BACKGROUND
Earl Tupper, has a last name that is commonly known as a type of food storage today. But how did he get to be that way?
Prior to the invention of Tupperware, most households would use Mason Jars, Pyrex dishes or even oval wooden shakers. While the wooden shakers are not nearly as popular today, many people do still use Pyrex and Mason Jar products.
Earl Tupper created his own company, The Earl S. Tupper Company, after spending some time working at DuPont which was a plastics manufacturing company at the time.1 Tupper worked on and developed plastics that were used during the WW2 era, however selling his products became extremely difficult. Tupper’s marketing techniques were not beneficial to his sales numbers. Many of the plastics that he created were able to be used in the kitchen because of their airtight and watertight lids but even these qualities didn’t help his sales numbers.2
Because sales were so low, Tupper decided to change the way in which the product was marketed. Instead of having it solely in stores, Tupper also had his product, Tupperware, demonstrated in home parties. This was done with the help of Brownie Wise.3 Brownie Wise was instrumental in the sales numbers for the Tupperware company.
Brownie Wise was working for another company at the time that Earl Tupper was trying to market his product. Wise was a phenomenal saleswoman and took the initiative to call Tupper and ask to be involved in the selling process. Without her, who knows if the product would have been as successful as it has been.
Footnotes
1. [Bob Kealing, Tupperware Unsealed: Brownie Wise, Earl Tupper, and the Home Party Pioneers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008, 11.]↩
2. [Ibid, 9.]↩
3. [Ibid, 18]↩
INVENTION