Hang on... was Tupperware a pyramid scheme?

Tupperware is one of those words so common we forgot it's a brand. It's also one of the great untold business stories, with a pioneer who was deliberately erased from view. Did she design a pyramid scheme? Not really. There's more to it than that. This is the story of Brownie Wise... and what it costs to build something you don't own. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is one of those stories that's hiding in plain sight. Tupperware is such a boring part of day-to-day life now, but it used to be weirdly important and have this strange status attached to it. And it helped change the economy in a couple of really important ways. It helped give people, mostly women, all over the world, some financial independence at a time when they really didn't have many options to earn money on their own schedule and using their own networks. That's good. It also helped grow something called the Multi-Level Marketing System, or MLM, which has some problems, to put it lightly. And we're going to talk about that whole mess today. But as usual, I'm getting ahead of myself. Hello, Rob.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Hello, good morning.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  Good morning. Good to be with you. We're talking about tupperware, which is one of those words, I think, that covers a whole world of items.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  It does, it does. I've brought some in today.

• 0:55Speaker 00

  Is that what you call, oh, here we go?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  I've just brought some in today. The thing I noticed this morning when I went to the cupboard where the tupperware drawer is, is that you can never find a match.

• 1:05Speaker 00

  Never.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like lost socks. There is some, I don't know where it is, but there is somewhere where all those missing socks and all those tupperware lids are. And even though I live in a house with three people, one of them is a small child who doesn't use the tupperware, they still disappear.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  It's just.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  It goes into the dishwasher and it somehow falls into a vortex behind it. Here's the thing, we've just been talking about it and we keep saying the same word, which is tupperware.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Can you do me a favor? What is the actual brand of those ones that you brought in?

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Um, that one hasn't got, hold on, let's have a look.

• 1:37Speaker 00

  It's not tupperware then, because they would have plastered that on it.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  These plastic ones I have here are Sistema and they've been made in New Zealand. Shout out to our Kiwi friends.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  Welcome to the show, Sistema, or Sistema. But I'm the same. I had a look this morning. It's not tupperware. I call it tupperware and it's one of those kind of common examples of we call it that.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Even though that's probably not what it is. And there's lots of examples of this sort of thing. I mean, Kleenex.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Band-Aid.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  Band-Aid's a good one.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Uh, Velcro.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  It's Velcro brand.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  It is.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  I didn't know that.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  It's its own thing.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:09Speaker 00

  And, you know, Sharpie.

• 2:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Iro, all this sort of stuff. But it's definitely one of those. And, and that comes with kind of this prestige attached to it. But it also ends up being a bit of a business killer down the line. I never really noticed that it wasn't Tupperware. And I never really thought about the fact that I actually probably have interacted with real Tupperware, maybe even never.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think I ever have.

• 2:29Speaker 00

  But this is rare, is the point. And it doesn't happen by accident. You have to do a lot of things right to hit that status. The thing about Tupperware, of course, is that it was totally revolutionary. Um, but that's not enough on its own. It needs a revolutionary salesperson too. And it had one. And this is kind of her story today. Or at least, I mean, it should be. Her name was Brownie Wise. She made Tupperware the household name that it still is today. She's basically the reason we call it that, even when it's not Tupperware. And then she was completely written out of the story. In fact, her name was literally buried in a hole. And Rob, that is the kind of weird business behaviour that we love on how we got here.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  We certainly do.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  It's our favourite kind.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:17Speaker 00

  We're really looking forward to this one. Brownie Wise episode. And we're going to get into it right after this quick message from our partners.

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• 4:55Speaker 00

  Welcome back and welcome to our favourite recurring segment on How We Got Here. It's really our only recurring segment, Rob.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  I know, we've got.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  But I like it.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  All the ones I keep pitching keep getting shut down, but we'll stick with this one.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  We'll look to include some others, maybe. Because this is two truths and a lie. How it works is I give you three facts about Tupperware. Two of them are real, one of them is a lie. You have a guess now about which one is the lie and then see if you've changed your mind by the end of the story. Fact number one, or lie number one. At Tupperware's annual sales conventions in the 1950s, saleswomen dressed in cowboy costumes and they used shovels to dig prizes out of the ground, including knit coats and diamond rings. Whatever you dug up, Rob, you kept.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  True or lie, number one?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  I'm hoping this is true because as someone who doesn't mind putting on a cowboy hat at a party or when he's had a few too many drinks, I hope this is true.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  And digging prizes out of the ground?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, why not?

