WFDSA Announces 2020 Direct Selling Business Results

The World Federation of Direct Selling Associations (WFDSA) today announced global direct sales of USD 179.3 billion for the year-ended December 31, 2020.   Excluding China¹, worldwide retail sales showed a year-over-year increase of 5.8% with all regions around the globe showing increases in sales versus 2019.  Global results, including China, resulted in a sales increase of 2.3%.   The industry is growing at a healthy pace with 3-year Compound Annual Growth of 3.0% (excluding China) and flat Globally (China Included).

Global sales force is at 125.4 million independent representatives/distributors, a 4.3% increase over 2019.   This figure includes more than 65 million Independent Representatives who are actively working to build their direct selling businesses either as a full-time career or part-time to earn supplemental income.

Around 40% of Direct Selling markets are now reporting inclusion of Preferred Member programs by their member companies, with almost 30 million participants in these programs reported in 2020.  Many of those joining Preferred Customer programs would previously have joined as independent representatives primarily to access discounted products.  The benefit of these programs is that they often provide a more customer-oriented experience for these participants.  Many eventually go on to pursue the business opportunity based on their richer experience as a customer.  We expect to see this trend continue as these programs develop further.

Any 2020 commentary would be incomplete without some mention of the global COVID-19 pandemic.  While WFDSA data did not directly track intra-year impact, there was significant feedback and insights from many of the member DSA’s and member companies that help explain the overall year on year results.  The universal factors that impacted most industries, including prolonged community lock downs, job displacements and global supply chain disruption also negatively impacted the Direct Selling industry.  While the situation varied greatly market to market, the entrepreneurial nature of Direct Selling, the increased demand for supplemental income, and often the limited availability of products through traditional retail channels during much of 2020, saw many Direct Selling companies and their Independent Representatives adapt and find new ways to stay connected with their customers and grow their businesses.  The increased use of online tools and video meetings provided new or enhanced channels for companies and their sellers, and welcome social interaction for customers during the isolation of lockdowns.

While some markets with more severe COVID-19 impact, and/or less developed technology or supply chain infrastructure (in particular, last mile delivery services) may have been less resilient, the overall the global industry growth during 2020 underscores the strength and adaptability of the industry.  The differences in performance from market to market will certainly pose some key questions for many, including what factors were key to driving those markets that thrived, how do we maintain that long term, and how do we apply translate some of those learnings to those markets that had a more challenging year.

Our data collection process this year has also benefitted from the increased use of the online tools that have now almost become a business staple.  We spent much more time on interactive Zoom calls with various DSA’s around the world to discuss questions around their data submissions, rather than email exchanges.  This helped both the committee and the DSA’s gain a better understanding of how to improve our collection and use of data.

In closing, we would like to thank all of the DSA’s that worked so hard to submit extremely high-quality data, our WFDSA Global Research Committee members who also worked hard to review and validate the data, and Paul Bourquin at Nathan & Associates for his hard work and diligence with preparing and maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of our data collection process.

Tim Sanson and Josephine Mills

WFDSA Global Research Sub-Committee Co-Chairs