Amway
Note; this category refers to all multilevel marketing schemes/co's
see also MLMkt
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9 24 the lever podcast series
powell justice sterilization never gave out memo, ref of to coc pal; fbi did not mention in senate nom dossier; PR problem post jack anderson brief?
RR promo for pacific legal
trailer: Master Plan | Listen Now
ep 4
3 mtg orlando dallas and --- same time? jerry ford vp
white of US steel
:{:{devos amway pal,}:
Jay Van Andel, cofounder
joe coors/ AILES}:
In this episode, we definitely answer that question for the very first time. Master Plan lead producer Jared Jacang Maher has uncovered troves of never-before-reported evidence that proves corporate executives and politicians didn’t just read Powell’s memo — they acted on it.
This includes three secret meetings of a “Powell Memo Task Force” — including one at Disney World. These gatherings drew together America’s most powerful businessmen, a future president, and an ambitious young media consultant named Roger Ailes.
By the end of 1974, the Powell Memo had transformed from a set of ideas into an actual master plan — and the pieces were in place to carry out a decades-long assault on American democracy.
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Jay Van Andel (June 3, 1924 – December 7, 2004) was an American billionaire businessman, best known as co-founder of the Amway Corporation, along with Richard DeVos.[1]
He also served as chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from 1979 to 1980.[2]
Early life
Jay Van Andel was born on June 3, 1924, to James and Petronilla (Van der Woude) Van Andel in Grand Rapids, Michigan.[3] His grandparents, Christian and Elizabeth had immigrated to America from the Netherlands in 1909.[4]
Van Andel's parents were devout Christians and members of the Christian Reformed Church. Jay credits his Christian background as being foundational for the rest of his life as a Christian. He once wrote, "Christianity involved the living out of Biblical values of honesty, generosity, and respect for others in our everyday life."[5]
Jay attended Grand Rapids Christian High School. Later, Van Andel attended Calvin College and Pratt Business School in Kansas.
When World War II broke out, Jay served as a United States Army Air Force officer.[6] He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and trained crews for B-17 and B-29 bombers that reached the Japanese mainland.[7]
Jay met his wife Betty Jean Hoekstra while on a direct selling house call in the spring of 1951. They married on August 16, 1952.[8]
Amway
While attending the Grand Rapids Christian High School before World War II, Jay Van Andel met Rich DeVos.[9] In 1949, Van Andel and DeVos became distributors of Nutrilite dietary supplements. They added cleaning products including Liquid Organic Cleaner, to their core line of products in 1958. In 1959, the "American Way Association" began in the basements of the Van Andel and DeVos homes, and later that year "Amway Sales Corporation" was formed. A converted service station became Amway's first outside office building in 1960.[10]
Today, Amway is a direct selling multinational company that sells a variety of health, beauty, and home care products. Amway went on to become the largest direct selling company in the world.[11] Amway corporate reports that in 2019, they have over 3 million independent business owners (IBO's) in over 100 countries.[12]
Van Andel Institute
In 1996, Van Andel founded Van Andel Institute with his wife Betty.[13] The 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization is located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and focuses on disease research and science education. Researchers look for ways to better diagnose and treat diseases, primarily cancer and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's. Education programs seek to inspire and prepare students to become the next generation of researchers.[14]
Since 1996, the Van Andel Institute is led by Jay's son, David Van Andel, as Chairman and CEO.[15]
Political activity and philanthropy
A strong supporter of the Republican Party, Van Andel contributed $2 million to the re-election campaign of President George W. Bush, and $475,000 to the Michigan State Republican Party (mostly for state legislature candidates) in 2004 alone. He was noted for his friendship with former President Gerald R. Ford, a native of Grand Rapids, who lamented his death and called him "a great family man and a worldwide leader in the business arena". Steve Forbes wrote, "Whether in business or philanthropy, Van Andel understood that the primary goal was to serve the needs and wants of other people. He exemplified the best of America".[16]
Awards
In 1981, Van Andel received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[17]
In 1993, Jay Van Andel was honored with an Edison Achievement Award for his commitment to innovation throughout his career.
Death
Van Andel and his wife Betty both died in 2004; Betty had Alzheimer's disease, and Jay had Parkinson's.[18] He was 80.
References
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Alticor
From SourceWatch
(Redirected from Amway)
Alticor consists of five business areas: Amway which does direct selling, Quixtar which sells on the web, Pyxis Innovations which does corporate development for Alticor, Gurwitch Products which does upscale cosmetics, and Access Business Group which does manufacturing and logistics. Amway has over 3 million salespersons selling cosmetics, home care products, and vitamins directly to customers including family and friends. Alticor is owned by Amway founders, the DeVos and Van Andel families. ^[1]
They have provided funding to both the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Private Enterprise.
