Amway Ambush

An educational moment in 1980s America

Hi there, new subscribers. If you live in the U.S., you’re probably sick and tired of continually being sold something. Especially in politics. From all sides. Every single day we are pitched another crackpot idea, another astonishing and preposterous scheme to defund the arts, arrest innocent citizens, fire FAA employees, or annex Canada. Any perspective other than the official White House line comes from “Radical Left Lunatics.” Also, Joe Biden is just fine! Don’t believe what you hear! It’s all going to work out! It’s a 24-hour cycle of pitch, pitch, sell, sell. Slimy, tacky, and exhausting. It reminds me of a little moment I experienced in college, when I was trapped in an Amway recruiting session. I’m sure many of you have experienced something similar in your life. Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

Around 1980 my then-girlfriend and I were approached by one of her friends. “You have to come with us to this meeting, it’s going to be really good.” Well what is it? “You’ll find out when we’re there. It’s going to help all of us improve our lives.” We were college students, and somewhat naïve, so we agreed to go to this secret meeting, along with the other girl and her boyfriend.

We drove out into the rainy Oregon night, the wipers were splashing back and forth in my girlfriend’s green sedan, which once belonged to the Fish & Game department and still had a functioning spotlight. We pulled into the parking lot of a hotel on the outskirts of town. Not a classy hotel. This was Eugene, Oregon. A small business hotel, which catered to sales guys coming into town for, say, the Potlatch particleboard regional meeting.

We walked the halls, and found the meeting room, which strangely was unmarked. A handful of others were sitting at tables with green tablecloths and pitchers of water. There was no signage, no branding anywhere. After everyone was settled, a man stood up in front of the room and checked his watch. He wore a shirt and necktie, and ill-fitting gray sport coat. He looked about 35 but already had a combover haircut, and a potent application of aftershave. He didn’t need a microphone.

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Here’s a fun graphic from Personal Finance Club, which is run by a guy named Jeremy—“I retired at 36 and currently have a net worth of over $4 million.”

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The Combover introduced himself. “How’s everyone doing? Let me ask you a question. Who in this room owns a car?” Some hands went up.

He pointed to one man. “And what’s your name? Wade? Wade, let me ask you this. Wouldn’t it be nice to own a NEW car? It sure would, wouldn’t it? We’ll get to that in just a minute.”

Okay, where was this going?

“Those of you with cars, it costs money to drive a car, right? The maintenance, the oil changes. Wouldn’t be nice to be able to afford NEW TIRES for that car? You bet it would. Nice new set of tires. We’ll get to that in just a minute.”

This game of shiny objects and zero explanation went on for awhile, enough for me to start sensing, what the hell is happening here? All of us in this room, we weren’t dummies. At least I didn’t think so. We grew up in America, the land of hucksters. We were familiar with the hard sell. Our ancestors had to listen to some slick-talking guy, pulling his horse-drawn wagon into the camp, standing up and extolling the virtues of some dubious colored liquid that was supposed to cure warts, grow hair, prevent cholera, and make the skin shiny and smooth. With the one goal to foist a few bottles onto the crowd of suckers, collect the money, and ride out of town before anyone realized the product was useless.

Since we were old enough to remember, we’d been pitched to buy bullshit we didn’t need, especially our generations who were babysat by network television, and the daily firehose of advertising in between episodes of Gilligan’s Island and the Huntley-Brinkley Report. We were well aware that we were being hustled, whether it was cars or cigarettes or laundry detergent or canned soup. The world was a continual marketplace of stuff shoved in front of your face, with the promise of a better life.

I recognized this guy’s rap. The street-vendor peddler of dreams. That high-energy enthusiasm to get on board, get that new car, with new tires. Let’s get out there and improve our lives! Grasp the golden ring! But the Combover still wouldn’t tell us what he was selling. What was the elixir? What was the catch?

I started thinking, I don’t have time for this BS. I’m only 20. I’m just a college student. I have a full slate of classes, and working two jobs, flipping burgers at the Student Union cafeteria and DJing at a radio station on the weekends (the regrettable Top 40 format). I have a term paper due on Eugene Ionesco and the Theater of the Absurd. I have a volunteer internship at a TV station in the evenings. And next week I have tickets to see Jackson Browne at the basketball stadium. What the fuck is this guy hawking?

After a good 45 minutes of fanning the flames of capitalism, of riling up the room into a froth, envisioning that brand-new set of Goodyear radials, the Combover finally lowered the boom. This was the internationally famous company Amway, and we sold the finest cleaning products in the country, and if you helped us sell enough of them, you could go onto the owner’s yacht at the end of the year for an all-expense-paid vacation!

It was a long time ago, but I still remember that we stormed out of the room, and bitched about the “Amway Ambush” all the way home, and probably for some months afterwards.

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From wikipedia: Amway and its sister companies under Alticor reported sales of $8.9 billion in 2019. It is the largest multi-level marketing company in the world by revenue. It conducts business through a number of affiliated companies in more than a hundred countries and territories. Amway has been investigated in various countries and by institutions such as the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for alleged pyramid scheme practices. The company has paid tens of millions of dollars to settle these suits.