Earl S. Tupper
Earl S. Tupper was an American inventor and entrepreneur, best known for creating Tupperware, a line of innovative plastic food storage containers. Born in 1907 in rural New Hampshire, Tupper faced financial challenges during his childhood, which fueled his ambition to succeed as an inventor. After a series of ventures and setbacks, including a landscaping business that failed during the Great Depression, he found employment at a plastics factory where he began experimenting with plastic products. His breakthrough came in 1946 with the introduction of the Wonderbowl, the first practical plastic food-storage container.
Tupper's collaboration with saleswoman Brownie Wise transformed Tupperware into a household name through the innovative home party sales model, which empowered many women to earn income and fostered community connections. Despite Tupperware's success, Tupper experienced frustration with the growing company dynamics and made significant changes in the late 1950s, including the firing of Wise and the eventual sale of his company. Tupper's contributions not only revolutionized food storage but also influenced marketing strategies, making Tupperware synonymous with postwar American consumer culture. He spent his later years in Costa Rica, continuing his pursuit of invention until his death in 1983.
Earl S. Tupper
American entrepreneur and landscaper
- Born: July 28, 1907
- Birthplace: Berlin, New Hampshire
- Died: October 5, 1983
- Place of death: San José, Costa Rica
Employing new plastics technology and innovative marketing techniques, Tupper revolutionized food storage and preparation with his Tupperware containers, creating a cultural and economic phenomenon that endured into the twenty-first century.
Primary field: Household products
Primary invention: Tupperware
Early Life
Earl Silas Tupper was born to Earnest Leslie Tupper and Lulu Clark Tupper on a farm in rural New Hampshire in 1907. His family struggled financially and moved frequently during his childhood, settling in rural Massachusetts in the early 1920’s and establishing a greenhouse business. A mediocre student who barely finished high school, Tupper nevertheless was an ambitious teenager with a strong work ethic and a dream of achieving fame and wealth as an inventor and entrepreneur. His father was an aspiring inventor who was granted a patent for a device to facilitate the cleaning of chickens, and Tupper, though reportedly harboring resentment of his father for his lack of ambition, shared his love for invention, filling numerous notebooks with ideas and sketches. Some, such as his idea for a fish-powered boat, appeared impractical; others, such as his suggestion that his parents open a free playground for the children of their greenhouse customers, would prove to be ahead of their time.
Tupper married in 1931, and he continued his efforts to create and market new inventions while operating a landscaping and tree surgery business to support himself and his family. His business folded during the Great Depression. After declaring bankruptcy, Tupper was forced to take a job in a plastics factory owned by the DuPont Corporation. Despite falling on hard times, he retained his ambition of becoming an entrepreneur, purchasing some used plastic-molding machines from his employer and establishing his own plastic container business in 1938. His company, Tupper Plastics, achieved modest success as a subcontractor for DuPont, making parts for gas masks and other devices for military use.
Life’s Work
After World War II, Tupper experimented with manufacturing various products for the bourgeoning postwar consumer market, including plastic cups, cigarette cases, and soap dishes. Yet he would realize his life’s ambition by applying his knowledge of plastics to the development of new means of food storage. His experimentation in plastics refinement led to the development of the Wonderbowl, the first practical plastic food-storage container, in 1946. Realizing the potential of the Wonderbowl, Tupper marketed it vigorously to retailers, but he realized little initial success and continued to struggle financially.
During the late 1940’s, Tupper would establish a business relationship with Brownie Wise, a Florida woman who had begun selling Tupperware as a sideline to her work as a distributor for Stanley Home Products. Along with Ann and Thomas Damigella, a Massachusetts couple who also sold Stanley Home Products, Wise attracted the attention of Tupper by selling large amounts of Tupperware products through home parties, a direct marketing technique employed by Stanley in which sellers would invite friends and neighbors into their homes for informal gatherings that included product demonstrations and sales presentations. Wise modified and expanded upon the home party model to create a network of Tupperware distributors and salespeople composed almost entirely of women, a large percentage of whom did not work outside the home. Through this network, Wise realized sales of Tupperware products that outstripped those of other distributors and retailers. Because of the success of Wise and the Damigellas, Tupper decided to market Tupperware products exclusively through home parties.
Tupper met with Wise, the Damigellas, and others in 1948 to create Tupperware Home Parties, Inc., making Wise the head of sales. Wise would continue to refine the home party model and build a nationwide network of salespeople and distributors during the 1950’s, making Tupperware a household word and a symbol of both the emerging postwar consumer culture and the changing role of women in American culture. The Tupperware party performed several functions: disseminating information about an innovative product whose uses and benefits were not readily apparent to retail shoppers, empowering women to supplement their household incomes and achieve a measure of independence as businesspeople, and providing a social outlet that proved particularly useful in an increasingly mobile postwar society, as women often attended Tupperware parties to establish or solidify relationships with neighbors.