- Jay Van Andel, cofounder
The Revival of Amway in the USA
The Associated Press reported on December 26, 2008 that " as Amway's 50th anniversary approaches in May, Alticor is shelving the inert Quixtar label and pouring millions of dollars into reviving the Amway brand in North America with market research, national television commercials and ads in newspapers and magazines and online. The company will use a transitional name, Amway Global, before reverting in about a year to Amway. ... Despite predictions of continuing economic gloom, Alticor executives hope to repeat in the United States the kind of growth they've seen abroad in the past - and to revive the mystique that helped the company spread throughout the Midwest and, by the mid-1960s, the rest of the country. Amway's hundreds of thousands of distributors dreamed of getting rich by selling cleaning products and by recruiting their acquaintances to join the fold. Still operating on that basic model, including prices that tend to be higher than those of their competitors, Amway saw global sales revenue top $7.1 billion in fiscal 2007. The company predicts another $1 billion increase this year. And most of its recent growth, in such developing Asian markets as China, India and Russia, has been under the Amway name." [1]
Political contributions
Betsy DeVos, the spouse of former Amway President Dick DeVos, is a Bush Pioneer having raised at least $100,000 for Bush in the 2004 presidential election. ^[2]
Alticor gave $63,477 to federal candidates in the 05/06 election period through its political action committee - 0% to Democrats, 100% to Republicans. ^[3]
Lobbying
The company spent $80,000 for lobbying in 2006. All of the lobbying was done by the lobbying firm Capitol Tax Partners. ^[4]
Spin on Wikipedia
On July 26, 2005, an anonymous poster from an Amway/Quixtar IP removed references to their company's practice of "Google bombing," which is an attempt to drown out sites reporting deceptive practices and negative opinions. This was caught by the Wikiscanner tool. [2]
Personnel
Executives:[5]
- Al Koop, Chief Operating Officer, Access Business Group LLC.
- David Ussery, President and Representative Director
- Doug DeVos, President
- Eva Cheng, Executive Vice President
- Jim Payne, Executive Vice President
- Steve Van Andel, Chairman
Selected board members:[5]
Contact details
7575 Fulton Street East
Ada, MI 49355
Phone: 616-787-1000 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 616-787-1000 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
Fax: 616-682-4000
Web: http://www.alticor.com
References
- ↑ Profile, Hoovers, accessed July 2007.
- ↑ Bush Pioneer Betsy DeVos, Texans for Public Justice, accessed August 2007.
- ↑ 2006 PAC Summary Data, Open Secrets, accessed July 2007.
- ↑ Amway/Alticor Inc lobbying expenses, Open Secrets.
- ↑ ^5.0 ^5.1 Leadership, accessed July 2007.
Related SourceWatch resources
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Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Swallowing Anything: The Hype Behind Alternative Remedies, PR Watch, Third Quarter, 1997: "Parry & Romani is headed by Thomas Parry, who, like Keven McGuiness, is a former aide to Orrin Hatch. 'The two have a mutually beneficial relationship,' reports Washingtonian magazine. 'Hatch refers Utah companies to Parry, Parry raises money for Hatch, Parry lobbies Hatch, the clients often gain.' ... The company's other principal, Romano Romani, served on the staff of Arizona Congressman Dennis DeConcini until DeConcini's embarrassment in the Charles Keating savings-and-loan scandal prompted him to decline seeking reelection.
Now their roles are reversed, with DeConcini working as a lobbyist on the payroll of Parry & Romani. ... The company also conveniently employs Scott Hatch, Orrin's son, who lobbies on behalf of clients such as the National Medical Device Coalition, the Non-Prescription Drug Manufacturers Association, and Herbalife International, a multilevel sales company whose controversial products include diet aids laced with diuretics, laxatives and caffeine. Herbalife products have drawn dozens of citations for safety and regulatory violations in both the United States and Canada."
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The conservative business model that paved the way for the Trump presidency
How Richard DeVos, one of the pillars of the right, pioneered Trumpian tactics
Richard DeVos, Orlando Magic owner and Amway co-founder, smiles after welcoming fans to the new Amway Center before a home basketball game in 2010. (AP) (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)
Perspective by Davor Mondom
:{October 11, 2018
Last month, businessman Richard DeVos, one of the most important forces in conservative politics for more than four decades, passed away at the age of 92. Since November 2016, he’s been most well known as the father-in-law of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Although she dismissed the notion at her confirmation, it is undeniable that Betsy DeVos owes her position at least in part to the hundreds of millions of dollars that she and her family have given to the Republican Party and conservative advocacy groups. Thanks to these donations, the Center for Responsive Politics has dubbed the DeVos family — which boasts an estimated net worth of $5.4 billion — “GOP royalty.”
