a great way to earn extra cash, but it's a system of direct sales that can leave some people high and dry. As we mourn the company's death, it's worth remembering that uncomfortable fact as well. Thirty-One is far from alone in this regard, though, and clearly there were things many Thirty-One consultants enjoyed about working for the company.