• 5:51Speaker 00

  Favourite, okay. Fact two. When the founder of Tupperware fired the woman who had made it famous, he had hundreds of copies of her memoir physically buried in a hole on the company property. Then he ordered every staff member to never acknowledge her existence again. So I said that her name was literally buried in a hole. You have to decide now whether or not I was being literal, literal, or if that was all part of this ruse for this lie number two or truth number two.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  Fact number three. After she left Tupperware, Brownie Wise went on to build second and third successful businesses. A cosmetic company called Vivienne Woodard that by 1965 had 40,000 saleswomen and was turning a profit of more than $3 million a year. So. Two of those are true, one of them is not true. Rob, thoughts?

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Um, I'm gonna guess that number two is the lie. Um, because I'm hoping for a feel-good story here. I know that isn't always the case with how we got here, but um, as I've said, I like number one. Number three is a nice tale if she didn't end up working with Tupperware, at least she had six elsewhere. So I'm hoping that those are the truths and the middle one is in fact the lie.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  Okay, I like, I like where you're going with that. As you say, rarely do you get positive, happy outcomes in these kinds of stories. Sometimes you do. Depends whose perspective, of course.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:13Speaker 00

  Right, so it's 1946. World War Two has just ended. American factories are switching from making bombs and tanks to things like fridges and cars and kitchen appliances. Plastic, which has spent the war years sort of in military hardware mode, is suddenly everywhere. And manufacturers are trying to figure out what to do with it in the home and increase sales. And in Massachusetts, you've got a guy named Earl Tupper trying to figure out how to make a bowl out of it.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  This is an interesting little point. I used to think when I was a kid that Tupperware meant something special, but it's really just his last name with ware after it.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Do we know if, you know, Band-Aid was Mr. Band or Velcro was Mr. Or Mrs. Vel? Do we, do we know?

• 8:00Speaker 00

  I don't, this is gonna call for further research, but yeah, a combination of of Mr. And Mrs. Band and Aid, you know, who knows? Earl Tupper, though, he's, he's working on this. He's not a warm man. In fact, he's kind of the opposite. He's famously, he has terrible people skills. And if you back up a bit, he's got a really long history of trying to invent stuff. He's one of these guys who wants to be an inventor. And Rob, his notebook contained some seriously weird ideas.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  How weird are we, are we talking here?

• 8:32Speaker 00

  Like, um, okay, like a fish-powered boat, a water motorcycle, a no-drip ice cream cone, a dagger-combination.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  That's some James Bond stuff.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  It is. And then, but also a belt buckle with a picture frame in it, which you probably wouldn't find in James Bond. I mean, to me, this is a list of stoner ideas.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  What purpose does the belt buckle with a picture frame have in it? Like, is it just like you take your pants off and go, hey, here's a photo of something?

• 9:05Speaker 00

  There it is. I'm looking, I'm looking. There it is. It's right there on my belt buckle. The weirdest one for me by far, and we've got to remember he's 19 when he's got this notebook. So maybe give him a little bit of a pass, but I can't get past the fish powered boat.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very kind of, you know, Game of Thrones-y, uh, that kind of fantasy kind of world where you've got some sort of creature below the boat that's doing all the actual work and the.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, but even then, how are you figuring, how, how are you getting there? It's such a huge leap. I mean, if we can pull up a picture, we might be able to have a look at it. Cause if you Google it, there are pictures of his notebook. So it's safe to say, and you can have a bit of a look at this. If you're listening on audio, it's safe to do so. There's a picture of Earl's drawing. There you go. Second one.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  It comes with, and I quote, "A large fish harnessed to the underside of the boat and a set of wings intended to prevent the fish from diving too deep or swimming away." And that's just bonkers.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Where do you get the fish? I mean, I mean, I know you get the fish.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  Are you using the same fish every time you want to use the boat? I don't know. This is, this is wild stuff.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  How do you control where the fish goes?

• 10:20Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Do you just like sprinkle, you just sprinkle a bit of, you know, goldfish flakes out the front?

