From Abracadabra to Zombies

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reader comments: Amway

14 Aug 1997
I reached the DD or Direct level in 1989, but due to immaturity on the part of two people in my upline, I lost a good chunk of my organization and have not had the motivation to build it back up (we had about 150 in our group). One runs into stupidity in every industry; the difference here is that everyone is a volunteer and can simply quit when he's treated shabbily--he doesn't have to stay in to feed his family.

My major beef with doing Amway is only that the training program for prospective distributors is a crazy-quilt of stuff passed on haphazardly through the lines of sponsorship, a situation that's come to be not really by design but through a combination of inattention by the corporation and a sort of natural evolution of the distributor system. It's like going to work for IBM and having no formal training program, forcing one to learn by watching others do their jobs. Not too efficient. I believe that this glaring inadequacy is responsible for the relatively small number of successes. I believe there are 30-40,000 Direct Distributors and above, a level reached by doing about $15,000 volume wholesale a month. I believe the number of people who've become millionaires in Amway is about 150, which I guess is a fairly respectable number.

I originally took it on faith that Amway products were cheaper to use than products in stores. Recently I've seen a couple of what appear to be rather exhaustive price comparisons on the 'net, at wholesale and retail. I went to Kroger and did my own comparisons based on recommended usages for all products concerned, and found that some Amway products cost the same to use as what's in the store; some are far cheaper to use, and some cost more to use.

I've seen lots of good come from being a distributor; there really are lots of people from the professions, many very highly paid professionals, who become distributors, and some even leave their professions to go full time, making the same or more money, citing the greatly reduced time demands once they've built a good-sized group.

I firmly believe more don't succeed simply because the training system is so bad. There have been so many screwed-up "methods" put forth by distributors, you just wouldn't believe. But I've run into a couple that make tremendous sense: a Diamond named Art Leazure figured out a nice way to network with people that allowed him to go Diamond pretty quickly and employed no deception. I believe just about anyone could do it Art's way.

I went through a long "dark night of the soul" about the business for several reasons, but I don't know if I'll go for it again. As it happens, I do have 2 guys sponsored who are hard at going Direct, and if they do, I'll get about $1200 bottom per month (more as their businesses grow) as long as they're Direct. I can't complain about that.

It's a real shame the business has had to go through the slime of being done wrong by fools who thought they could shortcut or cheat, and being an advertising producer by profession, I find it a real shame that the "curiosity approach," which says don't reveal the name of the business because it will turn off a prospect before he hears the straight story, even exists. The great advertising writer Stan Freiberg saw a long time ago that when a negative perception of a product exists, one just aggressively repositions it. That can easily done in this case. In fact, some guys I know who are having great sponsoring success are telling people it's Amway up front; they evidently communicate to prospects that THEY have no problem with what it is, so why should the prospect?

Again, you have a great site. I've learned quite a lot from it. Good fortune to you and God bless!
Mike Holmes

Bob, you suffer from a common misconception shared by the many who (chose?) not to understand the Amway Sales and Marketing plan. There ARE real customers involved. True, many customers become distributors, and many customers are people who were shown the marketing plan but were not interested in becoming distributors (but liked the products)

The products are of a high quality. A customer only needs to be 'sold' to once, when they are first introduced to a product. From then on, they buy from you.

If you are looking for proof in the products, bear in mind that Amway is a multi-billion dollar company, in fact one of the top three largest independent companies in America.

Most distributors have around 10-20 customers; some buy weekly, others occasionally.

As being a skeptic is all about having an informed opinion, I hope you'll update your comments based on this information.
Best wishes, (name removed by request)

Careful what you say about a million Americans. Amway is shaped like a pyramid, yes. The difference between it and a pyramid scheme, however, is something you have either ignored or missed.

Pyramid schemes rely upon signing up new people and getting money for merely signing them up. In Amway, there is no incentive for signing people up unless they buy the products, which are high-quality, at 30% off retail, and guaranteed. So all income is based on movement of product. You've obviously been very misled or addled or something to say all of this without any real information (from what I've seen in your web page). I suggest you find some real information out about it and get with the program.

Have a great life working 40 hours a week and appeasing your boss. I'll be retired.
98hrd@williams.edu

According to my experience just this week, compared with the information in your essay, Amway has developed a slightly new slant. They call it Interactive Marketing.

I was invited to a colleague's house to hear about a business opportunity intended as income supplementation and added security for academics in these times of lean grant money, etc. Also attending were two others, who turned out to be my host's two immediate upline distributors. I was shown a long video about trends in marketing and distribution in the U.S. that intimated through the accompanying images that perhaps the Net was involved somehow. I was expecting some kind of electronic storefront concept, maybe where you process orders and tune up your web pages in your spare time.

It took over two hours, after a long blackboard presentation and lots of talk about the drudgery and uncertainty of ordinary American lives, to reveal that this was Amway. The Amway brand products are completely de-emphasized in the presentation, in favor of products from other manufacturers that appear in Amway's catalogs. It is not suggested that anyone should sell any products, only that everybody should take advantage of the discount prices, and, if they have any gumption, recruit distributors to build their own network. Lots of examples of ordinary folk who retired at age 29, etc. Lots of talk of working 10-15 hours per week, or not working at all eventually, while making lots and lots of money. Enough to never have to worry. Enough to give some away.

I did learn one important thing last night when I returned materials to my neighbor. I mentioned that I found it somewhat dishonest that it took so long to reveal that it was Amway. He answered that the business had changed quite a bit. I said, well, they've de-emphasized the Amway branded products, but... He answered that they really hadn't, that of the 15-45 percent range of commissions, averaging the 30 percent that was used in all the examples, the highest are for the Amway products.

In your description of MLM, I think it may be useful to introduce the term sub-society. As presented to me, you're not selling anything - you're introducing people to a means of getting lots of the products they buy anyway to run their households. So in an economic analysis, you're joining a subset of society that acquires goods through this private distribution chain. Of course, you're also presented with an opportunity to get ahead, an opportunity to rub elbows with really successful people (instead of the negative caught-in-the-drudgery- of-modern-life people you've been stuck with), and learn how to think the right way about life. That's where the sub-society starts to sound like what people call a cult.

Alan J. Snyder