In August, the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations (WFDSA), the leading international organization representing the global direct selling industry, announced worldwide retail sales of $179.3 billion for the year-ending December 31, 2020. This figure represented an increase of 5.8 percent from 2019.
All regions around the globe experienced increases in sales in 2020 versus 2019. The global salesforce increased 4.3 percent to 125.4 million independent representatives/distributors.
Of course, much of what transpired in 2020, both inspiring and challenging, was the result of the global pandemic. It had an obvious impact on companies in the direct selling the industry and was a key driver of the increased numbers seen in both sales and the salesforce.
For five companies around the world—Natura &Co, Omnilife, PM-International, SwissJust, and Enagic—2020 was an unprecedented time in history that brought out the best in leadership, employees, and the salesforce, ushering in a new era of innovation that is setting the stage for future optimism.
NATURA: People First, Things Later
Founded in 1969, Natura is a Brazilian multinational in the cosmetics and personal care segment, a leader in direct sales in Brazil. With 6,900 employees and 2 million consultants in Latin America, Natura has headquarters in São Paulo, Brazil, and operates in ten countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, France, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States).
In 2014, Natura became the first publicly traded company to receive B Corp certification, and its third certification was concluded in 2020. Among Natura’s best-selling products in Brazil, its major market, are Kaiak deodorant cologne and Essencial Deo Parfum. Natura is part of Natura &Co, a global, purpose-driven, multi-channel and multi-brand cosmetics group that includes Avon, The Body Shop, and Aesop. Natura &Co operates in more than 110 countries, with over 3,700 stores, 35,000 employees and 8 million representatives and consultants.
“The main challenge we all faced last year was navigating a series of uncertainties during the pandemic,” says João Paulo Ferreira, CEO of Natura &Co Latin America and CEO of Natura Brazil.
“Having said that, we moved forward with one resolution in mind: people first, things later. For us, this period was especially challenging if we consider not only the pandemic, but also the integration of Avon into the group. We initiated this in 2020, principally in Latin America, uniting the operations of our four businesses: Avon, Natura, The Body Shop and Aesop.
Natura &Co CEO João Paulo Ferreira says recent challenges have been the pandemic and the integration of Avon into the group.
Natura &Co established three main commitments: care for its people, bar the contagion, and keep the economy running, always prioritizing life and well-being for all. The company acted rapidly to guarantee job security and safety for employees, enabling them to work remotely when possible, and reinforcing sanitary protocols in factories and distribution centers. It also offered virtual medical care to all.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Natura &Co has donated around R$100 million, including products (such as alcohol and soaps) and funds to help accelerating vaccination initiatives, supporting health authorities, and ensuring food security for vulnerable populations. More than 1.3 million people and 190 organizations have benefited from donations in Brazil and Latin America. The company also supported Natura Beauty Consultants and Avon Beauty Representatives economically and psychologically by creating an emergency relief fund to help them through the pandemic, focusing on those who became ill or lost their jobs and a significant part of their income.
To minimize the effects of the crisis on consultants and representatives, Natura &Co extended payment terms, and reduced product order requirements. To ensure that its direct seller network could maintain its activities safely, respecting social distancing protocols, it accelerated its digitalization process, already in progress over recent years, creating digital tools in apps and through social media, boosting social selling.
Natura &Co Latin America, which includes Avon, Natura, The Body Shop and Aesop, had a net revenue of R$20.5 billion in 2020, growing 9.4 percent compared with 2019 (3.7% in constant currency). This result was driven by market share gains for Natura and Avon, leveraged by increased consultant and representative productivity, the acceleration of social selling (through digital apps), and a higher number of Natura consultants.
“Recently, in the second quarter, the Natura &Co group posted another quarter of double-digit revenue growth globally, again outperforming the global Cosmetics, Fragrance, and Toiletries market,” Ferreira says. “Consolidated net revenue in the second quarter stood at R$9.5 billion, up 36.2 percent in Brazilian Reais and 31.7 percent in constant currency, driven by double-digit sales growth for all four of the group’s iconic brands and businesses.”
This strong performance was driven by growth across the board and strong sales in digital social selling and e-commerce across all brands, despite continued impacts from COVID-19 in key markets. Digitally enabled sales, which include online sales (e-commerce plus social selling) and relationship selling using the company’s main digital apps, reached 51 percent of total revenue.
