Shaklee was one of those "pyramid sales" things like Amway and Mary Kay that are now called Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) schemes. They did sell actual products to customers (Shaklee sold cleaning products but also vitamins and "nutritional supplements") but aside from that straightforward corner store idea the push was to set up "Levels" of sales and the members were encouraged to recruit their customer base to become the strata in a "sales pyramid structure". It worked well (at least for a time) for those that were at the peak of their pyramid...not so much for the lower levels.

I admit my take on this is biased cause my Mom was a Shaklee member when I was a kid. If there was a Golden Path to economic success and independence she didn't find it with Shaklee!

The Shaklee HQ in downtown SF is now mostly empty AFAIK. There are coffee and cookie vendors at the street level, but nothing up in the many floors above...so they went belly-up many years ago and the riches may have been enjoyed by a few, but not much if any lasting value.