Why so many things in Grand Rapids are named DeVos and Van Andel

Spend a day in Grand Rapids and you’ll see two last names again and again: DeVos and Van Andel. There’s the Van Andel Arena, the DeVos Place convention center, the Van Andel Institute, the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital, and more. Here’s the story behind them. In 1959, two friends from the Grand Rapids area — Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel — started a company in the nearby town of Ada called Amway (short for “American Way”). Amway sells cleaning, beauty, and health products, but in an unusual way: instead of stores, it relies on a network of independent salespeople who earn money both from what they sell and from signing up other salespeople. That “multi-level marketing” model made Amway one of the biggest companies of its kind in the world — and also brought decades of debate about whether it works like a pyramid scheme. In 1979, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ruled that Amway was not an illegal pyramid scheme, because its salespeople earn from selling real products (not just from recruiting) and can return unsold goods — though the same ruling also ordered Amway to stop exaggerating how much money its salespeople were likely to make. The two founders became billionaires, and their families have given enormous amounts of money to Grand Rapids — which is why their names are on so many hospitals, halls, and arenas around town. The families are also well known in national politics: Rich DeVos’s daughter-in-law, Betsy DeVos, served as U.S. Secretary of Education, and his grandson Rick DeVos started the ArtPrize art competition.