In 2020, billions of products and services were traded by direct selling in Brazil, where Natura is headquartered, resulting in R$ 50 billion in sales, up 10.5 percent compared to 2019. This shows how resilient direct selling has been even during the pandemic. In 2020, the Brazilian direct selling market grew 9.2 percent, while Natura’s direct selling channel rose by 15.4 percent.
According to Euromonitor data, Natura’s direct selling channel grew in other important Latin American markets besides Brazil, where the direct selling industry as a whole declined in 2020. In Mexico, Colombia, and Peru, for example, Natura’s direct selling channel grew despite the decrease in the market. And in Chile, Natura posted an increase of 21.3 percent, outperforming the 8 percent growth in the direct selling market.
The Latin American cosmetics market showed modest growth in 2020. Considering important markets like Chile and Mexico, Natura grew in contrast with a general decrease among competitors in the cosmetics segment. The company advanced in brand preference, brand power, and market share, especially last year. And the share of the Natura brand in many Latin American countries is still below expectations, especially in markets such as Colombia and Mexico, where the company has huge potential.
“With Avon, we are also benefiting from the quick wins we have had from harmonizing commercial practices,” Ferreira says. “Additionally, we now have a more focused selection of products, categories, and leading brands in our portfolio in several countries, and we can use this mix in our favor. We hope to see further improvement considering the transformations we have made in Avon’s commercial model.”
In Latin America, Natura &Co has the biggest market share in the cosmetics segment, with 12.5 percent, primarily related to the Natura and Avon brands. Its overall performance in Latin America, where the company has been successful in consolidating the digitalization of consultants’ and representatives’ activities, has helped them to overcome the effects of the pandemic and maintain their businesses. In addition, Natura has just been elected the most beloved brand in the region by Love Brands 2021, the only company in the cosmetics segment on the list.
Natura &Co has seen solid growth, especially in Mexico. The country became Natura’s largest market outside Brazil. It is important to consider that the online sales channel in Mexico was launched only in May 2021, initiating the company’s omnichannel approach successfully. It is also important to mention that the Natura brand had strong growth across Hispanic America in the second quarter of 2021, supported by all the markets, most notably Argentina, Peru, and Mexico. Productivity per consultant also increased in the region, and the Natura consultant base expanded by 19 percent, reaching 852,000.
There is quite a bit of concern about the growing inequalities and unemployment in Latin American countries, which reached record rates in 2020 and are still at a high level. According to the International Monetary Fund, per capita income in the region will not return to the pre-pandemic level until 2024, which will cause cumulative losses of 30 percent, compared to the pre-pandemic trend. Additionally, inflation is also putting pressure on the purchasing power of a population already weakened by the lack of employment. Additionally, by the end of August, most Latin American countries had not been able to completely vaccinate more than a third of their populations (exceptions are Chile and Uruguay, where immunization progressed rapidly).
Regarding its businesses, in 2020 Natura &Co shifted to a schedule of 100 percent virtual meetings, which challenged its commercial teams to maintain dynamism in its activities while the company was facing restrictions across all countries. In some of them, the restrictions on direct sales, principally for meetings, are still in place.
Faced with lockdowns and closed stores, Natura launched new digital products and services for direct sellers, such as a digital and interactive selling magazine. It also created a tool that allows direct sellers to customize digital advertisements for their social networks.
The company believes that the human touch is at the heart of the Natura &Co business, but it has also learned to be innovative. According to Ferreira, this is an ongoing process, and the company is on track. Currently, digitally enabled sales represent around 50 percent of Natura &Co’s revenue, with very positive numbers.
Due to the COVID-19 crisis, Natura &Co has reinforced its commitment to honor contracts, especially with supplier communities in the Amazon forest. This has been important for protecting its network and guaranteeing its production. Even so, it is still facing an imbalance in supply chains in Latin America, but so far it has been able to find appropriate alternatives. The company has had to deal with some shortages in imported materials and rising prices for international freight due to the reduced availability of means of transportation—in particular, air freight. Some examples are resins for plastics, paper for packaging, and palm oil (used in soap blends).
However, the effect of supply on the consultants’ business has been very low for Natura in Latin America. Nevertheless, the company remains vigilant. It is difficult to foresee, but in general terms, the recovery of the aforementioned chains will be closely linked to the progress of vaccination programs around the world.
