### Amway: The Untold Story

Comments on Amway's Emall Venture

"Amway will be spinning off to form a new company using a different name by early next year. The business will be web based, and will be similar to many I-Net shopping malls with distributors having the "opportunity" to purchase a "web franchise". This new "system" was unveiled at "Achiever's Weekend" in Scottsdale, AZ."

"News is out that the Amway Corp. is going to reinvent itself. It is the opinion of many sources that Amway North America, due to the huge decline in distributorships, and the largest decline in sales in their history, are restructuring their company to compete with e-commerce companies.

"I understand Amway already has a signed contract with Amazon offering 15% off Amazon books for Amway Distributors. The story I heard is that Amway is committed to the tune of approximately $100 million to fund the new site. They have engaged some firm in finding a name for the I-mall and will be deciding on that soon... They mention several times that they "MAY" take the internet mall public and "IF" they do they will surely make shares available to all the Amway Distributors... The start date was also mentioned several times to be September 1, 1999."

"I believe it will be called "World Wide Market". The market mall will use a CD to operate most mall functions. Amway won't put the mall on a search engine because of the negative info that will be found. It will also use a customer card to access individual accounts for purchases, (you want to buy something? here, use my number.) that's where the PYRAMID starts to play. Same prices for items though, $200.00 item is $190.00 + $10.00 S/H. (What a deal....) Also $185.00 for the initial start-up package, and they encourage that you buy 5/6 packages so you have one on hand to give to a new member that you just signed up."

"My name is Larry, and I've been invited on the groundfloor of the new "mall". The concept is very seductive and goes like this:

1) To get in the mall, you have to have an invite and a password.

2) The distributor gets 10 people to distribute these web locations with password. What happens is the distributor gets a percentage of all sales, and the guy that is one of the 10 also gets a cut.

3) Anyhow, this is to go "on line" 9/1/99 so there's a big build up of "recycled" Amway "distributors.

4) I can see how this would work for oh, the first 90 days- then the system is going to crash big time as soon as the major media thinks this is a newsworthy item."

"My husband & I are distributors, who, after reading your site and many of the other anti-Amway sites & learning the truth behind the business, will not be renewing our distributorship. However, we still have access to Amvox, and the news about Amway's Internet Mall is creating quite a sensation, almost a panic, among the distributors. We are (were) part of World Wide Dream Builders; our EDC is G. Within the past two weeks he has sent four messages down on Amvox, with comments from both himself and WWDB leader Ron Puryear, reassuring distributors that Amway is not changing, that the I-Mall (or "E-Biz") will just be another service available to distributors, and that we shouldn't even mention it when we show the plan until the last two minutes, after we have mentioned that the business is Amway. (Dishonest and deceptive, even about the internet). G, who is on the ADA Board this year, explained in one of his messages that Amway will continue to exist as it currently does, but that the company has decided to "move forward with technology" and is investing "between $20-$30 million dollars in their own I.S.P." However, he reiterates several times that distributors shouldn't forget that "this business is still built with soap, is still built with people and their dreams." (He fails to mention the dollars they will spend on books, tapes & functions.)

I find all of this very interesting, because my husband went with our upline direct to pick G up from the airport at the end of October when he returned from an ADA meeting in Ada, MI. My husband recorded his conversation with G as they drove home, and all G could talk about was how Amway was going on the internet, and how great it would be, and, how you really need to be a diamond when it launches in September 1999 in order to really take advantage of it. To be honest, I don't know he meant by that comment, "you need to be a diamond", but it struck me as strange. What if you're not a diamond? He also revealed that the ADA Board was investing with Amway in this Internet-Mall venture. Since all of the ADA Board members are iamonds and above, does this have something to do with his previous comment? It makes you wonder."