Karen Watters from Michigan was 18 years old, newly married and a mother when she started selling Tupperware in the early 1970s: “Back then, I couldn’t even get a credit card, the bank wouldn’t give it to me, even though I was the one who worked. Those were different times for women,” she told DW. Before 1974, married women in the US could not apply for a credit card in their own name.
Karen hosted so-called “Tupperware parties” for her friends and acquaintances and received a commission on everything she sold. She then used the money to help her husband finance his studies. “He was studying electrical engineering and I bought all the tools he needed. With the money I earned from selling Tupperware, he bought his equipment. That was the money we really needed,” says Watters.
For Karen Watters, like so many other women, selling the sealable plastic containers was a way to support her family. The Tupperware Party, a new retail concept introduced in the 1950s, gave thousands of women the opportunity to gain independence, to move up from being housewives to becoming entrepreneurs.
Tupperware: the phenomenon
The sealable food storage containers were developed by Earl Tupper, a businessman and chemist from New Hampshire. Tupper (1907-1983) discovered the possibility of producing plastic from an industrial byproduct. In 1938 he founded a plastic company that initially manufactured gas masks. When the world situation stabilized after World War II, the company expanded its product range. The idea for plastic molds was born in 1946.
But when the first Tupperware came onto the market, it did not initially meet with the hoped-for approval. The plastic containers seemed too cheap. In addition, housewives did not find the need to “burp” the containers to let the air out particularly practical. Tupper continued to experiment, refining his plastic and the design of the containers. The key innovation was the so-called “freshness valve” on the lid, which could be used to press excess air out of the box.
But it took an army of amateur saleswomen – mostly women from the suburbs – to help the brand take off. Thousands of women in the US and eventually around the world started their own businesses and sold the products at house gatherings, known as Tupperware parties. The phenomenon spread across the US and reached its peak in the 1950s and 60s.
Brownie Wise, a single mother with little education, was largely responsible for the success of the Tupperware empire. Tupper hired her as vice president and head of sales. A marketing genius with a knack for selling, she helped position the brand prominently.
Wise had previously worked for a cleaning supplies company called Stanley Home, which hosted what it called “home parties” – gatherings of housewives and their friends to sell products. Wise quickly realized that there was a market for such events for Tupperware, too.
Her stimulating product demonstrations, which included fun party games and throwing containers across the room to show they wouldn’t break, imparted knowledge about the product to buyers in an incidental way. At the company’s headquarters in Florida, Wise trained other women in her sales techniques, created manuals, and introduced generous sales incentives to bring more saleswomen on board. It worked – and soon the product was taking off!
To encourage salespeople, the company came up with creative promotions in which salespeople competed for “everything from new electric irons to a trip to Europe with Brownie Wise,” according to an article on U.S. public broadcaster PBS.
By the mid-1950s, Wise was the company’s icon and the first woman to be featured on the cover of Business Week. She also appeared in the pages of popular lifestyle magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Women’s Home Journal.
From housewife to entrepreneur
The socioeconomic conditions of the 1950s were perfect for the success of this marketing strategy. Women who had entered the workforce out of necessity during World War II were being pushed out and were now expected to stay home with the children during the baby boom.
Selling Tupperware was a way for women whose husbands did not want them to work outside the home to earn income. Housebound suburban women could escape the domestic routine and socialize.
The principle was simple: the hostess of a party invited a Tupperware salesperson to her home and in return received free Tupperware products, while the salesperson received a commission based on the number of products sold.
The Tupperware parties influenced the everyday culture and zeitgeist of an entire era. Housewives gained autonomy by becoming consultants, managers and saleswomen of a product. The parties were something of a secret meeting of women who celebrated their freedom in secret. At the same time, the business model fit the common idea that a woman’s real place was at home – in the kitchen, at the stove or at the refrigerator.
The end of the “burp bowls”
The narrative of female empowerment is now closely linked to the Tupper brand. However, for sales manager Brownie Wise – the celebrated businesswoman – the story did not end well: after a disagreement with Tupper, she had to leave the company that had made her great in 1958, without thanks and without severance pay.
In the same year, Earl Tupper sold the company, which was now called Tupperware Home Parties, to the Rexall Drug Company for 16 million dollars (the equivalent of 14.3 million euros) and retired.
But Tupper’s success story did not end there: the business model and products spread across Europe, Asia and Latin America. Since then, the brand has been sold mainly through Tupperware parties and no longer through stores. But design was also part of the brand strategy: since 1982, Tupperware has received more than 280 design awards for its product design and functionality.