After 78 years in business, Tupperware has filed for bankruptcy protection. The company cites poor demand and increased competition as the reasons for its slumping sales.
The company was started in 1942 by Earl Tupper, who worked for DuPont Chemical Company. He experimented with polyethylene slag, a waste product of the oil refining process. Tupper was able to purify it and mold it to create lightweight, non breakable containers.
Tupper’s first product was the Wonderbowl, which introduced the iconic “burp seal”. It didn’t sell well in stores, however. The person largely responsible for saving the fledgling company was a single mom from Detroit named Brownie Wise. She found Tupperware to be a product with broad appeal, and started selling it at home parties. By 1949, she had 19 dealers working with her, and she and her sales team sold over $150,000 of Tupperware. At Wise’s suggestion, Tupperware was pulled from store shelves in 1951 and sold exclusively through parties starting in 1951. At the height of their success, a Tupperware party was held every 1.4 seconds across the globe.
Tupper and Wise ended up having a falling out, resulting in her departure from the company in 1958. That year, Tupper sold the company for $18 million, divorced his wife, gave up his citizenship to avoid taxes, and bought an island off the coast of Costa Rica. He died there in 1983 at the age of 76.
Tupperware was named one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century by Guinness World Records. The Smithsonian even has Tupperware in it’s collection, with more than 100 pieces dating from 1946-1999.
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