Market America Worldwide|SHOP.COM’s international convention (ICON) hosted 5,000 entrepreneurs from nine countries. The five-day event featured presentations from celebrity speakers and industry experts, product updates and networking opportunities. Market America Co-Founder and CEO Loren Ridinger and President and COO Marc Ashley opened the convention with the debut of Ridinger’s debut book, which follows her process […]

Before the internet was widely available to the public, JR Ridinger envisioned a day when people would buy just about everything they needed and wanted online. He and his wife Loren founded Market America in 1992—years before shopping online was anywhere close to mainstream. It was truly a revolutionary concept more than 30 years ago. In 2010, the company acquired SHOP.com, and today is a global online retail giant with annual revenues topping $800 million.

In a statement on Market America’s Twitter account, the company said: “Market America has lost its great visionary, and the world has lost a passionate human being who believed in other people even more than they believed in themselves.” 

Thirty years ago, the founders of Market America had a crystal ball moment—a vision for referral tracking that could propel entrepreneurs farther than any traditional network marketing company had promised before. Today, JR and Loren Ridinger and the Market America team are once again looking to the future, eager to evolve the online marketplace they’ve been shaping for the last three decades.