• 10:24Speaker 00

  We've got very, not much to go with here, but this is the guy who invented Tupperware. So he's got this crazy list of previous, um, thoughts, I guess.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I guess we don't think about this with a lot of people because really, before you have a success in some sort of business world, you've probably failed a few times.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Same as, you know, inventors like your Thomas Edison's and that, there's probably Da Vinci even, there's probably a lot of shit ideas that didn't get up.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  Da Vinci, Edison, Tupper, the weird ideas. I mean, it's kind of just, it screams whiteboard session with no bad ideas. What have you got? A fish powered boat. Hell yeah. Right at there.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  Let's do it.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  That was a terrible idea.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  As you'd expect, he had to have a real job or real jobs while he's cooking this stuff up. Like he was a farmer for a while. He had a tree care business that failed. And then in 1937, he got a job at DuPont plastics factory and he was dealing with a waste product called polyethylene. They called it slag and it was basically a black oily lump of stuff that smelled really bad when you melted it and kind of nobody had any use for it. So naturally Earl Tupper, being the inventor, took this slag stuff home. And he worked on it for almost 10 years before he figured out that if you processed it just right, you could make it stay kind of soft when it cooled, not totally rigid, a little bit of give and it was strong.

• 11:44Speaker 00

  So for the first time, he really nailed an invention. A virtually indestructible food container with a lid that seals. And the reason it was such a good invention is that up until this point, leftover food was kept in a wax paper or under a shower cap. So this bowl with a lid is properly useful and it still is, of course. So in 1946, he brought out the Wonder Bowl. It was sold as translucent, pastel coloured, flexible and it sealed with a two-step lid. You press it down and then you lift the corner enough to let out a small burp of air. And in theory, after that, the food is locked in and fresh.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  And as a bit of an aside here, people don't really burp their Tupperware much these days. I don't, but it was a whole thing back in these early days. But anyway, I digress because it was a great new bowl. House Beautiful Magazine described it as fine art for 39 cents. The industry loved it. It won design awards, write-ups in trade publications, the whole lot. And then it just, it just sat there on department store shelves, didn't sell. Nobody bought it.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Why not?

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Um, I think because nobody really knew how to use it. It, you know, there was a demand for it, but they didn't really have anyone connecting that demand to the people, you know, to this product, I guess. It was a little bit weird, the two-step lid thing, a bit confusing. I mean, I think it was probably a bit like, um, like a fitted sheet. Somebody hands you a fitted sheet for the first time and they go, this is better than the system you're using. You go, I don't, I don't get it.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  How do I fold this?

• 13:22Speaker 00

  What do you mean? How do I fold this? How do I, what, what are you talking about? You know, it just needed a little bit of explaining, I think. As it, as it goes, if somebody does know how to fold a fitted sheet, please, for love of God, I'm struggling.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, same.

• 13:35Speaker 00

  So Tupperware was missing this important piece before it could be a successful business. Then came Brownie Wise. And a quick backstory on Brownie is that she was born in Georgia in 1913. Her parents were divorced and her mum raised her on her own. And Brownie's mum, she was a hat maker and a union organizer who was great at rallies. And she taught Brownie how to work a crowd and be a really good public speaker through these union rallies. By the time she moved to Detroit in 1936, when she was 23, she was charming and funny and warm, absolutely able to command a group's attention. Then she married a complete loser and her life got a bit derailed, Rob. It's a shame.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  She married a young Ford executive named Robert Wise after only knowing him for six months. Turns out he was an alcoholic and he was abusive and then they were divorced in 1941. And now, by that point, Brownie is a single mum to their son Gerry and she has no support. This guy, Robert, actually seems to have basically stalked Brownie for the rest of her life. He followed her and Gerry to Florida when they moved there a little bit later. And the book Life of the Party by Bob Keeling says this about him, quote, Gerry once had to wear a disguise when there was word his father might kidnap him. On another occasion, Gerry said he found his dad's car in town and it looked like he'd been living in it for six months. So he's a total dropkick, no hope and dangerous, frankly.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  So by this point, she's single and working as a secretary. Then one day, this is while she's still in Detroit. One day, a door to door salesman knocks on her door and he was selling cleaners and detergents, stuff like that, for Stanley home products. And he's kind of terrible at it. Brownie's watching him fumble his way through this sales pitch and she just thinks, I can do this, I can do this way better than him. So that's what she does. She calls the company and she gets herself a job. She signs up to start selling these Stanley home products as well. And within a year, she was one of the top selling unit managers in the Detroit area. And she did so well that she asked her management for a promotion.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  In fact, she went straight to Frank Stanley Beveridge and he said, well, you're a woman, so no. And she was completely crushed. Remember that she's a union organizer to her core. And this is not fair.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Is she a feminist?

