Tupperware is the name of a home products line that includes
preparation, storage, containment, and serving products for the kitchen
and home, which were first introduced to the public in 1946.
Tupperware develops, manufactures, and internationally distributes its products as a wholly owned
subsidiary of its parent company
Tupperware Brands Corporation and it is marketed by means of direct sales through an independent sales force of approximately 1.9 million consultants.
[2]
Company history
Tupperware was developed in 1946 by
Earl Silas Tupper (1907–83) in
Leominster, Massachusetts.
[3]
He developed plastic containers used in households to contain food and
keep it airtight. The formerly patented "burping seal" is a famous
aspect of Tupperware, which distinguished it from competitors.
Tupperware pioneered the
direct marketing strategy made famous by the
Tupperware party.
Brownie Wise
(1913–92), a former sales representative of Stanley Home Products,
developed the strategy. During the early 1950s, Tupperware's sales and
popularity exploded, thanks in large part to Wise's influence among
women who sold Tupperware, and some of the famous "jubilees" celebrating
the success of Tupperware ladies at lavish and outlandishly themed
parties. Tupperware was known—at a time when women came back from
working during
World War II only to be told to "go back to the kitchen"
[4] —as a method of empowering women, and giving them a toehold in the post-war business world.
[5][6][7]
The tradition of Tupperware's "Jubilee" style events continues to
this day, with rallies being held in major cities to recognize and
reward top-selling and top-recruiting individuals, teams, and
organizations.
In 1958, Earl Tupper fired Brownie Wise over general difference of
opinion in the Tupperware business operation. Officially, Tupper
objected to the expenses incurred by the jubilee and other similar
celebrations of Tupperware,
[8]
however the real reason was that Tupper had been approached by several
companies interested in buying him out; he felt that he would not be
able to sell with a woman in an executive position.
[9] Rexall bought Tupperware in 1958. Tupperware spread to Europe in 1960 when Mila Pond hosted a Tupperware party in
Weybridge,
England, and subsequently around the world. At the time, a strict
dress code was required for Tupperware ladies, with skirts and tights worn at all times, and white gloves often accompanying the outfit.
[10] A technique called "carrot calling" helped promote the parties: representatives would travel
door to door in a neighborhood and ask housewives to "run an experiment" in which
carrots
would be placed in a Tupperware container and compared with "anything
that you would ordinarily leave it in"; it would often result in the
scheduling of a Tupperware party.
[10]
Rexall sold its namesake drugstores in 1977, and renamed itself Dart Industries. Dart merged with
Kraftco to form Dart & Kraft. The company demerged, with the former Dart assets named Premark International.
Tupperware Brands was spun off from Premark in 1996; Premark was acquired by
Illinois Tool Works three years later.
[citation needed]
In 2003, Tupperware closed down operations in the UK, citing customer dissatisfaction with their direct sales model as an issue.
[11] There has been limited distribution in the UK since then, most recently via Tupperware Ireland.
[12] The company announced a formal relaunch in the UK in 2011,
[13] and recruited UK staff, but in December 2011 the relaunch was cancelled.
[14]
Tupperware is now sold in almost 100 countries, after peaking at more than a hundred after 1996.
[15]
Tupperware parties
Tupperware is still sold mostly through a
party plan,
with rewards for hosts. A Tupperware party is run by a Tupperware
consultant for a host who invites friends and neighbors into his or her
home to see the product line. Tupperware hosts are rewarded with free
products based on the level of sales made at their party. Parties also
take place in workplaces, schools, and other community groups.
In most countries, Tupperware's sales force is organized in a tiered
structure with consultants at the bottom, managers and star managers
over them, and next various levels of directors, Legacy Executive
Directors at the top level. In recent years, Tupperware has done away
with distributorships in the U.S. This has allowed Tupperware more
flexibility, and more generous commission and rewards for their
consultants.
In recent years, Tupperware in North America has moved to a new
business model which includes more emphasis on direct marketing channels
and eliminated its dependency on authorized distributorships. This
transition included such strategies as selling through
Target stores in the US, and Superstores in Canada, with disappointing results. Tupperware states this hurt direct sales.
[16] In countries with a strong focus on marketing through parties (such as
Germany and
Australia/
New Zealand), Tupperware's market share and profitability continue to decline.
[citation needed]
In many countries, Tupperware products come with a lifetime
guarantee. In India, there are some restrictions on the lifetime
guarantee clause. In the UK/Ireland the guarantee is 10 years.
[17]
The company is best known for its plastic bowls and storage containers,
however in recent years has branched out into stainless steel cookware,
fine cutlery, chef's knives and other kitchen gadgets. After
experiencing a slump in sales and public image in the mid-1990s, the
company created several new product lines to attract a younger market.
