For a global company like Amway, headquarters may be Ada, Mich., but “the office” is wherever our business takes us.
Our execs log hundreds of thousands of miles each year visiting our colleagues in the more than 80 countries and territories in which we operate.
This week, for example, Amway Chairman Steve Van Andel was in Vietnam, visiting with the Amway Vietnam team, media, and government officials, including President Minh Triet.
Now, we don’t meet with the president of a country every day.
But for our globe-trotting leaders, a “day at the office” might be anywhere from Ada to Uruguay and involve anyone from a distributor to a dignitary. It’s all in a day’s work.
There are more than 100,000 apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch at iTunes.
And now there’s an app for Amway.
We’ve just launched the new app for Amway distributors in North America. We’re one of a handful of direct sellers that offer iPhone/iPod Touch apps, but the comparisons end there. Our app isn’t just a mobile catalog - it’s a 24/7 collection of business tools that help our distributors do business whenever and wherever they go.
“The Amway app offers a tremendous competitive advantage for our distributors,” said Candace Matthews, Amway’s chief marketing officer. “The app enables our distributors to showcase to customers our health and beauty products, demonstrate how they work through videos and other business tools, and place an order from their iPhone or iPod Touch. No one else offers a tool as robust as Amway’s app.”
And it’s already getting a lot of attention. The Amway app is currently #4 on the iTunes list of top downloaded free business apps.
Helping our distributors reach consumers wherever they are? Yeah, we’ve got an app for that.
It’s only natural that we have baseball on our minds this week.
But every week, we’re thinking Twitter. We’ve seen people use it to find each other during disasters, raise millions, and spread urgent news around the globe.
We Tweet to engage with people interested in our business opportunity and product brands — our Amway Business Owners, media, customers, and sometimes, critics.
You’ll find enough Amway handles on Twitter to load the bases at several ballparks, but here’s our official line-up:
Today Orlando community leaders and Orlando Magic officials ”topped off” the Amway Center currently under construction in Orlando, Florida.
By hoisting the final beam in place, workers placed the roof on what some are already calling the greenest arena in the country and the first NBA facility to be LEED certified when it opens in late 2010.
Today, it’s raising the roof. Next fall the Amway Center will raise the bar as one of the nation’s premier sports and entertainment facilities and green public buildings.
Direct selling is a multi-billion dollar industry involving tens of millions of people worldwide.
How big and how many? Here’s a snapshot of direct selling, by the numbers:
$113 billion - global retail sales through direct sellers in U.S. dollars, according to the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations. $29.6 billion - retail sales through direct sellers last year in the U.S., the world’s biggest market for direct selling. 66 million - the number of direct selling reps worldwide - 15.1 million in the U.S. alone. 68 - direct selling companies around the world with more than $100 million in sales.
58 - the average age of the top 10 direct selling companies worldwide (none of the top 10 have been in business fewer than 25 years; Amway, the world’s second largest direct seller, turns 50 this year.)
42 - direct selling companies selling more than $100 million annually that are based in the U.S. 11 - companies that have sales of $1 billion or more.
It all adds up to a thriving global industry and opportunity for millions worldwide.
If you want to give someone a head start in learning anything, you start them young.
That’s the thinking behind offering local high school students a world-class business school experience through a new partnership between Amway and the Grand Rapids Public Schools. This week, we announced our support of a new high school curriculum choice at Ottawa Hills High School focusing on business, leadership and entrepreneurship. Students will learn management, finance, and other business skills through a focused curriculum, internships, lecture series, and real world experience.
Some of that experience will come from Amway volunteers who share their expertise with students. They include Amway’s chief marketing officer, Candace Matthews, who announced the program to students earlier this week.
This is one of four public-private partnerships that pair business leaders with Grand Rapids high schools called “Centers of Innovation.” And it caps 20 years of support for the Grand Rapids Public Schools by Amway and its employees.
More importantly, it’s a head start in business that’ll give these students a leg up as future employees, managers, and in some cases, CEOs.
Our aviation team operates quietly, capably and professionally. They do their jobs without a lot of attention or fanfare.
But that’s about to change, as Amway aviation moves from operating under radar to getting major recognition as one of two inaugural winners of the Gulfstream Outstanding Flight Award given for flights involving superior airmanship.
Amway was honored for transporting more than 1,100 people using 22 aircraft in a single day as part of the company’s 50th anniversary events in May.
We’re in good company. The other honoree is the U.S. Air Force’s 310th airlift squadron. The two teams were cited for performing significant real-world business and special-mission aviation operations using Gulfstream aircraft and as representing the “very best” flight operations in the world.
And the “very best” can’t operate under radar for very long.
Amway does. So much so that starting today we’re sponsoring Orlando Magic training camps and player practice jerseys. It’s the the first season in which the National Basketball Association has granted permission to have a sponsorship presence on team practice jerseys, and we’re stepping up to the line.
We’ve also stepped up our presence in Orlando. As announced earlier this year, Amway acquired the naming rights to the new Amway Center, scheduled to open in the fall of 2010. In addition to being the home court for the Orlando Magic, Amway Center will play host to an array of national events, concerts and family shows.
Our chief marketing officer Candace Matthews calls this a unique opportunity to build pride in the Amway business around the world. “Both Amway and the Magic have fans around the world, and in both organizations, we are committed to the hard work it takes to succeed.”
The Amway-tagged jerseys will be worn during Magic training camps, regular-season practices, post-season practices and pre-game shoot-arounds.
Between the jerseys, training camps, and Amway Center opening next year, Amway’s going to be hard to miss in Orlando.
Yet each year, 1.8 million children worldwide die due to diarrhea-related illness, largely caused by unclean water and inadequate sanitation. Around the world, 400 million people do not have access to safe drinking water.
It’s clearly a serious issue, and one a couple of Amway affiliates are committed to doing something about through their One by One programs.
Amway India has installed water purifiers in schools, orphanages, and institutions in 52 cities through the Amway Opportunity Foundation’s “Project Sunshine.” Since its launch in January, Project Sunshine has made a difference in the lives of 3,350 children in India.
Amway Korea sent a One by One team to Bangladesh earlier this year, and among other things, installed 30 water pumps and toilet facilities in Ghatail.
Installing toilets, water pumps, and purifiers might not make headlines, but the impact these projects will make in the lives of children is clear.
There are more than 100,000 apps for Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch at iTunes.
You’ll find enough Amway handles on Twitter to load the bases at several ballparks, but here’s our official line-up:
