Amway’s official sales press release was issued today and confirmed what was already publicly stated by Rich DeVos last Friday – Amway’s global sales for 2008 were $8.2billion – up 15% on Amway’s 2007 sales of $7.1 billion.
In a break from previous years, data for no individual markets or regions has not been separated out other than to say there was strong growth in Russia, China, and India and that overall 2/3 of Amway’s 58 affiliates recorded sales increases. This works out to 39 affiliates with growth and 9 either flat or decreasing. In 2007 it was reported that 39 out of 55 markets increased sales. I’m a little confused by the change in the number of affiliates as the only new market to open was Amway Vietnam. It’s possible that in markets like Scandinavia, which covers 4 countries, have been considered separately.
There has of course been much interest in seeing how the rebadged Quixtar, Amway Global, has been handling the “transformation“. Last year, following the TEAM debacle, sales were down slightly in North America. Amway Global has launched a massive number of initiatives in the North American market, including the name change, accreditation, lots of new cash incentives, plus of course a mass media marketing campaign. My personal feeling is that these changes will definitely be beneficial, but it may take a few years to see the full impact. Whether there’s been a positive or negative impact in 2008, Amway has decided to withhold. I made enquires and was given this explanation –
Yes, we are moving away from reporting individual market sales figures. We are competing as hard as we can around the world, and we realized we were giving our competitors a hand up in making their strategic plans when we told them how each market was doing. So we’re going to make them do some more homework.
While disappointing from the perspective of we Amway information junkies, there is some sense in this. There’s some real competition heating up in the world of direct sales. As most folk know, Amway Global recently sponsored the San Jose Earthquakes Major League Soccer Team, and that was a followup to the Nutrilite sponsorship of AC Milan. What you may not know is that MLS team LA Galaxy (famed for hiring David Beckham, now on loan to AC Milan) is sponsored by Herbalife, and just this week Herbalife announced they’re sponsoring AC Milan arch-rival Inter Milan!
In other news, Amway today also launched a new Amway Media Blog. It will be interesting to see if the blog posts and comments stay a little more civil on on target than what happened with the earlier Alticor and Amway Media blogs. It’s unfortunate that Amway related sites attract a small number of people who have little interest in anything other than being disruptive. Amway’s caught between a rock and a hard place in dealing with them. Ban them and you’re accused of censorship, let them post and they take over the conversation for their own agendas.
Touche, IBOFB,
But the release and continual update of the Income Disclosure Form tells the story.
But can you honestly say that it isn’t at least disappointing and a little suspicious that Amyway will not give the North American numbers for the first full year after the split?
How many questions and debates would have finally been settled? I was curious. Now (once again) I’m left frustrated.
BTW, I like the new site and have been checking in every few weeks.
What’s suspicious? DeVos and Van Andel have said North America had a very tough year, which clearly means sales dropped. Even at it’s best I don’t think anyone expected anything more than holding sales or a slight increase. To be expected after the Team debacle. I can’t think of any “debates” that would have been settled, but like you I’m curious too. C’est la vie.
The MV income disclosure form is a great document and I wish Amway would do something similar. Mind you, isn’t that IDF for MonaVie globally? It also doesn’t say what some folk claim it says (namely Mr Woodward in his comparison with Amway) as it’s a rolling average, whereas qualification for a recognised pin level in Amway is much harder, taking months of consistency.
J-Rod: Bear in mind that we are talking about a private company, not publicly traded. Publicly traded companies have to report detailed figures. Many private companies usually do not report these figures simply because they don’t have to.
Oh come on! Every global company reports individual sales. I can’t think of an industry that doesn’t. Can we take this to mean that the loss of Team was closer to 40% of the North American business than it was to 10%?
Can’t think of an industry that doesn’t? Hmmm … how about another direct selling example …. I know … MonaVie, where many of the Team folk took refuge! They don’t even report global yearly sales, let alone by country! Indeed … I can’t find a single privately held direct selling company that does break down it sales by country, and few that report their sales at all …..
dear, oh dear. Please do a little more “thinking”, and research, next time.