Amway US

Amway is a well-known multilevel marketing company specializing in health and beauty products, as well as home care items. The company has been around for more than 50 years and does business throughout the United States and in more than 100 different countries. They are quite a successful company and have even been ranked as number 29 on the list of the largest privately held companies in the United States by Forbes magazine in 2015. The number of reported employees is 17,000 as of 2018, but that doesn't include Amway distributors, who are the people on the ground that make the multilevel marketing program work. The headquarters for Amway are in Ada, Michigan.

The company began in 1949, founded by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos. The two had been partners in various business ventures, but they became distributors for Nutrilight food supplements, and even though they sold right away, they wanted to do something more. Instead of trying to make a success in Nutrilight, they decided to set up a multilevel marketing program with new products. The first product was called Frisk - an organic cleaner concentrate. Amway bought full ownership in Nutrilight in 1994. There are lots of different products that Amway offers and they mostly fall into the health and beauty category or are similar to what Nutrilight offered.

This is an international company that began expanding in 1971 when Australia was added to the list. Amway moved on to Europe in 1973 and then into Asia in 1974. By 1998, Amway was in India, Scandinavia, China, Africa, Thailand, and Latin America. The company now operates in over 100 countries and territories that are organized into regional markets. They had $8.6 billion in sales as of 2017.