Back in February, Amway reported their 2008 sales at $8.2 billion globally. In a break from previous years, the data for Amway Global/Quixtar in North America was not reported separately. In what was clearly a bit of spin, Amway PR explained they were moving away from reporting individual market data. The US press releases rarely mentioned individual international data in the past, and many Amway affiliates around the world have continued to release their sales data. Quite obviously, Amway Global’s sales (confusingly, Amway Global is actually only Amway North America) must have suffered in the continuing fallout from the dispute with TEAM, as well as the initially unpopular decision to revert Quixtar back to the Amway brand.
Well – now we know. Last week it was announced that Amway Global has again been ranked the #1 online Health & Beauty retailer by Internet Retailer. This is the sixth consecutive year Amway has topped these rankings, with an astounding market share of nearly a third. Hidden in the press release though, it was reported that Amway Global’s sales were $904 million in 2008, a drop of nearly 10% from 2007 sales of just over a billion, which were themselves a 4% drop from Amway North America’s best ever year in 2006.
With the publicity surrounding Amway’s 50 year anniversary, and the Orlando Magic’s challenge for the NBA Championship at Amway Arena, as well as other great initiatives like the Amway Global LA Sol and San Jose Quakes, it’s clear to me that the decision to move back to the Amway name was the right one, though as I said in February, it will probably take a few years to really have an effect.
UPDATE: Please read this post for important new information – Amway Global sales up 5% in 2008?
cool. how much money did YOU make? james
Yeah, I would say that with Holly Chen & Barry Chi and Brad & Julie Duncan qualifying for Crown in the US, it’s possible.
I think this figure indicates that all those rumours from TEAM members about how Amway Global will suffer from letting the MLM-tourist (oops, sorry, I mean “Orrin the Great”) go, were wrong. 🙂
Ahh, ok so I was mistaken, that’s interesting! That means online sales were UP over 2007?
Great work getting the data together SP75, this requires a new post I think …
ajgannon: Yes, I was referring to orders placed via Quixtar/Amway Global website. I am not so sure that the sales figure ($904 million) represent TOTAL sales.
Here is what Internet Retailer said about Quixtar sales in March 2008: “Quixtar, which still is formulating its year-end numbers, posted estimated web sales of $858 million in 2007, a drop of 0.3% from web sales of $861 million in the prior year.”
source: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=25131
In Feb 2007 IR said: “Online health and beauty retailer Quixtar Inc., No. 20 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, has reported web sales of $880 million for 2006, up 10% from $800 million in 2005. The web now accounts for 79% of the company’s total 2006 sales of $1.118 billion.”
source: http://www.internetretailer.com/dailyNews.asp?id=21363
Also, in 2006, the news release said: “Internet Retailer’s Top 500 guide ranks America’s largest retail websites based on 2005 sales. According to the publication, online sales topped $109 billion in 2005, a 25% increase over 2004 sales. Quixtar had $751 million in online sales last year, out of $1.058 billion in total sales.”
source: http://www.amwayglobalnews.com/pr/awg/quixtar_06ranking.aspx
Compiling the information available:
2005 – $751 million
2006 – $861 million (Jan2006-Dec2006) or $880 million (Sept2005-Aug2006)*
2007 – $858 million
2008 – $904 million
* I think there was a change in fiscal year
The figures above represent the online sales only, not the total sales.
The total sales for the years above were:
2005 – $1.058 billion
2006 – $1.094 billion
2007 – $1.118 billion
2008 – $1.072 billion
And finaly, the recent news release clearly says: “According to Internet Retailer estimates, Amway Global’s online sales surpassed $904 million in 2008.”
So I am pretty sure that this figure doesn’t represent total sales.
Is SP75 referring to orders placed via the web-site versus orders placed over the telephone? I would expect that the sales figure that IBOFightBack quotes ($904 million) is combined telephone and on-line orders.
In previous years the figures mentioned by Quixtar in their sales releases and Internet Retailer in their reports has been the same.
Note that the sales mentioned in the Internet Retailer’s report were ONLINE sales. Now, we of course have online ordering via Amway websites in Europe, but I also know from my personal experience that some orders are carried out offline.
While I am sure that the great majority of sales is done online, not ALL purchases are done via Quixtar/Amway Global website, so we can assume that the actual sales figure for Amway Global’s total sales was in fact slightly higher than 904 million. 🙂