Nutrilite is a brand of mineral, vitamin, and dietary supplements / Courtesy of Amway

By Park Si-soo

Founded in 1959, Amway is one of the world’s largest direct selling companies, operating in around 60 countries in Asia, Australia, Europe and Africa.

The Michigan-based firm has more than 20,000 employees and there are 3 million-plus Amway distributors selling the company’s products, called Amway Business Owners (ABOs).

Amway tapped into the Korean market in 1991, but immediately faced an uphill battle to dispel the public misunderstanding between multi-level direct marketing system and illegal pyramid schemes. Despite its decades-long efforts, such a die-hard misunderstanding still lingers to some extent here.

“After many years of hard work on this front, it is encouraging to see that people are gradually differentiating between the business opportunities of our company and other illegal pyramid businesses,” said Doug DeVos, Amway president.

Amway distributes more than 450 kinds of nutrition, beauty and home care products. Its top-selling brands include Nutrilite, Artistry, and eSpring.

Nutrilite is one of the world’s best-selling vitamin and dietary supplement brands whose sales marked $4.7 billion last year. Artistry is among the world’s top five largest selling skin care brands. eSpring is also one of the world’s largest selling brands of kitchen water treatment systems and the world’s second largest selling brand of home water treatment systems, according to Amway.

The firm’s global headquarters, which spans an area of more than 914,400 square meters, is located in Michigan.

It owns or manages numerous manufacturing facilities in the United States, China and Vietnam; organically certified farms for growing food supplement ingredients in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil; and distribution centers in North America, Europe and Asia.

In 2010, the company launched a distribution center in Busan here, which is responsible for the distribution of Amway products in Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.