“We will certainly remain focused on our integration process as a group, extracting more synergies from our brands and their operations worldwide, with particular focus on Latin America,” says Ferreira. “Further accelerating our digitalization process will also be a key strategy for 2022. During this unprecedented crisis, we have seen how the intensive use of technology has driven resilience for the direct selling model. We have learned to be innovative in establishing processes that do not depend on physical presence, and we are continuously stimulating the peer-to-peer logic in our network.”
Ferreira says the company is optimistic about its business capacity but is still cautious about the situation, considering that in most of the markets in which they operate vaccination is progressing at a slower pace than necessary. Consequently, it is facing a record number of people below the poverty line in Latin America, with economies unable to fully recover from the pandemic.
The company will continue to pursue the goals of its Commitment to Life, Natura &Co’s sustainability vision for 2030. Launched in 2020, this commitment set forth bold targets for the next decade, tackling some of the world’s most pressing issues: addressing the climate crisis and protecting the Amazon, ensuring equality and inclusion, and shifting the business toward circularity and regeneration.
“The principle behind this vision is to provide business solutions for the main socio-environmental problems the world is facing, generating a positive impact,” says Ferreira.
OMNILIFE: Seeking to Reinvent and Transcend
Omnilife was founded in 1992 by Jorge Vergara and Maricruz Zatarian, parents of owner and CEO Amaury Vergara, with a clear and strong vision to be “People Taking Care of People.” Offering nutritional supplements, personal care products, and cosmetics sold through more than six million independent distributors in twenty-one countries, the Guadalajara, Mexico-based company is among the top twenty-five companies in the world based on 2020 revenue.
According to Amaury Vergara, the pandemic represented a growth opportunity for the company, not only because of the increase in sales due to the consumption of products contributing to improving people’s health, but also because the Omnilife business model represented a source of employment.
“To give you an example, the unemployment effect caused by the pandemic favored us by increasing the registration of new distributors by 16 percent—almost 450,000 new registered distributors,” says Vergara. “In 2020, historical monthly sales records were broken in at least eleven countries where Omnilife operates.”
In 2020, the company grew by 15.4 percent compared to 2019. Twelve of its markets sales grow by more than 30 percent: Argentina (147%), Spain (98%), Uruguay (71%), Costa Rica (60%), Chile (42%), Guatemala (41%), Paraguay (41%), Panama (41%), US (35%), Colombia (33%), El Salvador (32%), and Russia (32%).
Comparing sales this year from January to July versus sales from January to July 2020, six countries are growing significantly: Chile (149%), Argentina (55%), El Salvador (43%), Spain (35%), Perú (32%), and the US (20%). Based on data through August 2021, Omnilife estimates sales will increase for the year.
Though the outlook for 2022 remains cautious, Omnilife CEO Amaury Vergara notes experts are pointing toward a business renaissance.
Like other direct selling companies, Omnilife is facing unprecedented times; however, the company is experiencing historically record-breaking sales that can be attributed to the growth in its workforce numbers and the enthusiasm of distributors in promoting and selling the products.
Very high peaks were observed in the sale of immunological products, which, once the fear of the virus subsided, had a downward trend. Other categories, such as supplements that contribute to the strengthening of the circulatory and digestive systems, have had growth above 2020 figures.
Omnilife has helped drive people to seek healthier lifestyle choices. The company faced its share of challenges, such as new ways of purchasing, delivery, and payments to distributors, as well as adapting to virtual events. However, today it is back to holding in-person events and living the new reality.
Vergara says that the pandemic hit the company significantly at first, but a well-developed substitute product plan enabled the company to generate a well-informed campaign with its salesforce to communicate the options. In addition, strong relationships and good negotiations with suppliers allowed the company to be more agile in addressing supply chain issues.
“From our manufacturing plant, we migrated versions between formats to compensate for the high demand in some formats of our production lines,” says Vergara. “For 2022, there will still be limited inputs in raw materials for products and packaging materials, so the challenges will continue.”
Vergara says that the outlook for 2022 will be cautious, although he notes there are experts who point toward a business renaissance, or boom, similar to a post-war period. However, everything remains very uncertain.
Whatever comes their way, Omnilife will be dedicated to being “People Taking Care of People,” and will continue to implement within its distributors the four fundamental pillars of the company—connection, evolution, integration, and transcendence—which will continue to define and guarantee solidity from its core.
“As a company, we constantly seek to reinvent ourselves and transcend people,” Vergara says. “We truly believe that our results are stunning and that we are on the right track to continue changing the lives of millions of people around the world.”
