The plastic containers earned a devoted following by offering women new business and social opportunities.
By JANET K. KEELER
Published February 9, 2004
[Times photo: Carrie Pratt]
Not even security at Raymond James Stadium a year ago could pry Tupperware from Elaine Wahl, who swiped back a cup like this one.
Elaine Wahl pleaded with the security guard at Raymond James Stadium.
Please don't take my Tupperware cup. It's empty. (She'd sipped the last drop of pregame sangria on her way to the gate.) It's part of a set. Pleeease.
Sorry, ma'am, no containers inside. No exceptions.
Wahl relinquished the cup, but she couldn't let it go. The guard looked away and she snatched it from the reject pile. "Stop!" yelled the guard; "Run!" yelled her husband.
"I could never believe I could run that fast," says the normally well-behaved Wahl, 45, the comptroller at the Belleair Country Club. She made it to her seat, winded, but clutching her cup. The complete set was saved.
After all, it was Tupperware.
Not all owners of the ubiquitous plastic containers would risk arrest for them, but they do tend to be passionate about Tupperware. Most of the more than 500 people, nearly all women, who wrote to the Times recently to share stories of Wonderlier bowls and Shape-O balls are as protective as a lioness is of her cubs. Some devotees wonder which lucky friends and family will get their collections when they die.
At 9 tonight on WEDU-Ch. 3, the PBS documentary Tupperware! explains how inventor Earl Silas Tupper and marketing genius Brownie Wise won the unending dedication of women by giving them an opportunity to make money and friends.
From the beginning, buying Tupperware was about more than stocking the shelves with sturdy containers. At their most basic, the in-home parties provided a break from housework and children while allowing women a chance to enjoy each other's company. And for women who didn't have perfectly groomed June Cleaver lives, it was a way to make much-needed money when opportunities were scarce.
"These are the same women who might have been working on the family farm, the five-and-dime or the jam factory. No one was throwing out the red carpet for them (like Tupperware did)," says Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, producer, director and writer of the hourlong show, which is part of the American Experience series.
It was Tupperware sales that helped Barbara Mallender of Clearwater pay for her daughter's college expenses in the 1970s. Depressed after the loss of her baby, Irene Kramer, now of Pinellas Park, forged connections with women at Tupperware parties in the early 1960s that sustained her in that difficult time.
And many military wives and stay-at-home moms made money and friends by selling Tupperware in towns where they were strangers. More than a few women wrote about hosting Tupperware parties at nudist colonies, and two New Jersey Tupperware ladies suspected that they were demonstrating the wonders of plastic to mob wives.
Although Tupperware is considered an American icon, most of its profits come from foreign sales these days. Its domestic market has been watered down by less expensive competition and more job opportunities for women.
The nature of women
Tupperware's longevity is built on the bonds between friends. But when the company agreed in 2001 to sell its products in Target stores, the in-home party business took a hard hit.
The relationship with Target was severed in September, and last month Tupperware, which has its headquarters in Kissimmee, posted fourth quarter losses for 2003, projecting further weakening in 2004. The company said that the deal with Target siphoned customers from the more profitable Tupperware parties. It will take much of this year to rebuild the North American sales force that suffered when emphasis turned to Target, the company said.
Today, Tupperware can be purchased at home parties, online, at mall kiosks and through TV infomercials and catalogs. According to Hoover's Online, Tupperware has 1-million salespeople in 100 countries. The company's biggest competition comes from Rubbermaid; Glad, the titan of inexpensive plastic containers; and Ziploc bags.
About 80 percent of Tupperware's $1.17-billion sales came from outside the United States in 2003. The company has targeted countries, such as India and Indonesia, where jobs are scarce and family ties are strong, a good combination for developing a sales network, reports Hoover's.
The foreign market has saved Tupperware, which saw its American sales drop as the number of women in the work force rose. Indeed, of the many women who shared their stories with the Times, a multitude are named Ruth, Helen, Dolores and Dorothy, all names popular in the 1920s and '30s. We heard from no one named Britney or Nicole and very few Cynthias and Sandras, an indication that Tupperware's devoted fan base is mostly older than 60.
In more recent years, Tupperware ladies have been dismissed as relics of a less enlightened time and taken ribbings by no less than Seinfeld. In a classic episode of the sitcom, the indomitable Kramer begs a homeless man to give him back a Tupperware container after he shared leftover Chinese food with him. The man refuses.
"But it's Tupperware," Kramer pleads.
A wise woman
Tupperware's sales techniques laid the groundwork for companies such as Pampered Chef, which sells kitchen equipment, and Partylite, a purveyor of candles and accessories. Women are still willing to turn a friend's home into a store.
Before Tupperware, homemakers stored food in metal tins and wax paper, neither of which locked in freshness for long. Then came this amazing plastic product that promised not only kitchen efficiency, but a social life, too.
An acceptable social life, adds Linda Lucas, professor of economics, and women's and gender studies at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg. If Tupperware had been selling lawn mowers, husbands might not have been so supportive of their wives' nights out.
"The other model like this is Mary Kay," she says. "Makeup and food. Two commodities that allow women to be involved."
Still, Brownie Wise, the woman who introduced the home party concept to Tupper, understood a woman's need for recognition, Kahn-Leavitt says. Tupper was good with products, Wise was good with people and Tupperware took off.
"If we build the people, they'll build the company," was one of Wise's favorite sayings. And she set out to do that by heaping praise and fur stoles on Tupperware's top sales people.
In the early 1950s, the company's headquarters had relocated from Massachusetts to Kissimmee. By 1957 Tupper was ready to cash out, but he suspected that a woman executive was a liability. He fired Wise in January 1958 and gave her $35,000 as a parting gift. He sold Tupperware to Rexall Drug that same year for $16-million.
Tupper died in 1983. Wise failed to regain the power she held with Tupperware in other business ventures. She died in 1992, just a few miles from Tupperware headquarters.
Tupperware is now a public company, traded on the New York Stock Exchange. On Friday, a share was going for $18.95.
Kahn-Leavitt interviewed 300 people for the PBS documentary, including relatives of Tupper and Wise and Tupperware employees. United Artists is interested in a feature-film script she is writing on Wise and Tupperware ladies.
Kahn-Leavitt would do well to talk to Tampa Bay area residents for stories of Tupperware's heyday.
People like Linda K. Brown of Tampa, who grew up in a home where there were curfews and chores and a list of rules about Tupperware. Brown shared her mother's guidelines:
"A. Tupperware was not to leave the house without a name and address label firmly stuck and taped over to the bottom of the bowl/container.
"B. Tupperware products were to be returned to the Tupperware cabinet, NOT stored with common, generic containers.
"C. Relatives could borrow Tupperware for up to three days. Any term breach resulted in me or my sister being dispatched to retrieve rogue pieces."
Brown's mother said nothing about running from a security guard with a confiscated cup, though we suspect she would have cheered Wahl and her heroic effort.
She, along with thousands of the Tupperware faithful, understood the value of a complete set.