The source of the family fortune: Amway. The name might not be familiar to some Americans, for a good reason. While Amway sells an array of household cleaning items, vitamins and nutritional supplements and cosmetics, you can’t buy them in stores. Indeed, the company’s innovation is its use of a business model known as multilevel marketing, or MLM. Consumers must purchase products directly from individual “distributors” — salespeople who operate as “independent business owners” by selling products and recruiting new sellers to do the same.
While this model sounded alluring to people drawn to a life free of a desk and a boss, Amway’s promise turned out to be hollow. In the early 1970s, Amway salespeople earned somewhere between $20 to $30 a month on average. By 2010, that had crept up to $115 — barely enough to cover a cellphone bill, let alone a full wage. But Amway itself — and the DeVos family — profited handsomely, to the tune of $8.8 billion in sales in 2016.
Amway padded the pocketbooks of the DeVos family at the expense of its workers. But it was not simply the DeVoses who got rich off this type of business. President Trump did, too. Indeed, the bigger threat to American workers today may not just be these businesses that have used economic anxieties and false promises of prosperity to undermine worker benefits, but the fact that this type of businessman is now our president.
Richard DeVos founded the company in 1959 with his childhood friend Jay Van Andel. He spelled out their vision in his 2014 memoir “Simply Rich,” writing, “We thought everyone who wanted to should be able to own their own business!”
Amway really took off in the 1970s, a period of unrest and uncertainty in the United States. Social protests ripped the country apart, and the disastrous withdrawal from Vietnam, Watergate and the Iran hostage crisis, to name a few, dealt blows to the country. Economically, roughly 25 years of post-World War II growth came to an end. The oil crises of 1973 and 1979 resulted in gas lines and fueled stagflation, a one-two punch of high inflation and high unemployment. A wave of pessimism swept over Americans. In 1974, only 7 percent of those surveyed by Gallup anticipated “a year of economic prosperity” ahead, while just 6 percent thought that 1975 would see “full or increasing employment.”
The American economy was also undergoing transformations that, over the next four decades, fundamentally and permanently jeopardized job security and material well-being for countless working people. Deindustrialization and outsourcing gutted manufacturing centers in the Northeast and Midwest. Real wages flatlined, income inequality ballooned and upward mobility declined. Some of these problems were exacerbated by rising corporate concentration — a problem that has only grown worse with time.
Many Americans responded to the tumult around them by turning inward and embracing self-help, a philosophy premised on the notion that individuals had within themselves the power to make their lives better through their own effort and determination. One of the most popular books of the decade was a self-help guide reassuringly titled “I’m OK — You’re OK.” The 1970s witnessed the flowering of the so-called Human Potential Movement. And conservatives ascended politically with a message of individual self-reliance.
Amway tapped directly into this ethos, offering what amounted to a program of economic self-help. By becoming distributors, Americans could proposer despite the gloomy economic climate. The company dangled the possibility that through direct sales individuals could earn huge fortunes, although Amway was careful never to guarantee this. Pro-Amway materials like Charles Paul Conn’s “An Uncommon Freedom” and “The Possible Dream” featured countless aspirational stories of distributors who managed to quit their jobs, pay down debts and earn tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars through direct selling. These success stories are the rare exception, but Amway has used them as examples of what anyone can achieve if they try hard enough.
The company and its boosters also have long insisted that direct sales are, in many instances, preferable to working an ordinary, 9-to-5 job. Why work for someone else when you can work for yourself?
But there is a catch: Amway’s “independent business owners” have none of the benefits of employment. By considering distributors heads of their own businesses, direct sales companies like Amway have avoided New Deal worker protections dating to the 1930s. While the companies promise to restore the pathways to self-improvement and entrepreneurship, they leave their distributors without any benefits or security. For Amway this means avoiding any of the costs of employing people full-time, while reaping all of the profits of a large workforce.
Even worse, along with paltry earnings, Amway distributors often incur substantial expenses as a result of being in the business. If a distributor has to drive considerable distances to find recruits, for example, he or she has to pay for travel costs. Additionally, many distributors have felt pressure to purchase “tools” — materials intended to help distributors run their businesses, which have included books, audio cassette tapes and CDs — as well as tickets to distributor conventions and functions.
Despite all this, Amway has managed to develop strong brand loyalty among its distributors; both because of its products, and because it touts the non-monetary benefits of distributing for Amway. The company casts distribution as an activity that can bring families closer, foster friendships and make people more self-confident, outgoing and optimistic. Amway has also held out the allure of recognition: distributors who hit certain milestones are awarded “pins” named after precious metals or stones (Gold, Emerald, Diamond, etc.), all of which come with special perks.
