Amway

Amway sells household, nutrition and beauty products through independent distributors who buy at wholesale, sell at retail and earn bonuses on the volume of the distributors they recruit. Sales run around $8 billion a year, and much of the income at the top of the structure has come from selling motivational tools and events to lower-level distributors rather than from product margin. The Federal Trade Commission's 1979 ruling separated Amway from an illegal pyramid scheme on the strength of its buy-back and retail rules, and that decision still governs how the whole multi-level marketing industry operates. Stephen Butterfield wrote the early critical study, Jay Van Andel gave the founder's version, and Eric Scheibeler documented the tools business from inside the top ranks.

3 books