fashion img

History of Direct Selling




History of Direct Selling



The history of Direct Selling originates back to the 1940’s where a company trading under the name of “California Vitamins” discovered they could make more sales when they had a lot of sales representatives selling a small amount of product each, compared to the traditional business model, of trying to have a few sales representatives selling a lot. California Vitamins also discovered that most of their growing customer base was made up of the friends and family of their existing sales representatives who had essentially referred them to the company as they were impressed with their product line.

New sales representatives were then created from existing satisfied customers and a commission based system was developed. Both teams and individuals were rewarded according to their sales efforts. And as a result Direct Selling was born. The same company later changed their trading name to Nutrilite Food Supplement Corporation.

In 1959 Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel founded the company Amway which was an abbreviation for the term “the American way”. Amway from day one was based on the same Direct Selling concept. Almost 50 years later Amway is a well established Direct Selling company operating in more than 80 countries around the world and with more than 3 million business operators.