Tupper Inspiration

Earl Tupper was born in New Hampshire in 1907. He came up with the idea for air tight plastic food storage containers while working at Dupont. In 1938 he founded the Tupperware Plastics Company in Orlando, Florida and in 1946 introduced his line of Tupper Plastics at hardware and department stores. Sales were dismal at best. He struggled along until 1951 when a take-charge woman named Brownie Wise came along, saved his plastic products from extinction and built him an empire. She came up with the brilliant idea to eliminate the retailers and sell direct to the housewives in living rooms while having a party. Yes, the Tupperware Party is an Americana cultural event of the highest order. There is no question about that!

In 1958, Mr. Tupper sold his company for sixteen million dollars and retired for life.

[Charles Pheonix, "Slide of the Week: Tupperware Factory, Mexico, 1967", God Bless Americana, 2 September 2005.]

Posted on September 2, 2005 at 14.08 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Common-Place Book, Curious Stuff

Leave a Reply

To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.

I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.