In some countries including Belgium, Australia, Ireland and the US,
Tupperware market their parties and career opportunities through mall
kiosks from time to time.
In China, Tupperware products are sold through franchised
"entrepreneurial shopfronts", of which there were 1900 in 2005, due to
laws enacted in 1998 aimed at pyramid selling.
[18][19] The Chinese characters 特百惠 are used as the brand name, and translate as "hundred benefit".
Cultural and historical impact
Typical authentic Tupperware
Tupperware created a means for the housewife to maintain her
obligations in the domestic sphere of the household while creating an
independence from the home in a sociable atmosphere.
[20]
The Tupperware Party allowed for women of the 1950s to work and enjoy
the benefits of earning an income without completely taking away the
independence granted to women during the Second World War when women
first began entering the labor market, all the while keeping their focus
in the domestic domain.
[21]
The "Party" model builds on characteristics generally developed by
being a housewife (e.g. party planning, hosting a party, sociable
relations with friends and neighbors) and created an alternative choice
for women who either needed or wanted to work. The reciprocity that
emerges at the “parties” which are traditionally composed of friends and
family members of the hostess creates a nurturing atmosphere without a
direct sales feeling. Studies show that the creation of the “Tupperware
party” is a gendered construct aimed at appeasing the general ethos of
the domestic arrangements of the era where men were the sole earners and
it was the women's responsibility to manage the housework. Earl Tupper
invented the plastic for Tupperware in 1938, however the product only
worked with the emergence of the sale through presentation in a party
setting. This reflects in the empowerment it gave women in a setting of
gossip and game playing the ability to sell and create a role for
individuals outside of the domestic realm. It has been argued that the
repercussions of the Tupperware boom in American households and the
American economy are the elevation of the status of women in the labor
market along with status within the home and facilitating their entrance
into the labor market in further years.
[22]
Feminist views vary regarding the Tupperware format of sales through
parties, and the social and economic role of women portrayed by the
Tupperware model. Opposing views state that the intended gendered
product and selling campaign further domesticates women, and keeps their
predominant focus on homemaking.
[22]
The positive feminist views consider that Tupperware provided work for
women who were pregnant or otherwise not guaranteed their position at
work due to the unequal gender laws in the workplace. The company
promoted the betterment of women and the endless opportunities
Tupperware offered to women; whereas, the negative view includes the
restriction of women to the domestic sphere and limiting the real
separation between running the household and a career.
[21]
The emergence of Tupperware on the American market created a new kind
of opportunity to an entirely underrepresented labor demographic; women,
and especially suburban housewives, which subsequently facilitated the
calls for equal rights between men and women in the workplace.
10 May 2011
Last updated at 09:57 GMT
History in Tupperware
- Launched in 1946
- First parties took place in 1948 - proved so successful that the product was sold exclusively this way from 1951
- 1960 saw the first British party in Weybridge, Surrey
- Party Bowl, Pie Taker and Dip 'N Serve Serving Tray all proved early successes
- Box Lunch and the Lunch 'N Bag launched in the 1980s
- By 1992, nearly half of all Tupperware's "consultants" held full-time jobs as well as selling Tupperware products
How Tupperware has conquered the world
By ZOE BRENNAN
Last updated at 09:26 18 January 2007
From the Queen's breakfast table to gloriously kitsch suburban
parties - how Tupperware has conquered the world:
Tupperware: the very word conjures up the white picket fences of
1950s America. Launched into a world where women wore pinnies,
daddy was breadwinner and rosy-cheeked children skipped home to eat
Mom's home-baked apple pie, these plastic storage containers
changed the modern kitchen and sparked an extraordinary social
revolution.
They came to symbolise the material abundance of America's
post-war suburbia - on every Formica kitchen surface, a Tupperware
container stood beside the Bakelite radio.
In British homes, too, Tupperware came to symbolise a homely,
wholesome way of life. And while its name is now more likely to
generate mirth or nostalgia, its somewhat kitsch appeal was
enlivened by the discovery that the Queen keeps her breakfast
cereals in Tupperware containers.
It changed the way we shopped. By the mid-1950s, the Tupperware
party had been born, turning the world's housewives into
mini-moguls.
Women would gather in a hostess's home, where they were shown -
and sold - the delights of Wonder Bowls, Ice-Tup Molds and Party
Susans.
In turn, a clever hostess could make a fortune, liberating her
from the kitchen sink and introducing her to the world of hard
commerce.
Now, a new movie, Tupperware!, will tell the story of this
iconic brand. A Broadway musical, Sealed for Freshness, is also due
to open next month.
