Tag Archive for 'china'

Not just about dollars or yuan

Corporate giving isn’t just about dollars, rubles, rupees, yen, or yuan.

Sure, Amway,  our employees and distributors have given more than US$70 million and 1 million volunteer hours through our One by One Campaign for Children since 2003. The direct selling industry gives generously as well: companies gave more than $336 million worldwide last year in cash and millions more in donations of goods and time, according to a recent World Federation of Direct Selling Associations report.

But there are other ways we give. Each year our executives and employees around the world speak at conferences and forums, lecture at educational institutions, and work with organizations to share knowledge and learnings. Recently we partnered with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at a forum on corporate social responsibility in China and will work with the Chamber on similar programs in the future.

It’s hard to put a price tag on this kind of giving.  Because knowledge is more valuable than any currency.

Super 75th

The celebration of Nutrilite’s 75th anniversary is too big to be contained to the brand’s hometown of Buena Park, California, or even this continent.

Nutrilite hosted an event in September for employees to celebrate 75 years of helping people live healthier lives. But that was just a warm-up for the super celebration that’ll bring the world’s leading brand of vitamin and mineral supplements to hundreds of thousands of people in some of Amway’s biggest markets.

The Nutrilite 75th Anniversary Super Tour will stop in nine Asian countries from October 9 to November 13. Health-conscious consumers and business owners from China to Singapore will participate in fun walks, health carnivals, and other events designed to help people learn how to achieve optimal health. Dr. Sam Rehnborg, the son of Nutrilite’s founder Carl Rehnborg and president of the Nutrilite Health Institute, will be there every leg of the journey to celebrate wellness and commemorate the anniversary. You can follow the tour at Nutrilite’s Facebook page.

It’s a super way to celebrate 75 years.

We’re ad it again

Jump, a magazine for growing families in the UK, featured an ad targeting moms for the Amway Business Opportunity in its summer issue (on page 41, to be exact).

Touting the “flexibility to suit you and your young family” as a primary benefit of joining Amway, it’s just one way affiliates are hyper-targeting to grow our distributor base.

In the U.S., readers of the Entrepreneur section of Forbes.com are greeted with stories of Inspirational Entrepreneurs courtesy of Amway Global. Print and television ads promoting the business opportunity have also ran in the likes of USA Today, Newsweek, and Business Week Online and on television during major sporting tournaments and other “achievement” programming.

And that’s just the beginning.

We’ve tapped top creative talent to implement advertising strategy in China, where Olympians, a famous fashion designer, and a renowned ballerina are featured in ARTISTRY and NUTRILITE campaigns. Top creative agencies in Japan, Korea, and Malaysia are also working on our behalf.

It all “ads” up to some pretty impressive creative muscles being flexed for Amway.

Power player

For the second year, Amway executive vice president Eva Cheng has been named to the Forbes100 Most Powerful Women” list.

The list, which Forbes has compiled since 2004, is a virtual “who’s who” of the top women in business, government and entertainment worldwide. As Forbes says, the list isn’t about celebrity or popularity. It’s about a more precious commodity: influence.

Forbes calls Cheng “fierce in the boardroom and on the social circuit.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Eva joined Amway more than 30 years ago as a secretary in our Hong Kong office. Today she runs our biggest affiliate, China, which she launched in 1995, as well as our other Southeast Asian markets. Her leadership has made Amway one of the most admired companies and best employers in China.

Eva’s a power player on the Amway team. And according to Forbes, in the rest of the world as well.

Environmental superhero

env_thm_pk

Want to get people thinking about environmental protection? Call in a superhero.

That’s what Amway China Co. Ltd. did with the opening of the Amway Environmental Theme Park in Beijing recently. Co-sponsored by Amway and the China Environmental Protection Foundation, the park is a family-focused environmental education and awareness effort that will travel to nine other Chinese cities before ending its tour in November.

“Environmental Protection Superman” is just one of 20 activities and exhibits that provide fun lessons in how people can  reuse, reduce, recycle, or otherwise preserve and protect China’s natural resources.

This kind of program has helped place Amway among the “Corporate Social Responsibility Top 50” companies in China. But there’s more. Last month the Greenway Project took Amway China employees out of the office and deep into the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau with environmental experts to study and report on biodiversity and environmental concerns in the Yellow River region.

When the Theme Park ends its run in November and the Greenway Project issues its report, more than 100,000 people will have learned more about protecting the environment. And perhaps there will be even more superheroes to help in the fight to protect the planet.

Seeing is believing

Just a stone’s throw from the British Museum, which hosts 6 million visitors per year, sits one of our favourite London attractions… the Amway Flagship Experience Center.

The Centre opened in May, and Marketing Week UK recently covered its role in a greater plan to educate consumers about Amway’s power brands and business opportunity. With a beauty styling bar and makeup play station, it’s Amway made fun and relevant to everyone from the Amway business owner to the curious passerby. There’s always a connection back to Amway’s business owners, as commissions from sales made at the Centre are attributed back to them.

This sort of brick-and-mortar approach to increasing brand awareness has worked for us in markets like Australia, China, Germany, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey to name a few. Amway India is also planning to turn a number of distribution centers into showrooms.

In the United States and Canada, mobile brand experiences travel to high-profile events to take the story of Amway’s power brands to the masses.

But back to the UK, where the British Museum contains fragments of the seven wonders of the world, and just a few blocks away, the Amway Flagship Experience Center contains wonders all its own.

Amway in the tour business?

You’d have thought as much over the last two weeks if you read media reports out of Taiwan and China.

Each has recently relaxed travel restrictions, a step toward a more constructive political relationship and closer to today’s Sino-Taiwanese business chumminess. Record numbers of mainlanders have visited the island, and Amway has led the way, ushering some 12,000 employees and distributors on cruises to Taiwan.

By and large, we like what we’re seeing in terms of spirit of cooperation between the two, and we are pleased to be party to those efforts.

Announced and revealed

It’s a good morning in Ada, where we’ve just announced our annual results for 2008. As we enter our 50th anniversary year, we are proud to see some early and encouraging results of our corporate transformation. In this global climate, we’re certainly excited to share an increase of more than 15 percent in sales over last year. This year, two thirds of our markets grew, and more than half of our 58 worldwide affiliates posted increases of more than 10 percent. Truly, this year’s success was a global one.

We’re also proudly unveiling a new Amway Media Blog today. Throughout this year, there will be some visible changes as we unify the global direct selling business. This is one of them. We have now archived both the “old” Amway Media Blog and the Alticor Media Blog, but of course we’ll still answer any questions on topics we previously covered.

Going forward, we will be able to relay the news that matters most at Amway through one voice, here at this site. Here’s the news of the day:

Continue reading ‘Announced and revealed’