Worldwide Dream Builders' Convention

[admin]

I got invited to one of these dream builders convention's here at the red lion in Portland Oregon. 

It hasn't started yet but I'm wondering if any of you know more about this organization?

[Guest]

Avoid this waste of time enterprise. I believe it is just a reincarnation of Amway but now mostly online.

[Guest Nicole]

Just curious what Amway is  

[Guest]

Amway (short for "American Way") is an American company specializing in the use of multi-level marketing to sell health, beauty, and home careproducts. The company was founded in 1959 by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos and is based in Ada, Michigan.

Amway and its sister companies under Alticor reported sales of $8.6 billion in 2017. It conducts business through a number of affiliated companies in more than a hundred countries and territories. Amway was ranked No. 29 among the largest privately held companies in the United States by Forbes in 2015 based on revenue, and No. 1 among multi-level marketing companies by Direct Selling News in 2016.

Amway has been investigated in various countries and by institutions such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for alleged pyramid scheme practices

[Guest]

Amway combines direct selling with a multi-level marketing strategy. Amway distributors, referred to as "independent business owners" (IBOs), may market products directly to potential customers and may also sponsor and mentor other people to become IBOs. IBOs may earn income both from the retail markup on any products they sell personally, plus a performance bonus based on the sales volume they and their downline (IBOs they have sponsored) have generated. People may also register as IBOs to buy products at discounted prices. Harvard Business School, which described Amway as "one of the most profitable direct selling companies in the world", noted that Amway founders Van Andel and DeVos "accomplished their success through the use of an elaborate pyramid-like distribution system in which independent distributors of Amway products received a percentage of the merchandise they sold and also a percentage of the merchandise sold by recruited distributors".

[Guest]

Wow... now that I went out reading about Amway.... I found another interesting quote:

Several sources have commented on the promotion of Christian conservative ideology within the Amway organization. Mother Jones magazine described the Amway distributor force as "heavily influenced by the company's dual themes of Christian morality and free enterprise" and operating "like a private political army". In The Cult of Free Enterprise, Stephen Butterfield, who spent time in the Yager group within Amway, wrote "[Amway] sells a marketing and motivational system, a cause, a way of life, in a fervid emotional atmosphere of rallies and political religious revivalism." Philadelphia City Paper correspondent Maryam Henein stated that "The language used in motivational tools for Amway frequently echoes or directly quotes the Bible, with the unstated assumption of a shared Christian perspective."

Businessweek correspondents Bill Vlasic and Beth Regan characterized the founding families of Amway as "fervently conservative, fervently Christian, and hugely influential in the Republican Party", noting that "Rich DeVos charged up the troops with a message of Christian beliefs and rock-ribbed conservatism."

High-ranking Amway leaders such as Richard DeVos and Dexter Yager were owners and members of the board of Gospel Films, a producer of movies and books geared towards conservative Christians, as well as co-owners (along with Salem Communications) of a right-wing, Christian nonprofit called Gospel Communications International. Yager, interviewed on 60 Minutes in 1983, admitted that he promotes Christianity through his Amway group, but stated that this might not be the case in other Amway groups.

Rolling Stone's Bob Moser reported that former Amway CEO and co-founder Richard DeVos is connected with the Dominionist political movement in the United States. Moser states that DeVos was a supporter of the late D. James Kennedy, giving more than $5 million to Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries. DeVos was also a founding member and two-time president of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing Christian organization.

Sociologist David G. Bromley calls Amway a "quasi-religious corporation" having sectarian characteristics. Bromley and Anson Shupe view Amway as preaching the gospel of prosperity.Patralekha Bhattacharya and Krishna Kumar Mehta, of the consulting firm Thinkalytics, LLC, reasoned that although some critics have referred to organizations such as Amway as "cults" and have speculated that they engage in "mind control", there are other explanations that could account for the behavior of distributors. Namely, continued involvement of distributors despite minimal economic return may result from social satisfaction compensating for diminished economic satisfaction.

[Ibezim]

How does the company operate 

can you tell me in details! 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

As a person who sold Amway products twice, and had to quit because they, although of reasonably good quality, were way over priced ... then tried it again with a different philosophy, but could not shake the fact that everybody in the distribution line made money ... which made the products over-priced ... I could not justify, as an example, taking a box of laundry detergent to a person's home.

It's door-to-door sales ... after you have loaded up all your relatives ... and FORMER friends, with a pot load of household soaps, detergents, and stuff.

 

 

[Guest Nicole]

Thanks for you reply  it sounds scary to me.