So where did Tupperware come from? The story starts with Earl
Tupper, a small-time inventor, born in New Hampshire in 1907.
Despite having only a cursory education, his quirky intelligence
was soon apparent.
TAt ten, he started a business selling the family's farm produce
door-to-door. He scribbled down his eccentric innovations - they
included a better garter, a dagger-shaped comb clipped to your belt
and a new procedure for removing a burst appendix.
His design for a 'fish-powered boat' used three clamps to
harness a large fish to tow the vessel.
Tupper tried to sell his inventions all over the country, but
received rejections by the dozen. After his landscaping and nursery
business went bust in the Great Depression, he joined the plastics
division of chemical company DuPont.
Back then, this new-fangled material was brittle and had an
unpleasant odour. But the more Tupper learned about plastic, the
more he was convinced that it would take over the world.
He experimented and discovered a more user-friendly, lighter
plastic. Flexible and odour-free, he shaped it into small tubs and
cartons. Tupperware was born.
Tupper's first containers came on the market in 1945; two years
later, the patented Tupperware seal - modelled on a paint tin lid -
was added.
They were not, alas, an instant success. Housewives were unused
to plastic and unable to work the special airtight 'burping' seal
that forced air out of the container to help preserve its
contents.
And there the dream might have ended were it not for a gutsy
single mother from Detroit, called Brownie Wise.
Divorced and hard up, she had been hosting small parties to sell
brushes and cleaning equipment to help pay for her young son's
medical bills. Now she set about building a network of housewives
dedicated to selling Tupperware from their homes.
She paid her eager saleswomen commission in return for
organising gatherings of their friends where Tupperware could be
demonstrated.
Suburban 1950s housewives were often isolated and bored.
A marketing genius, Wise was able to make the selling of
Tupperware ladylike, liberating and fun. The parties became a form
of networking and entertainment, with women playing fun games such
as Write An Honest Advert To Sell Your Husband.
By 1951, Tupper had stopped selling in shops entirely and had
made 40-year-old Wise head of home sales.
Together, their joint riches grew. Where Tupper was reclusive,
Wise was outgoing. He knew how to produce things; she knew how to
sell.
Wise relished every minute of her success. She drove a pink
Cadillac, dyed her pet canary pink, and was the first woman to be
photographed for the cover of Business Week ? seated on a peacock
throne.
But the more flamboyantly she behaved, the more resentful Tupper
became. A sober, rather puritanical man, he was deeply disapproving
of her excesses, and in 1958 he abruptly sacked her, declaring that
she had betrayed the company ethos and endangered its
reputation.
He said she had been observed using a Tupperware dish as a dog
bowl in her luxury home. It went against his ethos of the product
as a hygienic way to store food.
Despite her departure, the Tupperware empire grew, and in 1960
the firm set off to conquer Britain. The timing was perfect:
burgeoning consumer wealth, an upwardly mobile society and the
creation of suburbia meant that the nation's women were ready for
Tupperware parties.
The gatherings proved exactly the right vehicle for Sixties'
housewives to show off their new dresses and hairstyles, and to
swap gossip - and the product itself was an instant hit.
In 1965, the influential fashion magazine, Queen, gave
Tupperware its seal of approval, lauding it as 'the greatest
revolution in household consumer goods since the Phoenicians
invented glass'. Tupperware had well and truly arrived.
The parties themselves would decline in popularity only in the
late 1970s, with the advent of the all-women, alcohol-fuelled Ann
Summers parties, selling erotic lingerie and sex toys. These
reduced Tupperware parties to something of a joke - and a dated one
at that.
Tupperware's shine would recover in Britain only after it was
revealed in 2003 - by an undercover reporter who infiltrated
Buckingham Palace ? that the Queen stores her breakfast cereals in
Tupperware containers.
Ever since, there has been a renaissance, with retail sales
increasing by 80 per cent last year.
The parties have been relaunched as 'girls night out' evenings,
where the women make cocktails and talk about the problems they're
having with their husbands.
Today, a Tupperware party takes place somewhere in the world
every 2.5 seconds, and often brings with it great wealth. In
post-Soviet Russia, the firm has an army of saleswoman, many of
them earning more than £50,000 a year.
As for Tupper, he sold the company in 1958 to the Rexall Drug
Company for $16 million and moved to Costa Rica to avoid tax. He
died a broken man in 1983 after his later inventions ? including a
laundry device for travelling salesmen ? failed to take off.
Ironically, that year, Tupperware became the world's biggest
direct seller with annual sales of £620 million.
$2,300.4 million (2010) [1]
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