With his sales division thriving and its operation delegated to a trusted leader, Tupper again focused his creative energy on product development during the early and mid-1950’s. Consistent with his reputation for strict, detail-oriented management, Tupper closely supervised every detail of the operation of his factory and personally designed each new product, which was then tested in demonstration kitchens in the factory and introduced to the public at home parties. Wise remained the most visible figure in the Tupperware company, attracting media attention as a master marketer and attaining status as one of the most successful American businesswomen of the 1950’s. Wise built a network of salespeople and distributors through an elaborate system of rewards, many of which were presented during lavish “jubilees” that showered top sellers with praise and material rewards. As the phenomenon of the Tupperware party spread across the United States, sales of Tupperware products proliferated, making Tupperware one of the most widely recognized brand names in the United States by the end of the decade.
Despite the success of his company, Tupper reportedly grew restless as the Tupperware empire grew larger and more difficult to control. Frustrated by the media attention focused upon Wise and the expenses incurred by the elaborate system of seller incentives that she created, Tupper abruptly fired her in 1958, subsequently erasing all references to her from advertisements and company literature. Under increasing pressure to incorporate his company and offer public stock to avoid tax liability, Tupper sold the Tupperware company to the owner of the Rexall drugstore chain for $16 million later that year. Rexall retained the business model that had proven successful during the 1950’s, and Tupperware parties remained the primary method of marketing Tupperware products through the remainder of the twentieth century. In 1960, Rexall introduced Tupperware products to international audiences, sanctioning the first Tupperware party in the United Kingdom.
Firing Wise and selling his company were but the first of a series of drastic decisions that Tupper made in the late 1950’s. Soon afterward, he divorced his wife, relinquished his U.S. citizenship, and purchased a private island in Central America. Tupper soon grew restless in retirement and resumed efforts to invent new products; however, despite his reputation as the inventor of Tupperware, his inventions attracted little interest. He later moved to Costa Rica, where he died in 1983.
Impact
The life and work of Tupper exemplified the transition of American society during the mid-twentieth century. A self-taught tinkerer, he realized success as an independent inventor at a time when invention was rapidly becoming the domain of corporate laboratories and major research universities. Tupper was a product of the prewar rural Midwest whose most successful creation exerted a significant impact on life in the growing suburbs of postwar America.
The invention of Tupperware solidified the reputation of Earl Tupper as one of the most influential inventors of the twentieth century. Tupperware joined television, fast food, motels, and interstate highways as symbols of postwar American consumer society and the rapid changes in technology and culture that accompanied it. A simple household product, Tupperware provided a solution to a common and long-standing problem that had assumed a new urgency in the 1950’s as young working couples with growing families and increasing demands on their time benefited from ways to preserve leftover food and prepared ingredients more effectively. By developing a new method of refining plastic for practical use, Tupper revolutionized the plastics industry, facilitating the widespread use of plastic products in various household applications. In addition, the business model that he helped create transformed the marketing of consumer products, creating the concept of the home party and influencing other marketing techniques such as infomercials and home shopping channels that emphasized product demonstration and targeted sales pitches.
Bibliography
Clarke, Alison J. Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950’s America. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Provides insight into the life and work of Earl S. Tupper, the invention of Tupperware, and the foundation of the Tupperware company, as well as the influence of Tupperware on American commerce and culture.
Kealing, Bob. Tupperware Unsealed: Brownie Wise, Earl Tupper, and the Home Party Pioneers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008. This history of Tupperware includes biographical information on Earl S. Tupper and a detailed narrative of the invention and influence of Tupperware.
Klepacki, Laura. Avon: Building the World’s Premier Company for Women. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. Discusses the personnel connections between the Tupperware and Avon corporations and the influence of the Tupperware business model on Avon and similar businesses.
Silverstone, R. Visions of Suburbia. New York: Routledge, 1996. This overview of the global phenomenon of postwar suburban life discusses the role of Tupperware and Tupperware parties in postwar suburban culture, emphasizing the role of Brownie Wise as architect of the Tupperware business model and symbol of the growing participation of women in business and society.
Tupperware Corporation. Best Wishes, Brownie Wise: How to Put Your Wishes to Work. Orlando, Fla.: Tupperware Corporation, 1998. Reprint of the 1957 sales guide of the Tupperware corporation provides primary-source insight into the motivational strategies behind the development of the Tupperware sales network.