Amway

I have a friend from school days who joined Amway. He called me recently and told me some gibberish about how I can live a life full of expensive things without working if I join Amway.

This is not the first time I have heard about that company and I have always been of the opinion that either complete suckers, or complete scumbags, or often both, join Amway. I am obviously not considering joining that sort of an enterprise, but I wonder if anyone had friends or family get involved, and what happened.

i

My aunt. She did quite well with it. It depends on your location and your circle of friends. They're a legit company, although I don't know how they operate these days. In the old days, they had a lot of unique products and they built a loyal following.

In the interest of full disclosure, a roommate of mine was the son of a top exec at Amway, from Ada, Michigan (Amway's home), and we never had to pay for cleaning liquids when I was in college.

Yep, They tried it for a couple of years then I never heard anymore about it. They never got the Mercedes or the mansion they had taped on the refrigerator to keep themselves focused on the goal. At least many of the products are pretty good. But you can only sell so much soap to your family and friends, and being successful in Amway means you need an ever-growing network of new converts, each 'tithing' to you. Selling the products doesn't get you much.

I had a mate ask me along to an "opportunity" and it turned out to be Amway, surprisingly I knew the guy doing the sales pitch as well. It struck me at the time as being a standard pyramid selling scheme and I wouldn't touch it but I also valued friends and family too much and am not inclined to be a salesman anyway. I did buy a small sample of stuff and it did work well but was expensive. I can see how if you get in at the beginning, at the top, you might make considerable money, but after its run for awhile you'd just piss your friends off selling them stuff and getting them to sell to others and so on.

I understood that pyramid schemes were illegal, so not sure how Amway differs, not involved anyway.

LOL I'm not really trying to disparage you but your employer is little different. Ironic? Perhaps. Salient? Definitely......

If it was any good, wouldn't everyone be doing it?

My experience has been mixed, over the years several people have applied various degrees of deceit in attempts to get me involved in selling Amway and only 1 that simply offered to sell me products. We did buy a few things and were happy with them. It's like anything else in life you have to work long,hard and smart to be successful...there is no free lunch. I'm not interested in any biz that needs to trick or pressure me into participating.

Andrew

My first wife used to be an Amway distributor.

Amway's not a pyramid scheme, because there's an actual product being sold, and you *can* make money just from selling the stuff. You don't have to recruit other people in order to be profitable. If you don't, though, you need to put a lot of long, hard hours into selling in order to be anything more than minimally profitable.

Ed, not to question what you said, but how do you know that she did well. Amway distributors are notorious for lying about their incomes.

She was my aunt. She didn't get rich, but after my uncle died, it kept her afloat, and somewhat better. She just sold the stuff. She was well-known and well-liked, which gave her a good clientele to start with.

-- Ed Huntress

"According to Amway, their annual sales amounts to about $7 billion and there are 3 million distributors. Thus, the average distributor's sales amounts to about $2,333/yr. If 30% of that is profit, the average distributor makes $700/yr. Klebniov claims that the average income is $780, but the average distributor buys $1,068 worth of Amway goods himself and also has expenses such as telephone bills, gas, motivational meetings, publicity material and other expenses to expand the business. "The average active distributor sells only 19% of his products to non-Amway affiliated consumers," according to Klebniov. "The rest is either personally consumed or sold to other distributors." In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission requires Amway to label its products with the message that 54% of Amway recruits make nothing and the rest earn on average $65 a month. No such labels are required in other countries, but the facts are clear. Most people who get involved in Amway will not make money."

Not grokking that. Does Iggy work for another MLM cult?

Tex had written this in response to

: The biggest economic driver of Amway is not the Amway products, it's the tool scam. The upline makes SEVERAL TIMES more from the tool scam than Amway, and about 99% of the IBOs operate at a net loss. See the details on my blog, I suggest you start here: Be sure to sign the online petition here:

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It's the sort of thing that really only works in the large cities. In rural areas you just can't get enough of a "downpipe" to make it worthwhile. The big money is in having so many "below" you...

The last time I looked into it, their cleaning products and concentrates were almost a good buy, but made up a very small fraction of the product line. To keep your numbers up enough to keep your distributorship, you basically needed to buy all your household items from them, but everything other than the cleaning products, and maybe their vitamins was massively overpriced and bottom tier quality/ features (home electronics, etc.). It may not be strictly a pyramid, but the playing field isn't level, either. Just smile, shake your head, and walk away.

An interesting read...

Erik

Yes. The Democratic party.

At least Amway's stuff actually works.

So do Shaklee's. :)