• 16:01Speaker 00

  I think she is, absolutely. I think she's a key member of the upwards push for women in the workplace in the 20th century. And we'll get to that, but like, absolutely, this does not feel right to her.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Definitely not.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  And it was basically at that exact time when Brownie Wise first picked up this Wonder Bowl thing with a lid. Really important moment, just at the right time. So Brownie made the switch to Tupperware in 1949. She moved to Florida to get further away from Robert, which didn't really work. And immediately started dominating at Tupperware. Now, Tupperware was already doing something called the Home Party Sales System, which is basically a salesperson, a dealer, AKA an associate, would demonstrate the products in someone's living room with a bunch of people watching. The people would be able to touch and feel the products while chatting, having a cup of tea.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  The person who organized the party, the hostess, was usually given some Tupperware and maybe some gifts as a thank you. Usually not a direct commission from the sales. The feeling in the room is pretty casual. It's just a social gathering of friends. The problem was that it was usually a guy trying to sell to a group of women, which was often a bit clunky. Not quite nailing the vibe, you know what I mean? Rob, you ever watch the Direct Sales TV network? You ever seen that stuff like the guy who sells the Shamwow or the Slap Chop?

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  His name's Vince?

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  Or in Australia, do you remember Big Kev?

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Do I remember Big Kev?

• 17:32Speaker 00

  It's informative, really.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Should we explain him for our international audience?

• 17:35Speaker 00

  I think we probably should. So Big Kev, and I'll have a go on you and you might be able to correct me. Big Kev, he's a big guy.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  Sells cleaning products in that sort of straight down the barrel of the camera kind of way. And he famously always wore this Australian shirt.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Australian flag.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  Flag shirt. It was like a silk shirt.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  And his catchphrase was?

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Uh, I'm excited.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  I'm excited.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Excited. God. Jeez, that takes me right back.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  R I P.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  R I P to Big Kev, but like really good on TV. Similar kind of vibe to Shamwell Guy. These guys are really good on TV. Might be a bit full on in the living room though.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can imagine.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Context is everything, I think. Uh, Brownie Wise though, her vibe was, put me in the living room, give me a bunch of people to sell to and I'll absolutely nail it. She was warm, she was confident, you know, she said things like, hey, you have to burp the Tupperware container like it's a baby. She played games with the group. She demonstrated the product. The finale of her sales pitch was usually filling one of these containers with grape juice and then throwing it across the carpeted living room. And you know, people gasp and then it's like, hell yeah, woo. That's the best thing I've ever seen. Oh my God. Everybody signs up and like, it's the best time ever. You know, this is a fun afternoon.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I must say, I've, I've, I've been to a lot of parties in my life. Um, some say in my twenties, I might've gone to a few too many.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  But I've never been invited to a Tupperware party and I'm a little bit bummed by that.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Maybe you could kind of co-opt it and just start doing them. People will be made to be super confused.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 00

  And be like, guys, we're, we're gonna buy some Tupperware.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is blokes, Tupperware parties for guys in their thirties. Let's do it.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  Maybe it's not a bad idea. But the point is that Brownie was absolutely shooting to the top of the sales. She's recruiting people, she's teaching them, she, those recruits are making good sales, starting to recruit other people, teaching them. Her system is now going national and then international. Now economists call all this social capital. It's the idea that networks of trust have real economic value. And it's, you know, fast forward today, it's used much more precisely on social media now. But this is definitely the seed. It's the genesis of the whole thing. And Earl Tupper, he didn't really understand it completely, but he's the president and he liked all these sales that he was getting.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  He never really seemed to like Brownie Wise, despite all the money that she was making him. But he understood the process and he understood that he needed her. In 1951, Earl Tupper made Brownie Wise the Vice President of Marketing of Tupperware. And the business becomes completely cemented into these home parties. The sales army was now mostly women, and they were, in some cases, leading dozens of Tupperware parties across large regions every single week. Tupper pulled Tupperware off every store shelf in the country, which made Tupperware quite a rare thing.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  It was like desirable, impossible to comparison shop, and you kind of had to know somebody to get it. So it became this status symbol.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  And then Brownie starts having these jubilees. And things get a little bit weird.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Like a royal jubilee? What do you mean?

