The Covid-19 pandemic may be a bane to most of retail firms, but not to multilevel marketing company Amway Philippines.
The distributor of health, beauty, home care and agricultural products on Monday announced it is taking its business operations here to the next step. Amway Philippines Country Manager Leni P. Olmedo said the firm has seen a demand surge for nutrition items during the pandemic, and it intends to supply buyers with these products to help them cope with the crisis.
“Health and wellness products are now on demand; some even go through mental awareness activities to make it through the pandemic,” Olmedo said in a news briefing.
“We are seeing that nutrition is becoming a factor even in across a lot of households,” she said. “What they are trying to do is take in vitamins to ward off the virus.”
As such, Amway Philippines is looking to grow its business by 10 percent this year in the face of the pandemic, which has forced numerous industries to cut their growth targets.
Last year the firm manages about 80,000 Amway business owners (ABO), or direct sellers that offer health products to customers. From April to June this year, Amway has seen a 130-percent increase in new signups to become ABOs.
“Direct selling provides newly unemployed Filipinos a new chance at building a career at a difficult time,” Olmedo said.
“People would try to find a way to replace the income that was lost. This showed in our numbers, which has kept on growing because [those] unemployed [by the pandemic] are trying to find means to earn.”
In terms of avenue, the firm has seen its physical stores transfer to digital platforms, pushing its number of online sellers to 70 percent, from 8 percent before the pandemic, as the health crisis left people with no other option but to expand their purchasing options.
In support of these online sellers, Olmedo reported that Amway has distributed over 90 digital courses that educate on how to manage businesses from home. Likewise, live video trainings were conducted during the pandemic.
“We are upgrading our e-commerce facilities, and we conduct nearly daily trainings to help those sellers who are shifting to online from offline,” the country manager said.
Image credits: Alexey Novikov | Dreamstime.com