Amway 2012 – by the numbers


  • $11.3 Billion in Sales
  • Sales Increased 12 of the Last 13 Years
  • All Top 10 Markets Grew
  • $3.5 Billion in Bonuses & Incentives
  • 55,264 New Pin Qualifiers
  • 18,982 New Platinums
  • 53,200 Incentive Trip Qualifiers
  • 2.5 Million Volunteer Hours
  • More than $166 Million Donated
  • Nutrilite is the World”s #1 Selling Vitamin & Dietary Supplements Brand
  • Artistry is Among the Worlds Top 5 Largest Selling Premium Skin Care Brand
  • eSpring is the World’s #1 Largest-Selling Brand of Kitchen Water Treatment Systems
  • Atmosphere is the World’s #1 Largest-Selling Brand of Residential Air Treatment Systems
  • More Than 21,000 Employees Globally
  • More than 1,000 Patents Granted and 800 Patents Pending
  • More Than 900 Scientists and Technicians
  • 65 R&D Labs
  • Amway Paid Out More Bonuses & Cash Incentives to Its Distributors and Business Owners Worldwide Than Any Other Direct Sales Company
  • More People Renewed Their Amway Business Than Any Other Direct Selling Company in the World.

MLM has too many middlemen?

One of the claims of critics of the multi-level marketing model is that due to having paying the independent distributors, there’s too many “middlemen” to be able to distribute products efficiently, thus it forces the prices of MLM products to be too high. Well, if you’ve been paying attention to European news in the past week, there’s been a great example showing how MLM critics aren’t just ignorant of the MLM model – they’re ignorant of business models in general.

What’s happened is that it was discovered that some pre-packaged food products, such as lasagne, being sold in supermarkets around Europe contained horse meat instead of the advertised beef. Following the trail of blame shows just how many middlemen there are involved in “traditional” supply and distribution -

  1. The customers are upset at
  2. The supermarkets who are upset at
  3. Findus (brand) who blames their supplier

  4. Comigel (manufacturer) who blames their supplier

  5. Spanghero (meat processer) who blames their

  6. agent in Cyprus who blames their

  7. agent in the Netherlands who blames

  8. abattoirs in Romania who bought

  9. the horse meat off local farmers

So to get the product (meat) to the customers, there are at least 8 different middlemen, including at least 3 in the distribution chainIndeed there’s almost certainly more, such as transport companies, local wharehouses. advertising companies, legal and accounting firms and more. All of these get paid out the final price of the product as paid by the consumer.

How does it work in Amway? Well, back in the 1970s when the FTC investigated (and cleared) Amway, they found -

43. Currently about half of all Amway distributors were sponsored by a Direct Distributor or by a distributor sponsored by a Direct Distributor. More than 70% were within three positions of a Direct Distributor and 99% were within seven positions. (RX 423)

So for half of all distributors, it went -

  1. distributor
  2. direct distributor
  3. Amway (manufacturer)

So just 3 levels of “middlemen” for half of all transactions in the distribution chain, and only two when you consider the distributor as customer, which is a common scenario. That compares to 3+ levels in the distribution channel for the Findus product – and then you have 5 levels in the supply chain. How long is the supply chain for Nutrilite, Amway’s largest brand? Amway is the supplier, they own their own farms which supply their core ingredients. Yes there’ll be some suppliers for other ingredients, but it’s nowhere near the total of 8 levels in the supply and distribution chain for the lasagne.

MLM critics – not just ignorant about Amway and the MLM model.

Official: Amway reports record 2012 sales of $11.3 billion

I reported a few weeks back that according to a Thai newspaper report Amway had recorded 12 billion in sales last year. As I noted on the article shortly after it was published, a reliable source indicated it wasn’t accurate. That source proved to be correct and the official sales figures have now been released – a still impressive US$11.3 billion. This confirms Amway as overtaking Avon as the world’s #1 direct selling company. 2012 marks Amway’s seventh consecutive year of growth, and for the first time in 20 years there was growth in all of Amway’s top 10 markets , which include China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Russia, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine and the United States. Markets posting double-digit increases in 2012 included Colombia, Hong Kong, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Turkey and Venezuela.

Nutrilite again led sales, accounting for 45 percent of Amway’s sales. It continues to be the world’s #1 selling vitamin and dietary supplement brand. Beauty brands – including Artistry, BeautyCycle, Attitude, and Moiskin – generated 26 percent of sales. Home products, including Amway’s well known cleaning products and the world’s #1 selling point-of-use home water treatment system, eSpring, accounted for 22 percent of sales.

Amway Sales Data
note: prior to 1999 Amway reported “estimated retail sales”, ie the sales value if all product were sold at recommended retail price. Since restructuring under the parent company Alticor, actual revenue from sales to distributors are reported. Estimated actual revenues for earlier years are included for comparison.

What do Jennifer Lopez, Kaoru Nakajima, Doug DeVos, and Bill Clinton have in common?

They were all headline acts at an Amway event in Osaka, Japan last weekend!

