After the presentation, Leebardt and Arbonne International independent consultant Claudia Shelton chat about orders on the living room floor.

Photos by Mamta Popat / Arizona Daily Star

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Foothills resident Donna Sneed has a full-time job, cares for her husband, is an active member of her church and even makes time to attend every UA home basketball game.

And 15 months ago, she decided to take a second job.

Sneed became one of the almost 14 million Americans, 80 percent of whom are women, who make a living selling products from their homes. And she's not alone in the Foothills, where at private homes everything from skin-care products to sex toys are being peddled every week.

Once limited to the marketing of a few kinds of items at events such as Tupperware parties, the field of direct selling has grown to become almost a $30 billion industry, according to the Direct Selling Association, a national trade group.

For Sneed, who sells Doncaster fashions out of her home, the business offered flexibility that allowed her to work it into her already packed schedule.

"This I something a person can do and enjoy while she's also taking care of the other things in her life."

Nicole Woolsey Biggart, dean of the School of Management at the University of California-Davis, says the popularity of direct selling "reflects lack of opportunities for part-time, flexible work for women."

Biggart has written a book on the industry and follows its trends.

"It's a reality of women's lives that they do a disproportionate amount of housework and child raising," she says. "This allows them to be part of the economy."

Full-time pay, part-time work

According to Sneed, the time crunch affecting women's lives also drives many of her sales. A lot of her customers, she says, are professional women who don't have the time to spend an afternoon going from store to store in search of the perfect outfit.

Like Sneed, Foothills resident Claudia Shelton has a full-time job and sells things at in-home parties. An independent consultant for Arbonne International, a company that sells skin-care products, Shelton teaches music to elementary-school children during the school year.

In the future she sees herself becoming a stay-at-home mom and continuing to pull in an income through Arbonne — at her home or at other people's homes.

"They know me and my personality," Shelton says of the response she gets from customers. "They know I'm being genuine when I get excited about a product."

It was the allure of spending more time with her daughter that attracted Kim Webb to direct sales five years ago. Webb, who used to work full-time cleaning houses, now hosts sex-toy parties at her customer's homes, many in the Foothills.

She says she now makes "full-time money" by working barely more than 20 hours in a week. With money earned from her new job, she's bought a house and a new truck. She also has enough free time to paint and become a fixture in her daughter's life.

No wonder she calls the job "completely empowering."

"I'm being paid to be a stay-at-home mom," she says.

Flexible hours a selling point

Many women are making the same choices as Webb. The company she works for, Pure Romance, has 48 consultants in Tucson alone. Webb says sex toys — especially those marketed to women — are a perfect item for the direct-sales market, because most women would rather buy them in the safety and comfort of their own homes.

Edi Andersen, who lives in the Foothills and sells jewelry for a company called Silpada Designs, initially got into the business, at least in part, because she liked the idea of getting a discount when she bought items for herself. Once she got started, however, her involvement grew to the point where she cut back on her day job as a legal secretary in order to spend more time selling.

Even though the freedom and free time weren't the reasons Andersen got into the business, she still appreciates them.

"This has been a great way for me to have flexible hours while I make a lot of money," she says.

Sneed believes most other women would also appreciate these freedoms. She'll admit that her life is busy, but she doesn't think that makes her different.

"You could speak to any woman anywhere," Sneed says, "and she'd say the same thing."