• 21:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's the name that she gave to her big annual convention, a Tupperware Jubilee. It was a massive deal. Um, it was part training session, part motivational rally, part vanity project, I think it's safe to say. It had themed nights, cowboy, fairy costumes. They'd sing songs, like I got that Tupperware feeling down in my heart.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Sounds like a great time.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  Does sound like a good time. Brownie ran every single inch of these jubilees. There were prizes and Brownie would have stuff buried in the ground, like mink coats, diamond rings, cash.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Like a treasure hunt.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you'd have to dig it out. I mean, she, this is her whole thing. She knows how to put on a party.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  She'd hand out shovels and spades, you know, off you'd go. I can't imagine what these things must have been like, but there's a hell of a lot of vibe about them.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  How would you feel if you were at a party, you know, you're a few hours in, had a couple of drinks, had some food, everyone's having fun, engaging, and the host comes out holding a bunch of shovels and said, now guys, the game's gonna begin. You're like, okay, are we burying a dead body? Like, what's just happened? What has just happened to you?

• 22:08Speaker 00

  Get out there and find a new coat.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Let's go destroy this person's backyard, go dig it up.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  It's funny because this was a real thing at these parties and I've never heard of it before or since.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:19Speaker 00

  People burying stuff as part of fun games.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  At the party. But there you go. I mean, people become obsessed. There's this aura around Brownie and the whole world that she's created. I mean, Brownie was starting to be in women's magazines, business publications. She was warm, she was glamorous and beautiful, very quotable. Her saying, quote, "You build the people and they'll build the business", that becomes Tupperware's whole company motto. And in 1954, she became the first woman to ever appear on the cover of Business Week. This was becoming a revolution with Brownie at the centre of it. A close colleague of Brownie Wise, a guy named Gary McDonald, later said, quote, "What she was doing was helping people accomplish things beyond their wildest imaginations. They never thought of working, let alone making more money than their husbands.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  Fan letters were pouring in for Brownie. People felt like they knew her. If they did a bad job or if they got sick, they felt like they were letting her down." And it definitely got weird. One dealer incentive was that Brownie Wise would give away the clothes that she wore to the rallies. And people would go nuts to sell enough Tupperware to win her dresses. And then they'd go on diets to try to fit into them because she was quite slender. Was it a cult? Totally. It was. I mean, it's kind of one of those harmless-ish ones though.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  But I think, I think a lot of the mentality that was going into this is quite cultish.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  Is this like early doors of pyramid schemes sort of stuff?

• 23:50Speaker 00

  It's a really good question and I think it's something that people in the comments might have a bit to say about. Um, but I think what it really is, it's an early modern MLM or multi-level marketing system, which yes, it's in the same ballpark as a pyramid scheme. But pyramid schemes are kind of more overtly dodgy. There's really no product involved. It's all about recruitment. I recruit you, you pay me, you recruit somebody else, they pay you. Um, as soon as the recruitment dries up, the whole thing falls apart. I think with an MLM, which is what this was, it is about recruitment, but there's quite a lot of sales happening. Um, there's demand for the product and there's new territories to explore. There's expansion that is working and you can see clearly,

• 24:34Speaker 00

  um, that the amount of money rolling in shows that, that this was a good thing for people involved in it.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  I mean, in 1951, Tupperware had 200 dealers. By 1954, they had 9,000 dealers and the total network was more than twice that. Um, annual sales hit $25 million. That's like 300 million today. I mean, this is huge. And I think we're talking about MLMs in this early days as if they're great because they kind of are. I mean, they're getting people into the workforce that otherwise had limited opportunities. But the thing is by social media age, it does become quite predatory. It's not a good thing these days. Most legitimate companies have evacuated the whole space. I mean, even Tupperware itself, its own filings in 2018 show that 94% of its sales consultants earn about 650 bucks a year.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's not quite, you know, a guy you knew from back in the day hitting up on Facebook going like, "Hey man, we should catch up for a chat. I've got something to tell you."

• 25:32Speaker 00

  That's where we ended up.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  That's how we got here.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, originally it was kind of fine. As so many good things are, I mean, give it 50 years in the economy, people figure out how to break it.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  And of course, we're about to talk about how the whole thing came unstuck. The downfall of Tupperware, coming up right after this very short break.