Omnilife is happy to share its growth and abundance with its distributors. That’s why this year it will bring 4,254 of its Independent Distributors who qualified in previous months to Dubai.
PM-INTERNATIONAL: Company, Team Partners Evolve Together
PM-International has achieved phenomenal growth over the last few years. Founded in 1993, the company was well on its way to becoming one of the top ten direct selling companies in the world before the pandemic hit. The Luxembourg-based company, which develops and markets premium nutritional supplements and cosmetics through its FitLine® brand, achieved more than 50 percent growth in annual sales in 2020, earning $1.71 billion.
“We are very thankful for having been able to grow and develop over the past year, and we do not take any of it for granted,” says PM-International CEO Rolf Sorg. “I am very proud of our team partners around the world who have shown a lot of commitment, flexibility, and leadership. We have taken on the challenge and evolved together.”
According to Sorg, when the pandemic started last year, distribution partners were stuck at home during the lockdown of the first wave. The company made it possible for them to still support their customers through its Customer Direct Program. “We reacted extremely fast, creating additional tools and offering free delivery for customer orders from fifty dollars,” says Sorg. “All of this created a real motivational boost throughout our teams, particularly for our many young distributors who are digital natives and already had a lot of experience in working online. That made it easier for us to adapt and go fully online, wherever and whenever it was needed.”
While companies around the globe reported increased supply chain issues because of the pandemic, PM-International fared much better. The company has been focusing on prevention for twenty-eight years, not only in its product range but in all its business areas. Sorg says this includes long-term planning and conservative fiscal management, which helped enormously when the pandemic started. “Thanks to a great collaboration between our research and development department and our reliable logistics partners, we were able to secure our raw materials for six months in advance with a rolling forecast,” Sorg says.
Expansion has been key to PM-International’s growth over the last few years. The company has offices in Canada, Mexico, and the US. In 2019, it opened Headquarters Americas in Sarasota, Florida, earning the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) certification in 2020. The headquarters, which includes a fulfillment center, was a milestone achievement for the company and a key link in its global GMP-compliant supply chain.
Rolf Sorg, CEO of PM-International, believes that digitalization makes the business opportunity more accessible and user-friendly.
“We are developing very quickly here and have major projects ahead of us,” says Sammy El Ghoul, Chief Sales Officer for the Americas. “As we are already running out of space, we are investing into additional manufacturing equipment and facilities.”
In 2021, PM-International expanded its warehouse by about 7,000 square feet and plans a second administration building with an additional 3,500 square feet. In addition, the company’s North Branch offices in Pittsburgh will move into new facilities, and the company will open an additional office for the West region in order to support the expansion throughout the Americas.
PM-International is also expanding into other areas of the world, including the United Kingdom. The company has a positive outlook for this market because WFDSA data shows the UK direct selling industry grew by 45 percent in 2020, generating $822 million in retail sales. After preparing the operations for the UK market in 2020, PM-International has registered around a 150 percent increase in sales in this market in the last twelve months alone. With wellness and cosmetics products accounting for 80 percent of the retail sales in UK direct sales, Sorg sees a lot of potential for further growth.
In the future , the company plans to expand in all continents: in South America, Bolivia and Peru; in Europe, Hungary and Portugal; in the Asia-Pacific arena, Vietnam and China; and in Africa, Morocco.
Sorg believes that digitalization will make the PM-International business opportunity more accessible, more user-friendly, and more cost-efficient for team partners, but that virtual sales will never fully replace the personal interaction with customers and distributors. Direct sales is and always will be a people’s business, he says.
However, to continue the momentum company has experienced over the last few years, Sorg intends to take full advantage of hybrid events and digital retail solutions that, in his eyes, are here to stay.
“Going forward, hybrid events will be the new normal, a permanent feature,” he says. “Like major sporting events, PM Team Partners will have the choice of watching an event live on-site or as part of a public viewing event at their local subsidiary, or as online streaming on PM TV from the comfort of their own home. Some events will just stay online, like our Product Academies, and the same goes also for corporate trainings. Transforming our events setup was really a major step into the online working world.”
This year, Sorg is confident the company will reach $2 billion in sales. All the hard work since the beginning, but especially over the last few years, has paved the way for the company to continue growing. The goal is to create sustainable growth that will provide worldwide opportunities for generations to come.
