| Country | Sales (USD$m) | Growth |
| China | $4,385 | +1% |
| Japan | $1,185 | +2% |
| Korea | $885 | +2% |
| United States | $861 | +5% |
| Russia | $629 | +19% |
| Thailand | $568 | +10% |
| India | $493 | +7% |
| Taiwan | $340 | +8% |
| Malaysia | $263 | +8% |
| Ukraine | $150 | +7% |
source: Amway Europe Leadership Training Seminar 2013
In news out today, Amway India CEO William Pinckney and two company directors, Sanjay Malhotra and Anshu Budhraj, have been arrested, charged, and remanded in custody for 14 days. This continues a pattern of what can only be called police harassment in the Indian states of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Details have been hard to come by, but the charges apparently result from 4 complaints lodged against Amway in the Wayanad district of Kerala. Amway had reportedly been aware of, and co-operating with police regarding one charge, but the arrest resulted from three other complaints. According to the Times of India, the known charge was from a 2011 complaint and –
Vishalakshi alleged that Amway agents collected Rs.3.5 lakh from her for products sold by the companies and asked her to add more members to the chain. As she could not add more members, she sought a refund but the agents refused
3.5 lakh rupees is over US$6500!!! I’ve been unable to discover when this offence was alleged to have occurred, but clearly this is pretty bizarre, and if true it’s clear some Amway business owners (including, I would suggest, this woman!) have seriously abused the Amway business model.
Amway was apparently dealing with this issue and had already received “anticipatory bail” for the executives. The current arrests are apparently related to new complaints. And that’s where it get’s really bizarre –
The three complainants — Jafar, T Ashraf and P Hareendran — had alleged that in 2002 Amway India attempted to collect money from them with the intention to deceive them by involving them in a money-chain scheme.
This “offence” allegedly occurred more than a decade ago (!!!) and indicates that someone merely “tried” to collect money and deceive them. Yes, that’s right – three company executives of a multi-billion dollar multi-national award winning company have been arrested and thrown in jail because three people claim that, more than a decade ago, someone tried to recruit them in to Amway, and they believe Amway is illegal and in violation of the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Scheme.
Sorry, India, but this is shameful.
Indian contacts have suggested to me that the problem may be that Amway India is not corrupt and refuses to pay the bribes that local officials typically demand. Corruption is, unfortunately, rife in India, with most Indians reporting they have had to pay bribes to officials (including police) in order to get normal tasks completed.
Amway India IBOs should keep the story of Amway Korea in mind. In 1993, David Ussery, general manager of Amway Korea, was arrested, interrogated, and then held in jail for a week, with various allegations made against Amway. Eventually the charges were dismissed, and today, Korea is Amway’s third biggest market. In 2011 the Korean Government named Amway one of the 30 most successful foreign companies in the country.
update: sources tell me the Amway executives have been granted bail
They were all headline acts at an Amway event in Osaka, Japan last weekend!
It seems a good time was had by all –
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.
In some good news for Amway India and other direct selling companies, it’s been reported that –
“An inter-ministerial committee is expected to come out with regulatory guidelines for direct selling companies by the end of this month”
Amway India and other companies in the market have been suffering from a lack of clear guidelines and the actions of some misguided anti-mlm zealots, particularly in Andhra Pradesh. Amway has been working hard to get clear laws in place. Hopefully things improve!
The following email sent by Amway to all Emeralds and up in India a couple of weeks ago regarding the situation with Sajeev Nair and MonaVie
Dear Leaders,
Greetings from Amway India !!!!
As you are aware by now, Amway India had its biggest sales month in September’11 when we had Rs.251 crore of sales. With such excitement & momentum, I am not only confident of achieving our Goal of Rs 2500 cr by 2012, but also convinced that we will attain higher GOALS in the years to come.
We have introduced several “Positive Changes” in the business from November 1st that would further fuel our growth & offer a safer future for our ABOs. These revisions have been accepted very well by leadership all around.
