Man who invented tupperware

You're getting the idea. In other words, wherever you go, you will meet people who are prospects for Tupperware parties. Ann asked, "Well, just exactly how do I get people interested in Tupperware or having parties? How do I interest people who don't know about Tupperware?

Midget with a seal on it or a Sauce Dish and seal and a catalog with me. A person can't see Tupperware without being interested in it. Oh, and here's another one I didn't mention, trailer parks are among the best spots for Tupperware parties. On this day in , Earl Tupper, inventor of Tupperware, was born.

Raised in central Massachusetts, birthplace of the plastics industry, he was a compulsive tinkerer, inventing, among hundreds of other things, a fish-powered boat. When none of his ventures succeeded, he took a job in a Leominster plastics factory and in founded his own company. After much trial and error, he came up with the "wonderbowl," which had an airtight "burping" seal.

Sales did not take off until a woman named Brownie Wise persuaded him that Tupperware should be sold where it could be demonstrated — at home parties. Thanks to the quality of the product and Brownie Wise's success at mobilizing a sales force of "Tupperware Ladies," the Massachusetts-based company spawned a global enterprise.

The popular stereotype of a "Tupperware Lady" is a white, middle-class suburban housewife. In fact, many were first- and second-generation immigrants living in urban neighborhoods. In Earl Silas Tupper sat in a classroom in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and dreamed of making millions. Tupper was a poor student; in fact, he barely graduated from high school. However, the product he invented, and the woman who created a way to market it, would make him a very rich man.

World War II spurred innovation in the plastics industry, much of it concentrated in the central Massachusetts towns where Earl Tupper's family moved in After the war, manufacturers were looking to convert their operations to meet peacetime needs.

In Tupper obtained some polyethylene, a plastic Du Pont had developed during the war. He bought molding machines and began to experiment. Many of his first designs were failures, but in he finally came up with a winner — the "wonderbowl," which had an airtight seal modeled on a paint can.

In he finally received a patent for the "burping seal. Although the product won design awards, it was slow to catch on with consumers except in Detroit and a few other cities, where sales were booming. He soon learned that Tupperware's popularity in the Motor City was largely due to the efforts of a creative and ambitious saleswoman named Brownie Wise. Brownie Wise was a divorced woman in her 30s with a son to support.

In those very early days of the plastics revolution, the stuff had a bad reputation: Many early plastics were oily; some were flammable. They were smelly, too. One of the main ingredients in Bakelite was formaldehyde—the main ingredient in embalming fluid. It was sturdy yet flexible and kept its shape in hot water. And if you dropped it, it bounced without spilling its contents. Stanley salespeople hawked their wares by recruiting a housewife to host a party for her friends and acquaintances.

At the party, the salesperson demonstrated Stanley products—mops, brushes, cleaning products, etc. A lot of people attend only out of guilt or a sense of obligation to the host and buy just enough merchandise to avoid embarrassment.

The same was true in the late s: People could buy cleaning products anywhere, which made it kind of irritating to have to sit through a Stanley demonstration just because a friend had invited them. Even the Stanley salespeople knew it, and that was why growing numbers of them were adding Tupperware to their Stanley offerings.

Tupperware was no mop or bottle of dish soap. It was something new, a big improvement over the products that had come before it. They bought a lot of it, too: Tupperware sold so well at home parties that many Stanley salespeople were abandoning the company entirely and selling nothing but Tupperware. One of the most successful of the ex-Stanley salespeople was a woman named Brownie Wise. In April , he hired Wise and made her a vice president of a brand-new division called Tupperware Home Parties, headquartered in Kissimmee, Florida.

Tupper also pulled Tupperware from department stores. Clearly, it needed to be demonstrated, and once it was, people bought it.

It was great for the company, too, because the sales force Brownie Wise was building cost it almost nothing. Like the Stanley team before them, they were independent salespeople who earned a percentage of their sales. The party plan was also good for the housewives who sold Tupperware. Selling Tupperware offered housewives a chance to develop business skills, make their own money, and earn recognition they seldom got from cooking, cleaning, and taking care of their kids.

It was even possible to make a lot of money selling Tupper-ware. Top-performing Tupperware ladies were promoted to manage other Tupperware ladies, and if the husband of a top-performing manager was willing to quit his job and join his wife at Tupper-ware, the couple could be awarded a lucrative distributorship and transferred across the country to open up new territories.

In a public relations firm told Earl Tupper that he should make Brownie Wise the public face of the company. Hands-On Tupper designed every new piece of Tupperware himself. He worked closely with his most trusted machine men and he set up demonstration kitchens where his products could be tested at the factory in New England and at Tupperware Home Parties in Florida.

He also asked his wife, his mother and his aunts to try out his new inventions. As the company grew, so did Wise's celebrity. The company had purposely put Wise up on a pedestal as a wonder woman salesperson. But when the press suggested Wise was responsible for Tupperware's success, and that she could be equally successful selling any product, Tupper couldn't stand it any longer. He had been approached by larger companies that wanted to buy Tupperware, and he was tempted to sell out.

Tupper was also being told that the Internal Revenue Service would tax his children heavily if he died as sole owner of Tupperware. His accountants told him he could avoid this if he would form a board that controlled the company, but he refused. He didn't give any reasons. Still an Inventor Tupper continued to invent gadgets and other devices, but none of his new inventions took off.

To the end of his life, he carried little pads of paper in his shirt pocket, on which he scribbled down ideas for new inventions. His sons tell stories of their father jotting notes about better hospital gurneys while being wheeled in to the operating room. He also devised a round stove, and a clothes-washing exercise cylinder for the traveling salesperson.

Work Ethic At the age of 71, he wrote in an autobiographical essay, "I'm ready to really go to work Lasting Influence Earl Tupper died in The patents on many of his classic Tupperware products ran out in the s, but his design ideas still influence the plastics industry, the food industry, and the lives of people around the world who store their food in plastic containers with lids that seal. Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America.

Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today. I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies.

By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead. It was the largest fire in American history. Postwar consumerism was praised as a patriotic contribution to the ultimate success of the American way of life. In the s, images of the future offered a source of wonderment and fascination, as well as a means of promoting the most up-to-date consumer products.

Support Provided by: Learn More. Now Streaming The Codebreaker Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America.