• 25:55Speaker 00

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• 26:53Speaker 00

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• 27:29Speaker 00

  Welcome back. Here's what you need to know about Earl Tupper. He nailed this product, but he never did much more innovating after that. And he was a shocking people person. He hated publicity, he hated interviews and he starts resenting Brownie Wise, who is great at all of those things. His issue became centred around this book that Brownie wrote in 1957, which was called Best Wishes. It was a memoir and business book. It was kind of all about her turning things around at Tupperware. And fair enough, really, she did that. It's her story. But Tupper was furious that she hadn't checked with him first. By this stage, he was looking into selling the company and he thought that the book didn't really reflect well on him or the business.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  So he sent her a memo. She sent back a letter. And Rob, the whole back and forth is actually now in the Smithsonian Museum Archives. And her letter includes the line, quote, "This letter is about as friendly as a mad dog and about as helpful as a first-class case of leprosy." Good line.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Great line.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  Put that down, she sent it.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  She's absolutely had enough of Earl. And one party that she throws tips the whole thing into absolute chaos. The luau, the famous luau. I think this might be one of the worst parties of all time. I mean, definitely.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  I've been to some.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Definitely in the Hall of Fame, but this is a 1,200-person party.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  That's a big party.

• 28:58Speaker 00

  It's a big, big party and boy, oh, boy, did it go off the rails.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Just on the Smithsonian for a second before we move on. Could you imagine having some communications that you've had with a workmate being put in a museum?

• 29:11Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, or maybe if I had, if I was as good enough to say that this is as helpful as a first-class case of leprosy.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  I'd want that to be in the museum.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  You know, imagine, could you remember how many drafts you write of an angry email? And you come back to it and you think, hmm, that one, she was like, hell yeah, this is awesome.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, like we, we use Slack a lot here at this business and I'm known for being very blunt. A lot of yes, no, terrible idea. Okay, thanks. Like, not really museum-worthy.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Well, this is what CEOs become famous for. There's a whole world of communication theory about how, you know, CEOs are very quick and abrupt.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Hey, future CEO right here.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Are you, are you CEO of this operation? I've never even asked you that.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  No, I'm not, should be though.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Soon to be.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Should be.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  There you go. So Brownie owned a small private island near the Tupperware headquarters on a lake in central Florida.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Uh oh.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. So she decided to throw a luau for the Jubilee guests one year. Over a thousand people were invited, 1,200-ish. Boats would take them across to the island, but this is Florida. And a thunderstorm rolled in on the day that it was meant to happen. Brownie's like, all good, don't cancel it, this'll be fine. But the storm got really bad and there was no cover on the island. We're talking lightning, heavy rain, huge winds. The boats were smashing around the dock, things were flying across the party area. 21 people ended up in the hospital, some with quite serious injuries. And in the chaos. Brownie just left. She got on one of the working boats and she just went home.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  It's a shame that Netflix wasn't around here because this was the first Fire Festival.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  It was.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  But instead it happened in, what year are we?

