WFDSA Shares Global Annual STATS Report

The World Federation of Direct Selling Associations (WFDSA) released its 2025 Global Annual STATS Report.

According to the report, global direct selling sales grew to $167.3 billion in 2025. This total is 2.3% above 2019, symbolizing that the industry is recovering from the disruption of the pandemic and returning to modest, steady growth.*

This growth was reported as “broad rather than concentrated,” as all four WFDSA regions posted growth for the first time since 2018. Among these, Africa & Middle East showed the strongest gains with 6.9%, followed by Asia & Pacific (2.5%), Europe (1.6%) and the Americas (0.4%). Overall, 57% of WFDSA markets saw an increase in sales, which is a significant improvement from 43% in 2024 and 41% in 2023.*

Product sales showed the beginning of a category evolution. Health and wellness, cosmetics and personal care and household goods continue to be the channel’s strongest and largest categories, but their sales fell from 76.6% in 2020 to 64.6% in 2025. Newer categories, like financial products, utilities and home care have risen to comprise 13% of global sales. In the US, these newer categories represent a third of all sales.

Sellers in the channel are also evolving. Global sales force numbers fell to 98.8 million in 2025, down 15% from 2020. Combined with higher sales numbers, the WFDSA reported that this is a sign that sellers are generating more business on average.

Currently, nearly 99 million people work within the channel as independent sales representatives, of which 70% are women and 25% are under the age or 35. Sellers over the age of 54 increased from 22% to 28%, and Europe was the only region to report sales force growth (1.6%). The WFDSA emphasized that attracting younger entrepreneurs and supporting new sellers would be critical to maintain these productivity gains.

For the first time, Ecuador and the Philippines crossed the “$1 billion threshold,” with $1.06 billion and $1.55 billion respectively, bringing the total number of billion-dollar markets to 23 and accounting for 93% of global direct selling sales.

The US continues to be the world’s largest direct selling market at $34.2 billion, but experienced a 1.6% decline.

Markets that experienced growth included China (6%), South Korea (4.2%), Mexico (7%) and Germany, the second-largest market at $20.2 billion (1.7%). Asia & Pacific, the largest region with $68.2 billion in sales, represented 40.8% of global sales and almost two-thirds of the industry’s global sales increase.

The WFDSA stated that strong self-regulation, partnership with governments and the ethical use of new tools like AI, which it reported has been adopted by more than half of member companies, will shape the industry’s growth in the years ahead.

“Direct selling is moving past the disruption of the early decade and into a period of modest and steady growth,”

said Shaila Manyam, WFDSA Executive Director.

“What encourages me most is that this is not a story of a few large markets carrying the rest. Growth came from every region, and more than half of our markets grew. Markets such as Germany and the Philippines also show that trust, high ethical standards and close collaboration with regulators are what turn gains into lasting growth.”

Sources: Direct Selling News and WFDSA