Word: andele
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...Andel is an ardent advocate of the free enterprise system and fully enjoys its rewards. He is chairman and co-owner of Amway (a contraction of American way) Corp., one of the nation's most successful private firms, which is engaged in what he calls "in-the-home selling." In this its 20th year, Amway expects to retail $750 million worth of cosmetics, vitamins, jewelry, home-care products and some 4,000 brand-name appliances and other items direct to customers through catalogues by a network of 300,000 door-to-door salespeople. Amway's achievements are evident...
Early in May, Van Andel, 54, the tall, sandy-haired grandson of an immigrant Dutch bicycle salesman, began a one-year term as chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (membership: 84,000 companies, organizations, state and local chambers and individuals). Voted in by the Chamber's board, Van Andel expects to fill his traditionally figurehead role by making speeches and TV appearances, attending White House meetings and testifying on Capitol Hill in behalf of business...
...Andel started Amway in 1959 with Richard DeVos, a Grand Rapids high school chum who is now president and the other co-owner of the company. The two had joined a number of small enterprises after World War II, including a restaurant, a flying school, a commercial air charter service and a distributorship for Nutrilite. The two left to start Amway, taking with them a number of discontented Nutrilite distributors. The first product that Amway marketed was an all-purpose liquid cleaner called Frisk, and today soaps and detergents remain the core of the business...
...Andel says that although top Amway salespeople can earn more than $100,000 a year, the majority, who may be housewives, retirees or even doctors or lawyers, probably make $50 to $150 a month. Though the result is a many-layered sales organization, it differs significantly from unscrupulous pyramid sales schemes like Glenn ("Dare to Be Great") Turner's Florida-based cosmetics operation, in which participants earned money by signing up new distributors rather than by selling the company's products...
Amway has moved to diversify by buying, among other things, hotels in Grand Rapids and the Caribbean and the 950-affiliate Mutual Broadcasting System radio network. A political conservative who was sworn into his Chamber of Commerce job by his good Michigan friend Gerald Ford, Van Andel is an earnest backer of a tax reduction group, Taxpayers United Federation. He is also a supporter of a campaign to limit the number of terms for Presidents (to one), Senators (two) and Representatives (six) in order to reduce the preponderance of professional politicians, as opposed to "citizen" politicians, in Washington...