Wednesday, January 20, 2021

E-commerce?

 Back nearly 20 years ago or so, Amway tried to launch themselves as an e-commerce company which included a name change to Quixtar.   IBOs came up with all kinds of new recruiting tactics using the buzzword “e-commerce”.  It became humorous at times because IBOs started to deny that Quixtar was in any way related to Amway.  

It was funny because Quixtar IBOs signed an agreement with Amway, sold Amway products, used the Amway compensation plan, and received bonuses from the Amway corporation.  Thus watching IBOs deny the relationship was pure humor to those who watched Amway with a critical eye. 

Based on the success of Amazon, you’d think Quixtar would have been more successful.  Shop online and have the goods drop shipped to your door.  One would also think that this concept would be wildly successful in the days of covid 19.  Right?  Contactless shopping with home delivery.  It’s for that reason that take out pizza and food delivery services were booming with covid 19 raging.  

So why did Quixtar, which later changed back to Amway, not capitalize with e-commerce and online shopping?   In my point of view, it’s because there is a low demand for Amway goods outside of the self consumption demand of IBOs themselves.  I don’t know or a formal study but it appears that Amway goods are primarily used by IBOs along with sympathetic friends and family members of IBOs.  

Amway products are generic in nature but carry a premium price and that is not conducive to good sales when I can easily buy similar or better products at a cheaper price on Amazon or even Walmart.com.   IBOs have denied this but it looks like Amway took a successful business model, online shopping and got marginal results.  What if IBOs didn’t buy from themselves and resorted only to attempting to sell to customers?  I wonder what Amway sales would look like under those conditions?  

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nobody in Amway would make a dime if they had to depend on selling Amway products by normal retail (whether in-person or on-line) to the general public. NOBODY WANTS THE SHIT!

As my deluded cousin told me many years ago when he roped me into Amway: "Amway isn't about selling products. Amway is about selling the Plan!"

In short, Amway isn't a retail business at all. It's just a very expensive buyer's club where members are required to purchase a certain quantity of products every month. They can only make money by convincing a network of others to do the same.

Most people recognize this fact pretty quickly, and that's why the vast majority of Amway IBOs drop out of the business or become inactive within six months.

When Amway changed to Quixtar, it was nothing but a publicity move, since the name "Amway" stinks like a rotten fish. The name change didn't work, because the essential structure of the Amway racket has never changed in the slightest.

Anonymous said...

But...but...they are an $8.5 billion company! Bigger than the NFL!

And the blowhard Diamonds and Emeralds who show the plan won't dare say that the far majority of those sales are from IBOs buying from themselves because otherwise, they will get yelled at by Upline if they didn't do so.