The FTC consider any USA company with a network marketing compensation plan and retail sales below 51% as a Pyramid Scheme and regular attack smaller companies who are not compliant with the FTC Business Guidance For MLM.
In 2012 a Wall Street Journal reporter asked Doug DeVos and Steve Van Andel, in an interview:
What percentage of the products that Amway sells to the distributors, are resold to end-user customers who are not also distributors?
The Amway co-CEO’s told the Wall Street Journal that 50% of the sales that are made to distributors are resold to actual retail customers. The other half is not resold by the salespeople to anyone.
That seems to be not true, at least not for the USA…
Amway nowadays release the retail numbers at their achievers conference every year and have not gotten over 15% in the USA market.
Average is around 12-13% and Amway tries to improve those retail figures. International retail sales might be higher.
I am not after Amway, I am not trying to poke a bear, however as an international Direct Sales reporter in my opinion it’s a strange situation the FTC goes after smaller MLM companies and let a Network Marketing giant get away with minor retail sales for the past 25+ years.
Its measuring