Jennifer Lopez, Bill Clinton, Amway Japan

It seems a good time was had by all -

Jennifer Lopez Amway

Bill Britt has died

Founders Crown Ambassador William “Bill” Britt has passed away at the age of 81. Britt, the founder and leader of Britt WorldWide, was one of the most successful yet controversial distributors in Amway’s history. Bill and his wife Peggy joined Amway in 1970, ten years after the company began, and built one of the largest Amway businesses in the world. They reached Diamond level in 1973 and Crown Ambassador in 1996. In 2004 they were recognized as Founders Crown Ambassador, FAA 40, one of only 14 Amway distributorships in the world to have reached that level.

The Britts are downline of Founders Crown Ambassador Dexter Yager, and were an integral part of the success and expansion of the “Yager System” in the 70s and 80s. The Britt’s eventually founded their own business support company, Britt WorldWide, which grew around the world, reaching great success particularly in India, where the Britt’s developed a second large Amway business, reaching Crown in 2009.

Their success was not without controversy however. Britt’s firebrand approach, with no apologies for mixing his strong evangelical Christian faith, political beliefs and business attracting devotion from many but criticism from others. In 2004 the Britt organisation was the focus of a Dateline NBC investigation into Quixtar (now Amway North America) and several of his downline distributors were disciplined by Amway as a result.

The Britt’s Amway legacy lives on, with  hundreds of Diamonds from around the world in their downline, including Paul & Leslie Miller and Larry & Pam Winters from the United States, India’s Founders Triple Diamonds, Harbhajan Singh & Mohinder Braich and Double Diamonds Kanti & Lata Gala, China’s Founders Crown Ambassador’s Guo-Yuan Du & Ya-Qin Zhu (Matthew Du), England’s Double Diamonds Trevor & Jackie Lowe and Turkey’s Double Diamonds Hatice Firat & Mehmet Muratoglu and Merih & Nilufer Bolukbasi.

Our thoughts are with his wife Peggy and the entire Britt Worldwide family.

Missing: Amway victims – if found please report to Boies, Schiller & Flexner

As regular readers would know, a few years back some disgruntled former Quixtar IBOs, Pokorny & Blenn, launched a class action lawsuit in California against Quixtar (now Amway) and Britt World Wide. In my view the case was clearly bogus, but Amway decided to avoid the cost of a long court case, and also take the opportunity to clear the decks of any issues from the past. What they did was to not only offer a settlement, but to bring all the other major Amway business support groups in to the case as well, so that any IBOs who felt they’d been exploited could get some restitution and agree not to launch any future legal actions. Everyone could just move on.

Well, today I received an email from the “Class Counsel” handling the settlement that began like this -

Records show that you are a current or former Amway/Quixtar distributor (“IBO”). Former IBOs can get benefits from a Settlement providing $34 million in cash and $21 million (retail value) in free products from Quixtar. Initially, eligible claimants had until August 17, 2012 to file a claim to receive cash or free products. However, after accounting for the claims that have already been filed, there is excess cash and products in the Settlement Funds.

Critics of multilevel marketing claim there are literally hundreds of millions of “victims” of MLM companies that have lost thousands, even tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. When asked where all these “victims” are, and why they haven’t requested refunds, or complained to authorities or groups like the Better Business Bureau (there are very, very few complaints against legitimate MLM companies), critics claim that these “victims” are too ashamed to complain.

Right now, hedge fund short seller Bill Ackman has been making similar claims against Herbalife, another large MLM company. He has made various accusations against them, including that it is an illegal pyramid scheme, and is betting it will be closed down, in which case he will make hundreds of millions of dollars from shorting the stock. (In reality he stands to make a lot of money just by driving the stock price down, which he successfully did just by making the accusations). Another investor, Daniel Loeb, made the following comment about Ackman’s accusations -

“The short thesis rests on the notion that the FTC has been asleep at the switch, missed a massive fraud for over three decades, and will shortly awaken (at the behest of hedge fund short seller) to shut down the company,” Mr. Loeb wrote. “We find this thesis to be preposterous.”

We find this thesis to be preposterous. Loeb has stated well the reality of  many of the claims of critics of the multilevel marketing industry. We find this thesis to be preposterous.

Well, following Amway’s settlement in the Pokorny Class Action, the administrators endeavoured to contact every single Amway/Quixtar IBO over the last decade in the United States. They contacted them and offered them money.

The result? To clear the settlement money they’ve had to extend the time to submit a claim by seven months and expand the benefit dramatically. The value of the product packs available has doubled, and if you spent money on BSM, you can just write a letter and claim you spent money, and how much, and get some of the cash.

So c’mon, don’t be ashamed! Get your free wag now at www.quixtarclass.com

Amway goes K-POP

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock the past year, you’ve surely encountered the wildly successful Gangnam Style song and music video from Korean pop star PSY. Well, Amway Korea has apparently been swallowed by the K-Pop trend. I give you “Dreaming” one of the stranger (for us westerners) Amway videos that I’ve encountered -


For a little context, the video seems to be set in conjunction with the Busan International Film Festival, one of Asia’s most prestigious film festivals. Amway and Artistry were a major sponsor last year.

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