With growth, we also attract attention of various entities. One of them can be competing organizations who claim to be ‘Just Like Amway’business opportunities. Amway India & the Direct Selling Industry is poised for huge growth in years to come, which pulls organizations to get a share of this growing market. While we appreciate healthy competition, it is unfortunate that some organizations choose improper & dishonorable methods to grab business & get a foothold in the market. We have reasons to believe that such ‘Copycat Businesses’ with shallow income opportunities have been targeting YOUR line of sponsorship to build THEIR business. They are really not competitors but actually “predators”.
I wanted to take this opportunity to advise you on expected launch of a company in the Direct Selling market in India and what activities are currently taking place openly & surreptitiously, leading up to this launch. Continue reading Amway India letter to distributors
Back in 2007/2008 Amway in North America (then known as Quixtar) was involved in a deal of controversy after terminating several Diamonds associated with the organisation TEAM, led primarily by Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady. Eventually TEAM and many associated Diamonds joined another MLM company, MonaVie. There were then various legal battles between all parties over this, involving disputes of anti-Amway bloggers, stealing of corporate secrets, contract violations etc etc etc.
At the time these Diamonds were moving many in their groups to MonaVie, there were a lot of comments on this blog and elsewhere by people claiming that Amway was abandoning their distributors, changing polices, and would be opening stores, allowing their products to be sold in other retail outlets, and generally competing unfairly with the field. All of this was rubbish. What Amway has been doing around the world (though, ironically enough, not in the US) is opening up business centers to support the distributors. Some of these also act as retail outlets, but ultimately the PV and profit goes back to IBOs as usual. In my opinion these have been great innovations.
One place where Amway has been aggressively doing this is in India, with the opening of a large number of pickup locations where distributors can place orders and pickup products. It fits in well with the nature of India and seem to be working well. This week though, Times of India reports on a number of Diamonds who have stated they are leaving Amway, claiming rewards aren’t good enough and the company is focusing on showrooms and products instead of (believe it or not!) just recruiting people. Comments left on that site, and also this site, have further claimed that Amway India was going to be selling products through retail outlets and were abandoning distributors.
It all sounds awfully familiar, and low and behold … some Amway Indian Diamonds , lead by Sajeev Nair, are now loudly promoting their move to MonaVie India, just like TEAM did in North America.
This isn’t all that is familiar however. Back before the TEAM affiliated IBOs all left Amway (and there were reportedly hundreds of thousands), Amway was the subject of many complaints on the internet, people complaining of deceptive practices, hype, excessive pressure to spend money on “tools” etc etc. Since 2008 the emergence of new Amway critics on the internet has pretty much dried up. There’s a handful of diehard blogs (many run by the same person), but not really anything “new”. On the other hand, commentary from former distributors and others criticising MonaVie and MonaVie leaderslike Woodward for deceptive tactics has proliferated, with even a once anti-Amway blog like Amthrax now pretty much dedicated to anti-MonaVie commentary. Given Amway grew in sales last year by almost as much as MonaVie did total ($800M vs $854M) this can’t be attributed to MonaVie being more successful and attracting more attention. It appears that many of the tactics that helped contribute to these people getting kicked out of Amway were simply transferred to MonaVie, and the criticism has followed.
So how does this all connect to Amway India? Well, several times over the past months, a few visitors from India have left comments on The Truth About Amway regarding an Amway group called “Team One”, operating heavily in the Indian state of Kerala. The comments have complained about deceptive practices, excessive pressure to spend money on “tools” etc etc. All the same types of complaints we used to read about Amway North America, and which have diminished considerably since the TEAM dispute. I looked into Team One, and funnily enough it’s run by Sajeev Nair, the very same Double Diamond who says he’s now moving to MonaVie.
So, just like 2008 in North America, we have a large group of distributors, apparently the source of a number complaints, deciding to leave Amway for MonaVie and spreading a number of falsehoods about Amway as they go.
Amway North America suffered for a year or two from the TEAM exodus, but is now going from strength to strength (double digit growth in the past year) and is generating virtually no complaints about bad practices. Sajeev Nair – it may hurt for a bit, but I suspect Amway India won’t miss you. All the best with MonaVie.