There are lots of ways to obtain enough to eat. Selling Amway products and the Amway lifestyle to everyone you know is one of them.
December 8, 2004
By LANDON THOMAS
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, died yesterday in Ada, Mich. He was 80 years old and died of natural causes, a family spokesman said.
Like Mr. Van Andel himself, Amway’s origins were modest, but from its simple beginnings grew one of the largest direct sales companies in the world, relying on over three million devoted distributors around the world to sell everything from vitamins to Coca-Cola machines.
While extraordinarily lucrative – Mr. Van Andel was worth over a billion dollars, according to Forbes Magazine – the business, which relied on a vast sales force to sell its products and recruit others to do the same, was also controversial.
In the 1970’s federal authorities said the company was an illegal pyramid scheme, although the charges were later dropped. And in the 1980’s, Canada charged the company with defrauding it out of millions in customs duties.
Through it all, Mr. Van Andel maintained that his dedicated pitchmen and pitchwomen embodied the sound virtues of free enterprise and entrepreneurship that remained dear to him, despite what he believed to be the interfering tendencies of big government.
“No matter what government may do to hinder their essential work,” he wrote in his autobiography, “entrepreneurs will always be there. And as long as entrepreneurs are with us, and they live moral lives, there is hope.”
Although he retired as chairman of Amway in 1995, Mr. Van Andel remained a staunch supporter of Republican presidents, backing Bob Dole in 1995 and most recently contributing $2 million to the Progress for America fund, a conservative organization that ran negative television adds against Senator John Kerry during the recent presidential campaign.
Born in June 1924, Mr. Van Andel and his longtime partner and friend Richard DeVos co-founded Amway in 1959 in their hometown, Grand Rapids, Mich., after aborted attempts to start an air charter service and a drive-in restaurant.
Starting with vitamins, they moved on to soap and other home care products and expanded rapidly throughout the country by developing a network of distributors who were encouraged to sell and consume the company’s products as well as preach the virtues of direct sales to others.
The Amway method, which was continuously reinforced via self-help books and inspirational tape recordings, became a tie that bound the firm’s broad web of salespeople.
At public rallies that often began with the Pledge of Allegiance and wrapped up with a rendition of “God Bless America,” inspirational speakers from Ronald Reagan to Gerald Ford exhorted the sales force, and the firm recruited high-profile distributors like Pat Boone and Tom Landry to its sales ranks.
Sales soon surpassed a billion dollars and the company established itself as a strong rival to Avon, going so far as to attempt a takeover in the 1980’s.
Underlying the homespun nostrums and patriotism was a simple, but core message: that the interests of Amway and its distributors were one and the same.
These principles drew the attention of regulators like the Federal Trade Commission, which spent six years investigating whether the company’s practices were an illegal pyramid, allowing distributors to succeed only by recruiting a succeeding wave.
In his later years, Mr. Van Andel, who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, devoted much of his time to philanthropic efforts, establishing the Van Andel Institute, which financed research for a range of human health topics. He also contributed millions to urban renewal projects in Grand Rapids and was a trustee of the Heritage Foundation and the Hudson Institute, two conservative-minded research and policy lobbying organizations.
He was a longtime member of the Christian Reformed Church.
He is survived by his four children – two sons and two daughters – and 10 grandchildren. His wife of 52 years, Betty Van Andel, died in January after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.