Amway Hit The Easy Button

In 1983, Amway founders Rich DeVos and Jay VanAndel hit the easy button. When faced with an opportunity to reign in the tools system by providing company training, they buckled.

Rich DeVos:

"It was time to bring some reasonableness to all of this. We also didn't take it to the Board, by the way, because we didn't really want to put a Board member on the spot. We have Board members who operate pretty big systems. It would have been a kind of an embarrassment to put him in the crossfire; so we just decided not to even discuss it at that level."

The reasonableness was tossed out when Bill Britt and Dexter Yager allegedly held back volume from the Amway company for two months. When faced with doing the right thing or losing their biggest source of volume, DeVos and VanAndel went with the volume. They pushed the easy button.

The easy button made DeVos and VanAndel billions, but cost them something some say is much more dear. Integrity. The DeVos/VanAndel legacy is riddled with broken dreams because they bowed to the whims of Britt and Yager.

I think the easy button also cost them billions. If Amway had taken control of the tools in 1983 and kept their prices under control, there would be no reason anyone in Amway would leave for Xango, Univera LifeSciences, Usana or any other Network Marketing company.

In my opinion, Amway could have dominated. Instead, they spin off as Quixtar in the U.S. and continue the downward spiral, allowing tools to be the largest source of monetary loss for the average IBO, while the same tools are the largest source of income for the Quixtar Diamonds.

Comments

[DEE RANDALL]

I have factual info that BRITT and cronies have been in high level arbitration with Quixtar over Alleged indescretions by Larry Winters.Some of the issues are tax fraud(3.5 million) Copyright infringement(cd's)And illegal solicitation of other people's groups.Not to mention illegal transfer of business volume for 56 months to maintain EDC qualification