In Business Since: Launch Date: 9-1-99

Financial Strength: Extremely strong. A sister company of Amway, a multi-billion dollar network marketing company, Quixtar is undoubtedly well financed.

Read About Quixtar in This Very Informative Book

Management: The Amway management team is among the best in network marketing, having been the pioneers and paving the way for other companies to succeed in this often misunderstood industry. See our review of Amway for more information on management.

Management Rating: 5 Stars

Online Training & Support: Limited online training and support. Quixtar's online advertising policies are not what many online marketers would want since their policy prohibits mass marketing, and it does not provide for personalized self-replicating websites that many online companies provide for their members. However, sales activity can be tracked through IBO numbers assigned to all Quixtar business owners. Quixtar's online policies and method of doing business is probably hampered by old Amway mentality. Quixtar is probably more a convenient method of ordering Amway products than a new online business opportunity.

Click here to learn how you can effectively utilize the most powerful online marketing technique to sponsor more people than you ever thought possible. Field Training & Support: Amway's training and support from group events such as in-home meetings, regional and national events is excellent, and we see the same for Quixtar Independent Business Owners. However, again I see the old mentality, from those who are successful and have been with Amway for decades, preventing a wide acceptance of newer methods of doing business, such as telephone conference calls and the more personal 3-way telephone call, where a less experienced or less successful distributor 3 ways a prospect into a more experienced and usually very successful upline member. A 3 way call is similar to a one on one in-home meeting where a successful upline member presents the opportunity to the prospect while the distributor sits back and simply listens, except this is done on the telephone and it's usually a question and answer session rather than a complete opportunity presentation. Although there are probably Quixtar or Amway distributors who conduct these conference calls, I don't believe that it is widely promoted by the company.

Motivational Support: Motivational support from Amway's top distributors, who earn 6 and 7 figure incomes, are unmatched in the industry. It is also available online at the corporate website, through local, regional, and national events, and through Amagram, A monthly publication that is mailed to their distributors.

Overall Training & Support Rating: 4 Stars

Products/Services: You name it, they'll have it, including Amway products and hundreds of thousands of name brand products, which were available prior to Quixtar, plus other products available from online retail affiliates. Amway products are of excellent quality and effectiveness and are supported by a top notch R&D department.

Product Quality/Effectiveness Rating: 5 Stars

Product Market Rating: 5 Stars

Business Opportunity Market Rating: 4 Stars

Compensation Plan: Quixtar's compensation plan is the same as Amway's compensation plan. See Amway review for more info on comp plan. What would have been an incredible development is a completely different compensation plan that is based on current industry trends. Although Quixtar has enjoyed strong first year sales, with a large percentage probably coming from Amway distributors, a redesigned and up to date compensation plan would have generated much more excitement from the network marketing industry and perhaps could have fueled one of the biggest sign up rates in the history of this industry. Can you imagine what the response would have been to a completely new opportunity with a completely different comp plan backed by the strength and longevity of the Amway Corporation?

Compensation Plan Rating: 3.75 Stars

Overall Rating: 4.625 Stars

Advantages: Strong financial backing, global resources of Amway, international opportunity, improved product ordering over Amway's old method, strong technical expertise.

Disadvantages: The Amway name may still be a stumbling block for some, but my advice is not to let it be one. Distributors should be proud of what Amway stands for and what it has accomplished for the industry and individuals worldwide. The compensation plan may also be a problem for some, especially to many "inner-circle" network marketers who have come to dislike "breakaway" plans and have opted for the newer compensation plans, such as unilevels with infinity bonuses, matrix plans, and binaries. No self-replicating websites for IBO's means less online duplicatability. This is not a "viral marketing" opportunity.

Comments: My first review of Quixtar, which was about a month prior to their launch in September of 1999, was very optimistic, and the extremely positive response that I thought would come from network marketers, even those who were negative about Amway, did not happen. As I mentioned above, perhaps a redesign of the comp plan would have had the positive reaction that I predicted. In any case, Quixtar is an improvement from the old Amway method of ordering products.