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July:
Whenever there’s been a bump in the road, the business has
always risen to the challenge,
Jim Janz notes.
There was the FTC investigation in the 1970s, for instance.
“Rich
DeVos and
Jay
Van Andel were late for a
Board
Meeting one day,” says Jim. “We waited for them, and when
Jay came in he said, ‘We have a little announcement: The
FTC just
came for thousands of documents – we’re kind of proud of
that; it puts us in league with some of the largest
companies in the nation. We knew this opportunity would come
one day, and we have saved up a war chest to defend our
business model. We’re confident we will win.’ And of course,
that’s what happened. We actually published the FTC report
in the centerfold of the
Amagram, it was
that good!” To this day it stands as proof of the validity of the
business model.
Amway also suffered a
tragedy when its aerosol plant went up in flames. For some
young companies, that would have been a disaster, but not
Amway. Says Jim, “We
didn’t miss a beat. We hired another company to fill orders
until we could rebuild the plant.” Amway built a
state-of-the-art new facility that continues to fill orders
to this day, even doing some contract manufacturing to
maximize operations.
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