President Trump also recognized the pull of multilevel marketing as a businessman. In March 2009, he struck a licensing deal with Ideal Health, a MLM that sold health and wellness products. That fall, Ideal Health was officially re-christened the Trump Network. In the midst of the Great Recession, Trump promoted the network and MLM as a way to stem the tide of economic pain — just as Amway had before him. The Trump Network, he promised in a promotional video, offered Americans the opportunity “to opt out of the recession.”
Just two years later, though, the Trump Network shut its doors. Some distributors went bankrupt, while many more were frustrated that promises of wealth and economic independence never materialized. Their disappointment echoed the experiences of former Amway distributors like Stephen Butterfield, Ruth Carter and Eric Scheibeler, who all left and wrote critical tell-all books. But like Trump University and other failed ventures, the losses were felt by vulnerable people hoping for a Trump miracle, while Trump’s image as a wealthy success and his bottom line remained untarnished.
In life and in death, Richard DeVos, like Donald Trump, was attacked as a con man. Both men found success in appealing to anxieties about change and yearnings for a lost past. DeVos insisted that Amway could make financial security and socioeconomic mobility more prevalent again. Trump, meanwhile, has used the promise of wealth and mobility for ordinary people to enrich himself and ascend to the highest position in government. And he’s operating the government in the same way: lots of promises to help average Americans, but regressive policies that do nothing to boost their bottom line. Amway made the DeVos family wealthy while offering few, if any, tangible gains for its distributor force. If past is prologue, the president’s base may want to brace itself.
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Powell Memorandum: Attack On American Free Enterprise System
A collection of materials held at Washington and Lee University School of Law, in the Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Archives including a transcript and print copy of the famous "Powell Memorandum" of 1971, as well as correspondence between Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., William J. Gill, Arch N. Booth, Ross L. Malone, K. A. Randall, and many more.
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https://washingtonmonthly.com › 2016 › 08 › 29 › the-myth-of-the-powell-memo
The Myth of the Powell Memo - Washington Monthly
The Powell Memo plays a significant part in Right Moves: The Conservative Think Tank in American Political Culture Since 1945, historian Jason Stahl's new book on the emergence of conservative ...
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https://inequality.org › research › remembering-moment-ceos-dug
The Powell Memo: Remembering the Moment Our CEOs Dug In--For Good
The rest of Powell's memo would detail the sorts of steps Corporate America could take — on campuses, with the media, in politics — to sweep away what Powell considered "inequitable" taxes on men of means and tame regulatory agencies "with large authority over the business system they do not believe in.". The memo would remain confidential until syndicated national columnist Jack ...
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PDF 8-23-1971 The Memo - reuters.com
51/167 4cc 8/23/71 TO: FROM: CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM ATTACK ON AMERICAN FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM Hr. Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr. Chairman Education Committee u.s. Chamber of Commerce Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
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https://www.latimes.com › archives › la-xpm-2004-dec-08-me-vanandel8-story.html
Jay Van Andel, 80; Amway Co-Founder, Philanthropist
Dec 8, 2004Jay Van Andel, 80; Amway Co-Founder, Philanthropist. L.A. Times Archives. Dec. 8, 2004 12 AM PT. From Times Wire Reports. Jay Van Andel, the co-founder of Amway Corp. who helped parlay a ...
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Jay Van Andel - Wikipedia
Jay Van Andel (June 3, 1924 - December 7, 2004) was an American billionaire businessman, best known as co-founder of the Amway Corporation, along with Richard DeVos. [ 1 ] He also served as chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from 1979 to 1980.
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Jay Van Andel, a Co-Founder of Amway, Dies at 80
Dec 8, 2004Dec. 8, 2004. Jay Van Andel, a co-founder of Amway who spun a soap-selling business in his basement into a $6 billion global sales giant and contributed millions to conservative political causes ...
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https://www.starnewsonline.com › story › news › 2004 › 12 › 08 › co-founder-of-amway-dies-at-80 › 30767311007
Co-founder of Amway dies at 80 - starnewsonline.com
- Jay Van Andel, the co-founder of Amway Corp. who helped parlay neighborhood soap sales into a billion-dollar business and later became a leading philanthropist for conservative causes, has died ...
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The conservative business model that paved the way for the Trump ...
Oct 11, 2018October 11, 2018 at 6:00 a.m. EDT. Last month, businessman Richard DeVos, one of the most important forces in conservative politics for more than four decades, passed away at the age of 92. Since ...
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Amway Founders: Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel's Story
Rich went on to attend Calvin College, and later served in the United States Army Air Force from 1944 to 1946. In 1959, Rich co-founded Amway Corp with his good friend and business partner, Jay Van Andel. Rich and his wife, Helen, became passionately involved in philanthropy in their hometown of Grand Rapids. Rich and Helen's generosity ...
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