In order to illustrate the extent to which Amway beliefs and ideology have come to be salient in their product lines, I feel it necessary to look closely at a particular Amway product SA8ã Laundry Concentrate. The product itself seems rather banal, a box of powdered soap. However, embodied within this product lies something potentially far more wondrous, indeed even "magical."
Laundry soap. As I mentioned above, the soap product to which I am referring is SA8® Laundry Concentrate. There are 10 variations of SA8® concentrate licensed and produced by the privately held MLM Corporation known as Amway.8 I chose this particular product because it is not only one of Amway’s most standard products (it is generally included in an incoming distributor’s business kit), but it also continues to be widely marketed wherever Amway operates. As I began to research the process into how SA8® is manufactured, marketed and distributed, I became keenly aware that the amount of information I would be able to glean about this product was severely limited. Therefore, I have attempted to trace out a small part of the relations involved in this product’s "life" in the marketplace. However, to trace the "history" of SA8®, one is confronted with a story that unfolds in bits and pieces, hints of information haphazardly located but lacking wholeness. It is from these "pieces of the whole" that I have attempted to form into an artificial narrative. I gathered most of the information on SA8® Laundry Concentrate from the Amway Homepage (www.amway.com; proceed to the product section), as well as other additional resources on the Internet. I was also given some general information on the product from the Amway Corporation itself via e-mail in response to my inquiry into the product’s production. While the secrecy surrounding the product can be partially understood for a variety of reasons (not the least of which likely involves questions of competition and product secrecy), the fact that many of the vital aspects this soap’s production lie hidden in a realm of fog and "mystery" beckons further inquiry and analysis.
In beginning my research on SA8® LC, I was struck by the fact that the product seemed to hold a rather prominent place in the Amway Corporation’s media texts (videos, catalogs and other printed material). It is presented not only as "The world’s finest laundry detergent!" but also as a symbol of Amway’s commitment to quality. While employing a surprisingly blatant notion of "accepted" gender roles in the household, the following passage also illustrates the importance which "the commitment to quality" narrative is used in presenting the product to potential consumers.
Mom knows that the heart of any laundry system is its detergent. So moms were thrilled when we introduced SA8® Laundry Compound in the early 1960’s. Moms have cheered us on with each improvement, and today we can boast of five exceptional versions of laundry detergent. All SA8Laundry Concentrates are highly concentrated and contain no fillers. They keep whites and colors bright with an anti-graying agent. All contain biodegradable surfactants that rapidly break down to their natural elements--carbon dioxide and water. You’ll love them, too. [www.amway.com/amwayusa/products/life/sudsduds/detergnt.htm]
The passage above is intriguing not only for its emphasis on quality but also the implicit assumption that women are not only responsible for domestic chores, but indeed that this is their "proper" place in the cosmos, the arena over which they have expert knowledge. Anne McClintock’s observations on the production and marketing of soap in the late 19th Century seem particularly relevant here, she remarks:
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, soap was a scarce and humdrum item and washing a cursory activity at best. A few decades later, the manufacture of soap had burgeoned into an imperial commerce; Victorian cleaning rituals were peddled globally as the God-given sign of fetish powers. The soap saga captured the hidden affinity between domesticity and empire and embodied a triangulated crisis in value: the undervaluation of women's work in the domestic realm, the overvaluation of the commodity in the industrial market and the disavowal of colonized fetishism with spectacular effect, notwithstanding the fact that male Victorians promoted the soap as the icon of nonfetishistic rationality.Both the cult of domesticity and the new imperialism found in soap an exemplary mediating form. The emergent middle class values--monogamy ("clean" sex, which has value), industrial capital ("clean" money, which has value),...and the imperial civilizing mission ("washing" and clothing the savage")--could all be marvelously embodied in the single household commodity. (207-208)
Granted, the historical and socio-economic contexts differ, it is still of interest to note that as in the emergent Victorian/Imperialist consumer society of the 19th Century, women here are not presented as active producers of domestic products or knowledge (or indeed control over these arenas), rather women are portrayed as "cheering" Moms (or perhaps, in Arlie Hochschild's terms, domestic "cheerleaders") who have recognized the "quality" product of SA8®LC as offered by Amway. While the theme of gender relations will be more carefully explored later on, it is curious to note that in this short advertisement (as well as in a plethora of other similar advertising examples salient in this gendered discourse) there is an emphasis on keeping the boundary between "women’s" work&endash;assumed to revolve around "the home"&endash;and the work of men who are implied to be the agents of the product’s invention and distribution to needy housewives.
The theme of quality and the importance of SA8® LC is further expressed, indeed rather explicitly, in a promotional video where one of the co-founders of Amway, Rich DeVos, states the following as he holds a box of SA8® LC. He speaks to the viewer while standing in front of an idle conveyer belt lined with rows of boxed SA8® LC product (either SA8® Plus Premium Laundry Concentrate or SA8® Phosphate--Free Laundry Concentrate). He states:
It all began with a simple box of soap. But behind the box of soap is the quality that goes with it so that we could stand on this product and people could come to know and believe in the Amway name. As you look at our many products and services today, just as in the beginning, we stand behind the product. [Rich DeVos. ©Amway, video #L-VA-431C ]
This "simple" product, as Rich DeVos stated, is thus imbued with a symbolic power seemingly removed from what the product actually does, i.e. clean clothes. The use of the image "standing on your soapbox," while not explicitly stated, is far from what could be called an "unconscious" move. The imagery and language draw our attention to not only the product, but far more importantly, to what the Amway Corp. itself stands for--its image, its standards, its commitment to quality and the customer, etc. Throughout the various pieces of promotional material the product is consistently presented in like manner, albeit perhaps not as explicitly. Marx’s analysis of "The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof" seems particularly relevant in light of this phenomena. Marx observes:
A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point of those properties are the product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, as soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to start dancing of its own accord. [in Kamenka, 1983:444-445]
As Marx so succinctly observes, the product has come to signify something far greater than its "mere" socially constructed function. This begs the question of what is in fact being marketed? At root, this product seems to be about a much more fundamental question--ideology. The product has become, in a sense, irrelevant. What appears more critical is what this product is able to convey about Amway and what it is that it and Amway stand for and represent.
Moreover, as I began to look for information on how the soap was actually produced, who was involved in its production, where the raw materials come from, etc. I ran into an area where clear answers were few and far between. When I contacted the Amway Corporation itself I was kindly and speedily offered the following narrative about SA8® LC production. I shall call this the "Official Amway Story Line."
Hi Samuel,
Some general information which I can tell you about the production of our SA8 laundry detergent is:Our raw materials arrive by train and truck. However, we do not release who our suppliers are. Once they arrive they are inspected by our Quality Assurance staff.. All of our detergents are produced at our facilities in Ada, MI. Once production is finished, the product is again inspected by our QA staff. Once the product has been produced, it is sent to our central warehouse. From there it is shipped via truck from Ada to one of our 10 Service Centers. From the Service Centers it is then shipped to our distributors and their customers.9
While this narrative does provide some basic information about the process, there is no information about where the raw materials come from and very little information about who is involved in the process of SA8® LC production. However, in looking through Amway’s own homepage I discovered there, interlaced among the various narratives and descriptions, hints of the production process. Nevertheless, as was noted earlier, this is far from a complete outline of the production process, limited by the lack of information on many aspects of production. What follows is a "mental map,"10 so to speak, of the production process of SA8® LC. It is meant to give the reader only a general understanding of the process.