Saturday, February 21, 2009

Amway/Quixtar/World Group/WWDB

It appears my last blog post--regarding Amway changing it's name to Quixtar, then changing it to World Group/WWDB--has garnered a negative rating. One can only assume the rating was given by an Amway/Quixtar/World Group/WWDB distributor. Maybe they saw it as an attack on a company/business opportunity they believe in. And maybe that's what it was. But I find it hard to believe in a company that keeps changing its name.

It is a fact that most people perceived Amway as being shady. It became a joke, really. I once was invited to breakfast (it ended up just being coffee) to hear about a great business opportunity. The distributor never mentioned the name of the company. The sales tools he used didn't have any hint of the name of the company. After his presentation, I asked him flat out if it was Amway. Instead of stating, proudly, that it indeed was Amway, he tried to evade the question. But I pinned him down and he could only confess what I knew to be true from the beginning of the meeting. Meeting over. Simple as that.

I want to work with a company of which I can be proud. Two examples that come to mind: Avon and Watkins. They've never felt the need to change their names. Never will.

So, anonymous rater, don't take it to heart. It's only my opinion.

3 comments:

IBOFB said...

Perhaps Greg, the rating was because your post was wrong on nearly all counts?

(1) Amway isn't shady. Yes, some folk may run their Amway businesses in a shady fashion, but Amway itself is an extremely well regarded company amongst those whose opinions count. Check out this video on Youtube, and this continually growing list of awards won by Amway. It's unfortunate (but admittedly understandable) that folk confuse the behaviours of some of the millions of Amway business owners with the company itself, and perhaps worse, assume that all other Amway reps operate the same way. Which brings me to the next point ...

(2) Amway did not change their name to Quixtar. The Quixtar company was setup in 1999 separate to Amway North America, both as daughter companies of Alticor. Amway reps (then called distributors) were allowed to transfer to the new business, which used a diffrent model, if they wished. Amway continued to operate with the old model. However, by 2001/2002 virtually everyone had left Amway for Quixtar, so Alticor made the decision to close down Amway North America. In 2007 the decision was made to revive the Amway name in North America as the name "Quixtar" never caught on and Amway in other regions had now adopted many of the aspects of the business model pioneered by Quixtar. Quixtar has been now renamed Amway Global. That's the only "name change" that has occurred - and it's back to the name you claim is shady and they're trying to avoid.

(3) WWDB/World Word Group are not Amway. Over the years dozens of different companies have been setup around the world to offer training and support to Amway and Quixtar business owners. Most (but not all) of them were founded by people who had built successful Amway businesses. They were not setup by Amway, are not owned by Amway or Amway's owners, their profits don't go to Amway or Amway's owners and they have no other connection to Amway.

WWDB/WWG is one of the more successful of those companies in the US and has been around for several decades - no name changes. Chances are the "sales materials" you saw were produced by WWDB, not by Amway, hence they wouldn't have Amway printed on them. Similiarly for any seminars you may have been invited to.

Now, having said all of that, there is an element of truth to parts of the basis for your opinion. Because some people (and indeed some of these 3rd party companies) have operated in a less than professional manner, Amway's reputation has been damaged. An unfortunate side effect is that some people refuse even to look at the Amway business, believing that how those folk operate and the Amway opportunity itself are one and the same. Unless you happen to be approached by someone from such a group, then chances are they are not showing you the same operation.

So, this fellow was trying to get you to not only check out Amway, but to also check out Amway as run by WWDB and what WWDB offers. They may operate in a completely different manner to how you believe Amway operates (note: I'm not affilated with WWDB). If he'd just asked you to look at Amway, then as you state, you never would have looked at it.

As it was he still didn't handle it in a professional manner (he was probably new) and the result was much the same. With more experience, and more knowledge of what an amazing company Amway is he'll hopefully do a better job in the future.

You're welcome to your opinion, and I'm sure it's originated with some legitimate experiences, but when the post expressing it is full of statements that aren't even true, well, how do you expect people to "rate" the post?

(it wasn't me the first time by the way)

cheers,
/ibofb

quixtarisacult said...

What a load of crap. Amway's rolling failure rate for distributors joining approaches 100%. Representing these independent business failures as a success is clearly intent to defraud other who might be convinced to join. Amway and the Amway kingpins (sellers of training materials and rally tickets) do indeed succeed--at least in bamboozling vulnerable people into believing in the Amway prosperity dream. Amway furthers the same fraud that they've used successfully to fleece 100s of thousands over their first 50 years in 'bidnez'.

Amway as a money extracting entity is indeed a success, but not necessarily for the people buying the monopoly priced products or the huge load of nearly worthless crap the 'dream building' motivational organizations push on their downlines.

All thess training materials sell for pennies on the dollar on eBay where Amway broken dreams are really sold.

Amway and the Top Distributor kingpins are the success story; their success is fueled by all the downline dupes who do all the buying making the originators of this 'closed market swindle' very wealth indeed.

Amway is a name people have good reason to be ashamed of. For more click here. Let the buyers of Amway dreams beware!

Anonymous said...

What has Amway done to the folk who ran their Amway business is a shady fahion? Apparentkly nothing.

Amway and Quixtar, while on paper, seperate companies, sold the same products, had the same support, and had the same leaders. They also had teh same compensation plan and the same miserable success rate. People denied the connection because, well, they were liars.

Based on evidence on the internet, WWDB was/is the most abusive LOS in Amway. They also have hypocritical leaders who had their homes foreclosed for FAILURE to make their monthly payments.

Amway's reputation has been damaged by Amway IBO's and Amway has done very little to stop these IBO's.

It's humorous because the biggest defenders of Amway, such as IBOFB. have not accomplished anything of significance in Amway.