SWISSJUST: Success Is a Delicate Alchemy
Just is a family-owned business still anchored in the mountains of Walzenhausen, Switzerland. With almost ninety years in the market, it is considered a worldwide pioneer in herbal wellness therapy. Its products are based on wellness recipes that use ancestral practices with medicinal herbs to meet daily needs. At the heart of each formula is the restorative power of plants and herbs from its native Swiss Alps with potent active compounds that provide wellness and beauty properties.
Just products are sold in over thirty-five countries around the world through companies like SwissJust, which markets, sells, and distributes their products in specific geographies. SwissJust is responsible for the whole of the Americas, with operations in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Perú, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panamá, Uruguay, Chile, and Puerto Rico. Its regional headquarters are located in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
According to Jacques Mizrahi, CEO of SwissJust Americas, all nine SwissJust companies had double-digit growth in 2020, and the company hit records in sales and in the number of active consultants in every single market. Growth per market varied between 30 percent to over 100 percent.
“Looking at the longer trends, we did about four years of growth in one year,” say Mizrahi. “We had the luck of coming into the pandemic healthy. We had been growing at lower double-digits for several years, and our consultant base was already quite digital and social media savvy. “We had a strong party plan practice—in-person, of course—and we were also doing many virtual training meetings, so Zoom was not such a huge novelty.”
Once the pandemic struck, six of SwissJust’s nine markets went into full lockdown. People were not allowed to leave the house by law. A few of the company’s warehouse facilities closed overnight because they were in lockdown areas. The company was completely closed for an entire month in Perú, Chile, Argentina, and Colombia.
“We first went into communication overdrive with the field to make sure we kept the spirit alive and provided a sense of calm and strategic direction,” Mizrahi says. “Then we jumped into digital transformation with both feet—virtual parties and events, e-commerce, and the use of customer data. We tried to be as agile as possible. In countries where we had full lockdown and no sales, we paid commissions to leaders to help them get through the financial slump.”
Even through the market shutdowns and lockdowns, statistics from the local direct selling associations showed that SwissJust had the highest growth in the industry in Peru for 2020—doubling in size even though the company lost a whole month of sales in April—and was No. 1 in its segment in Costa Rica. In Colombia, SwissJust was among the companies with the highest growth rate for 2020.
In North America, SwissJust’s US business almost doubled in size in 2020, and the Mexico market, which is the company’s largest, grew by 30 percent year-over-year.
Interestingly, although Uruguay exited the year at +50 percent growth, the total yearly growth was 25 percent, which was the lowest of all nine countries. Uruguay was the country least impacted by the pandemic; it never had full lockdowns and reached high levels of vaccination quickly. In summary, the bigger the negative impact of the pandemic, the bigger the positive impact on the business.
“Keeping up with demand from an operational perspective was tough beyond the actual global supply chain restrictions.” Mizrahi says. “We had to outsource pick and pack in several countries, recruit new employees remotely, and integrate them into our culture with no face-to-face interaction.”
Like other direct selling companies, the biggest challenge remains the lack of face-to-face events and incentive travel. Mizrahi says that in most of Latin America, vaccination rates are running around 35 percent, which means that restrictions are huge.
“Success in our channel is achieved through a delicate alchemy where the secret sauce includes ingredients like money, recognition, sense of belonging, and fun travel,” he says. “The latter two have almost disappeared for eighteen months and have no signs of coming back for at least another six months, maybe excluding the US and a few higher-vaccination countries. We are banking on the relationships and motivation built over many years, but at some point the formula needs all its components to stay alive.”
SwissJust Americas CEO Jacques Mizrahi believes success in the direct selling channel is achieved through a delicate alchemy.
For example, SwissJust runs a regional incentive trip every year to visit the main factory and fields in Switzerland. It has continued running the yearly qualification but has not executed the actual trip. “We promised all earners that they will eventually enjoy their hard-earned reward,” says Mizrahi. “At present, we already have a backlog of 110 earners, plus those who are going to qualify this year to travel next year.”
If the disruptions continue, the company will have to take 150–200 people on the trip. To make matters more complex, every cohort gets to go to a second city on the same trip. So among the estimated 200-plus earners that will go to Switzerland next year, fifty will also go to Barcelona (2019 earners), another fifty to Berlin (2020 earners), and so on. Imagine the logistics.
