Industry News
September 2009
‘Setting the Standards’
Member Assembly of the Unternehmensverband Direktvertrieb e.V. (UVDV)
Meeting held on 18th June, 2006 at Airport-Club Frankfurt, Germany
ALL full and associate members of the UVDV met for their first assembly of this year, on 18th June in Frankfurt. Many of the members took the opportunity to spend the evening before the Member Assembly at the Hotel Steigenberger, informally meeting up and networking with the Board of Directors as well as their colleagues within the UVDV.
CEO Dr. Jens Abend, opened the proceedings by welcoming the participants and presenting a comprehensive agenda of topics. In his ‘State of the Union’ address he outlined the progress of
the association over the past year in the UVDVWorking Programme, and said, “We are setting Standards.”
Gerd Niedernhuber, Board member of the UVDV and leader of the team ‘Best Practice’ gave a presentation about their first results on the topic ‘Recruiting/Retention’. This was followed by an International direct selling industry news update by Dr. Karlheinz Ossig, Meridien, Germany. Following his presentation Dr. Ossig was recognised for his 40 years of service to the direct selling industry, by Dr. Jens Abend.
Other highlights of the meeting were Professor Dr. Michael Zacharia’s report about the new edited ‘Branchenreport 2009 for Germany, Austria and Switzerland’. This is a comprehensive study relating to the direct selling industry, where 6,600 networkers from the three countries identified had participated in answering a questionnaire about their direct selling activities and experiences. These countries, with mainly German speaking consumers and approximately 880,000 self-employed sales Consultants, generate sales volumes of approximately €6.5 billion per year.
All of the UVDV members present at the assembly received a first edition of this highly interesting direct selling report, signed by the professor and the members of the UVDV Board.
Jutta Schetting, Executive Director of Tahitian Noni Germany and Austria updated the meeting on the positive influence of their Bonus Club incentive. This is a programme for preferred
customers, which had benefitted sales volume as well as retention rates.
Jens Karsten, Director European Regulatory Affairs, FEDSA then gave an overview of European legal development.
All of the content of the meeting was much appreciated by all members, as well as the guests from Wellstar, Mannatech, Stampin’ Up, Freelife and Germanway, who are candidates for prospective membership for the UVDV.
The next Member Assembly of the UVDV will be held on 15th October 2009.
The German Direct Selling Association - Unternehmensverband Direktvertrieb e.V. (UVDV) -has 16 full and associated members, representing and supporting the interests of the German direct selling industry.
The UVDV was founded in 2006 and since then they have been successfully acting as informant, consultant and mediator between the economy, politics, and consumers.
Their main objective is to secure the positioning of direct selling in Germany as an accepted distribution channel. The core values of the UVDV are set on trust, credibility and integrity, and under their slogan ‘We are setting standards!’ they have developed an extensive Code of Ethics. All 16 UVDV members are required to comply with this Code of Ethics, which is taken extremely seriously by them all.
