Tupperware conducts its business through a single business segment, manufacturing and marketing a broad line of high-quality consumer products for the home. The core of Tupperware's product line consists of food storage containers which preserve freshness through the well-known Tupperware seals. Tupperware also has an established line of children's educational toys, serving products and gifts. The line of products has expanded over the years into kitchen, home storage and organizing uses with products such as Modular Mates containers, Fridge Stackables containers, OneTouch canisters, the Rock N'Serve line, Meals in Minutes line, Legacy Serving line and TupperMagic line, and many specialized containers. In recent years, Tupperware has expanded its offerings in the food preparation and servicing areas through the addition of a number of products, including double colanders, tumblers and mugs, mixing and serving bowls, serving centers, microwaveable cooking and serving products, and kitchen utensils. Tupperware continues to introduce new designs and colors in its product lines, and to extend existing products into new markets around the world. The development of new products varies in different markets in order to address differences in cultures, lifestyles, tastes and needs of the markets.
Company History:
Tupperware Corporation, whose well-known Tupperware parties have spread to more than 100 countries, is one of the largest direct sellers in the world. Relying on independent consultants rather than employees for sales, the company generated more than $1 billion in revenues in 1998. Although Tupperware's mainstay for 50 years had been plastic food storage containers, in the 1990s the company expanded into kitchen tools, small appliances, and baby and toddler products. Although U.S. sales declined steadily in the 1980s and 1990s, international sales expanded, with the result that more than 85 percent of company revenues came from international business in the mid-1990s. The economic declines in the Far East and Latin America in the late 1990s left Tupperware with overall falling sales and an unsure outlook for the coming years.
Company Origins
Company founder Earl Tupper was an early plastics pioneer. The young inventor found work at DuPont in the 1930s without the benefit of a college education. By 1938 Tupper was ready to strike out on his own and devote himself to research in plastics. That year he started his own company, leaving DuPont with only his experience and a discarded piece of polyethylene, remains from the oil refining process that no one had yet manipulated into a practical form. Tupper's fledgling company kept afloat by making plastic parts for gas masks in World War II, although Tupper continued to pursue his research with polyethylene. Tupper modified his own refining process, searching for more useful and appealing forms of plastic.
By 1942 Tupper had developed a plastic that was both durable and safe for food storage. The lightweight, flexible, and unbreakable material was also clear, odorless, and nontoxic. Tupper dubbed the new material Poly-T, and he further refined the product over the next few years. In 1946 he founded a new company, Tupperware, and began manufacturing food storage and serving containers with Poly-T. The containers were enhanced the following year with the unique Tupperware seal, an innovation that consumers would still find useful more than 50 years later. Tupper had gotten the idea for the airtight seal from a paint can lid.
Although Tupper quickly found department and hardware stores to carry his product, customers were harder to come by. Consumers were unfamiliar with the benefits of the new material and did not know how to operate the seal. Sales finally took off in the late 1940s when a few direct sellers of Stanley Home Products added Tupperware to their demonstrations. The products flourished with the direct selling approach because salespeople could explain the benefits of the plastic and personally demonstrate the seal to consumers. In addition, Stanley Home Products salespeople did not sell door to door, but rather sold their products at home parties. This method was particularly suited to Tupperware sales because homemakers felt they were getting advice from other homemakers who actually used the products.
Expansion in the 1950s--70s
The most successful early direct seller of Tupperware was Brownie Wise, a Detroit secretary and single mother. Tupper hired her in 1951 to create a direct selling system for his company. Within a few months Tupper had established the subsidiary Tupperware Home Parties, Inc. and had abandoned selling his products through retail stores. Wise's home party system used a sales force of independent consultants who earned a flat percentage of the goods they sold and won incentives in the form of bonuses and products. Wise, together with Gary McDonald, another Stanley veteran, created the Tupperware Jubilee, an annual sales convention that became famous and provided a format for the conventions of numerous direct-selling companies.
Sales skyrocketed, multiplying 25 times within three years. By the late 1950s Tupperware had become a household name. With almost no advertising, Tupperware had created phenomenal brand awareness. The company's rapid success can be attributed to its recruitment of almost 9,000 independent consultants by 1954, most of them women, and their enthusiastic spread of Tupperware parties.
Tupperware home parties provided an easy entry into the workforce for women. Able to schedule the parties around their home and family responsibilities, women could earn extra cash and get together with friends and neighbours at the same time. In addition, the home party plan provided a milieu in which women were trusted as salespeople, unlike door-to-door sales, where women were not accepted at the time.
In 1958 Wise resigned from her vice-president position and Tupper sold the company to Rexall Drug. Despite the change in management the company continued to thrive. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s sales and earnings doubled every five years. The company had grown not only in the United States but also had entered and thrived in several foreign countries. Tupperware's first venture outside the United States was to Canada in 1958. Tupperware parties were soon being thrown in Latin America, Western Europe, and Japan. International sales became a significant source of revenue for Tupperware in the 1970s, and Rexall Drug, which had become Dart Industries, had changed the subsidiary's name to Tupperware International.
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