Logistical problems have also been a challenge for SwissJust in the area of supply chain. Mizrahi says that in the beginning of the pandemic, the disappearance of air travel made it almost impossible to ship finished products to many markets. For a shipment from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Lima, Peru, the shipment had to go through Rotterdam in The Netherlands.
“The main supply chain restrictions we still have today are the incredible cost of shipping anything, anywhere, in any fashion,” Mizrahi says. “As we all know, providing service is paramount in our business, so we have often had to pay ridiculous fares just to make sure our consultants can deliver.”
Despite the continued challenges ahead, Mizrahi is “very optimistic” about the future. The company believes that the accelerated digitalization of the salesforce is going to allow SwissJust to provide better service to customers. Social selling in the new context, he says, will combine the unique value of the consultant as a “trusted friendly voice” with the value of sophisticated e-tailing and business intelligence on consumer behavior.
“Our optimism can only be tarnished if we continue to see low levels of vaccination in Latin America and this, in turn, jeopardizes our ability to celebrate the culture and values of our people in face-to-face events, travel, and real heart-to-heart connections,” says Mizrahi. “We all know the future is hybrid, and we need to get over our current ‘virtual-only’ situation to get there!”
ENAGIC: Smooth Transition, Motivated Salesforce
For Okinawa-based Enagic International, the privately held company founded by Hironari Ohshiro and best known for its water-ionization systems, the last eighteen months have not brought the same level of disruption other international companies have experienced. That is not to say the company, which also sells Ukon (wild turmeric) supplements, tea, and soap, has not had its share of challenges, because it has.
From an operations standpoint, the pandemic was initially concerning because Enagic is global, with offices in more than thirty-five countries, including the United States, India, Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. Like other multinational companies, Enagic was met with the challenge of maintaining consistent business operations while much of its team worked remotely. Staff and distributors had to quickly adapt to the use of Zoom, social media, and messaging apps to fill the void created by the suspension of in-person meetings.
Rules and restrictions put in place because of the pandemic presented—and continue to present—issues in some markets. In the US, for example, work from home was implemented in many states and company travel restricted out of an abundance of caution. And the restrictions that remain can be inconsistent and confusing from state to state, resulting in some frustration for customers and distributors.
Okinawa, Japan-based Enagic has been led by Founder and CEO Hironari Ohshiro since 1974.
Despite the occasional disruptions and the uncertainty in the overall economy, Enagic operations have been steady. The company was able to smoothly transition to remote working for many months in 2020 and earlier this year, but most staff are back in the office and visitors can return on a limited basis.
According to Enagic USA President Keishi Hirano, the company has a foundation for long-term growth. This confidence comes from the ongoing popularity of the best-selling product, the Leveluk Kangen 8 (K8) water ionizer. Enagic is the leader in manufacturing water-ionization systems that transform regular tap water into pure, electrolytically reduced and hydrogen-rich drinking water. There are hundreds of thousands of Enagic water machines in homes and businesses around the globe.
“Enagic water-ionization systems are installed in the home, so we have a competitive advantage over retail water options, like bottled water,” says Hirano. “Enagic customers can enjoy filtered, healthy water from the comfort and safety of home, any time of the day or night.”
That was an important factor when people did not want to venture out during the pandemic. In 2020, Enagic global sales increased more than 10 percent compared to 2019. In the US, 2020 sales were approximately 20 percent higher year-over-year.
One market that has been a surprise for the company in the last year is India. Sales there have soared, leading it to become the second largest Enagic market. “The subcontinent has so many communities and households in need of filtered, healthy water,” says Hirano. “The K8 and SD501 water ionizers have been popular, and India is full of entrepreneurial, ambitious people from all backgrounds who are attracted to the Enagic opportunity and the patented 8-point compensation plan.”
Hirano says Enagic’s outlook for 2022 is very optimistic. The company manufactures everything at its own factory in Osaka, Japan, and uses tightly controlled production processes and distribution procedures to markets around the world. In addition, the relaxation of pandemic restrictions is energizing the distributor ranks with more in-person meetings, events, trainings, and seminars. And an emerging rivalry between the US and India for bragging rights as the No. 1 Enagic market in the world will likely bring about increased sales.
However, Hirano believes the biggest reason Enagic is poised for continued growth in the coming year is the motivated, passionate salesforce. “There are approximately 1.6 million independent distributors around the world focused on sharing Kangen Water® and the Enagic opportunity,” he says.