Iconic Tupperware may be on its last burps

PHILADELPHIA — In December 1999, Guinness World Records listed the 10 greatest inventions of the 20th century.

The computer wasn’t included. But the food-storage containers made by Tupperware were.

The company is famous for durable products lauded as “sacrosanct … icons of modernism” that are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian Institution. An estimated 90 percent of U.S. homes have at least one “super storer,” “thatsa mega-mixing bowl,” or other classic pieces of Tupperware.

The company’s nearly 80-year-old corporate model, featuring women both as salespeople and consumers interacting at Tupperware parties held in private homes, has become an indelible part of American — and world — culture.

Now, however, Tupperware faces what may be its last days.

Financial experts say the Orlando-based company doesn’t connect with young people, is overwhelmed by competitors, and is suffering a sharp decline (18 percent) in its in-person sales force, as demand for its products wanes. Net sales for 2022 were $1.3 billion, an 18 percent decrease from 2021.

Tupperware didn’t file its annual report on time, and may be delisted by the New York Stock Exchange as a result. CEO Miguel Fernandez says the company “is taking immediate action to seek additional financing.”

Last year, the company began selling some of its products in Target to revive sales, but few are buying. In a filing, the company concluded there’s “substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

As end times loom, people have been reassessing their “ancient” but nevertheless indispensable Tupperware items.

“I still have old-school pieces from when my mom sold Tupperware 20 years ago,” said Lisa Wolverton, 50, a personal trainer from Ardmore. “A yellow strainer, a Jell-O mold, and a cupcake holder. I use that strainer daily.”

Others are sharing amusing stories from long-ago Tupperware parties, and are re-appreciating how the company influenced the lives of countless women who made cash hawking ways to keep foods fresh.

“I used to take in $200 extra a month selling Tupperware in the mid-1980s when I was living in the Northeast,” said Linda Solomon, a former Philadelphia social worker who didn’t give her age, and who now lives in Richmond, Ind. “But my Tupperware manager made enough to pay college tuition for her eight kids.

“Hosting parties was extremely uncool, but it was fun, and if you had a sense of humor and a sense of improving your home, it was worthwhile. And a lot of laughs.”

As recently as 2014, according to Good Housekeeping, Tupperware took in $2.6 billion in revenue.

Since the mid-1990s, 85 percent of Tupperware has been sold internationally, according to Alison J. Clarke, author of the book, “Tupperware: The Promise of Plastics in 1950’s America.”

In 2015, there was one Tupperware party being conducted every 1.4 seconds somewhere in the world, Good Housekeeping reported. In France alone, people held 500,000 such parties per year. While parties are still held, the exact numbers were unavailable, and Tupperware officials didn’t respond to requests for information. What’s clear is that the Tupperware sales force has diminished, said Neil Saunders, analyst for GlobalData, a management consulting company.

New Hampshire chemist Earl Tupper started his company in 1946. Products didn’t do well in stores because people couldn’t understand how they worked.

In 1951, a single mother from Detroit named Brownie Wise innovated the idea of holding events in people’s homes where she could explain Tupperware to friends. She demonstrated the famous “burp,” or rush of air (satirized in Seinfeld decades later) that occurs when a cover seals a container.

The company pulled its products from stores and went all-in on a sales force of women selling in living rooms.

The timing was perfect, according to Stephanie Coontz, a director of the Council on Contemporary Families.

“Women had to give up the jobs they’d taken during World War II when the men were off fighting,” Coontz said. “Upon their return, women were forced back home, and they were discontented.

“Tupperware was a nice distraction. Women could make money and socialize, breaking up the monotony of being a 1950s and ’60s housewife.”

That kind of earning didn’t threaten the marital zeitgeist, which was centered on the husband working and the wife keeping house, said Nicole Cochran, a Temple University Ph.D. candidate in sociology who is writing a dissertation on companies like Tupperware.

“A woman could work from home within the confines of traditional womanhood, still present for the children,” Cochran said. “She could be somewhat liberated, yet still deemed feminine.”

Marjorie Britt, 59, of Abington, said her mother was one of those women.

“I got sentimental about her selling Tupperware, and I got into it myself a few years,” she said. “We had a blast — eating, playing games. I even ended up getting some men to come.

“Mostly, I really liked the awesome products, and the more you sold, the more free pieces you got.”

Jennie Nemroff, 59, a registered nurse from Wynnewood, can relate.

“I had a Tupperware party so I could get discounts and free Tupperware,” she said. In her case, there was an emergency that warranted a bevy of containers: She and her husband had encountered mouse problems in their first house. “I had to put everything in Tupperware. Now, I always recommend it to anyone with mice.”

In loading up on Tupperware, Nemroff, like others, deduced one of Tupperware’s potential weaknesses years ago: “It lasts forever. So once you have it, you don’t need to replace it.”

University of Delaware anthropologist Neri de Kramer, an expert on food and consumerism, concurred.

“They’re thick and very sturdy. But we live in a throwaway culture and people like to refresh their kitchens frequently,” she said. “An item that lasts a lifetime may not be as attractive to today’s consumers.”

Indeed, said Cochrane, young people are more accustomed to repurposing food-takeout containers for storage.

In-person sales companies like Tupperware, Avon, or Mary Kay don’t appeal very much to today’s women, she added, although some young women do sell from home. Cochrane said: MONAT hair care and Arbonne skin care and nutrition products, for example, are pitched on Instagram.

“People prefer online or in-store sales,” Saunders said.

Tupperware enjoyed a brief bump in sales during the heart of the pandemic, when people were cooking more and needed food storage, said Ed Nelling, finance professor at the LeBow College of Business at Drexel University. But it didn’t last. And no one was organizing parties for Tupperware or anything else as COVID-19 raged.

Ultimately, Saunders speculated, Tupperware could be bankrupt in two months. But the name likely won’t die.

“Some household products company will want to buy the brand,” he said. “I don’t know if it’ll survive in its current form. But Tupperware won’t disappear completely.

“It’s iconic.”