• 30:58Speaker 00

  It's a great, that's exactly what it was. It was all meant to be fun and games and digging prizes out of the ground and, and wearing costumes. And instead genuine, like, problems.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Doomsday.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  Real bad problems. And then Brownie, who's the leader of the whole thing, she just clears off. Um, and quite a few people filed lawsuits actually against the company. And remember that Earl Tupper's already getting annoyed? This was enough for him to say enough's enough. Earl Tupper, he's totally beside himself and on January 25, 1958, he just fires Brownie Wise. Basically out of the blue, calls her into the office and says, you're done. No warning, no farewell party, no jubilee, no nothing. Get out, take your stuff, you're done.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  And I think this is the part of the story that I find most surprising. She had no formal contract. She owned no company stock. She had no equity stake of any kind.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  I mean, she's been on the cover of Business Week, holding these Tupperware containers. And when she left, she was entitled to nothing, nothing to show for it.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Get it in writing, kids. That's the lesson for today.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  Is it ever?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Get it in writing.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  Is it ever? She sued, fair enough, for over a million dollars, but she was bullied into a settlement of about 30,000, which is one year's salary and that's it. Earl then, this is another weird part of the story. Earl then gets an earth mover, gets a huge hole, another hole.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Another hole.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  Another hole. Huge hole dug on the office grounds and he puts hundreds of copies of Brownie's book, Best Wishes, into the hole and buries them. And then he's standing there and he orders every employee not to acknowledge Brownie again. No mention of her name. As far as Tupperware's official history was concerned, Brownie Wise just ceased to exist.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  It's very, um, like medieval king vibes. You've just, you've just gotten rid of someone and go, we never speak of them again. And if you speak of them, I'll, I'll cut off your head.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  It was a bit like that. That's actually fair.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  Really full on kind of vibe. I mean, I know we said he didn't have very good people skills, but this is kind of next level.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  Now, moron Earl, not moron, but as in moron Earl.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Ah, moron Earl.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  Gotta be careful. I'm certainly not saying that. Thing about him is he did sell Tupperware in the end. He sold it later that year to Rexel Drug Company for $16 million. Brownie didn't get a cent of that. So initially, Earl was kind of seen as a champion of women in the workforce. After all, he did promote Brownie into the first major executive role, one of the first major executive roles a woman had in corporate America. But then he turned out to brutally dump her with basically nothing, absolutely savage stuff. Then, the year after selling his business for $16 million, Earl Tupper divorces his wife.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  And then later on, he buys an island off the coast of Central America and renounces his American citizenship. So he doesn't have to pay US taxes.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Big move.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Big move, controversial to say the least. He died in 1980.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  Was he a popular man? No, he was not. But as established, he does not care. He is very, I mean, he's reclusive, really. He cleared off to an island.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Kind of have to be, if that's how you want to live your life.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  Totally. The point I think there is that Earl Tupper's obituaries did credit him alone with Tupperware's success. His whole effort to erase Brownie worked. When Brownie died in 1992, aged 79, she was buried in a plain grave, no ceremony. She was not particularly rich. Simple, small gravestone, no mention of Tupperware, no mention of the trailblazing at all, really.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Plastic coffin, plastic lid, you can pop it open.

• 34:57Speaker 00

  That would have been more fitting, perhaps. But no, you can see pictures of the gravestone. I mean, it certainly doesn't look like someone who pioneered something significant.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  She had tried to rebuild after she left Tupperware. She started a cosmetics company, then another. She gave speeches. She even wrote a follow up book. None of it really came close, though. The weirdest thing in hindsight, I think, is that Brownie Wise could be written out of the Tupperware story. I mean, she was really famous. Everybody knew her. People all over the country and the world were still sending her letters. It possibly just speaks to how hard the 20th century was for working women. Two steps forward, one and a half big steps back. And once Tupper is out of the company, things continue with Brownie's system for years. That must have been so hard for her to see all around her all the time.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  In fact, the company only officially added Brownie Wise to their proper official company history 60 years after she was fired. In 2016, they paid for a small park to be named after her in Orlando. She'd been dead for 24 years by the time they did that. It's a sad story, really, for Brownie. And the model she helped build, as mentioned, has a very complicated legacy. By the end, Tupperware has totally lost the spark that made salespeople love it. As mentioned, only a tiny fraction of the salespeople by the end were earning money, proper money. Vast majority, they're making 650 bucks a year.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Absolutely not worth it.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  That's not sustainable either, as far as a company goes. So what happened to Tupperware in the end? Well, it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1996 with sales revenue of almost 1.4 billion US dollars. That revenue grew. It peaked in 2013 at 2.7 billion and then sales just declined pretty much nonstop from then on. Share price went from $96 to 50 cents.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  Company filed for bankruptcy in 2024 and was bought for just $23 million and debt guarantees. And basically, it's that dominance that we were talking about way in the beginning that killed it. I mean, you and I think that we're using Tupperware containers even when we're not.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  That's not money for Tupperware.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Definitely not.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  The patents expired in the 1980s and the market was filled with these cheaper options. Tupperware, remember, was only being sold directly. Couldn't buy it in shops. You couldn't buy it online, Rob, until 2022. This is why I said that we've probably never really actually held Tupperware.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  I doubt it.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Despite thinking we are.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Like unless our parents might have had it, but.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  Maybe they did.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  We definitely.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  I mean, it was a thing. Like there were Tupperware parties all over the world. Like it was enormous and those products obviously are still around.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Is that why there were so many holes dug in my backyard as a kid?

• 38:00Speaker 00

  It was part of it. Yeah, it was part of the routine.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Well, in a way, it's all kind of poetic in the end because it fell in a heap.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  From this system that it championed and created. But here's the thing that stays with me after this one. What Brownie Wise really invented was the influencer model. The product barely mattered. She could have been selling anything. She used a network and trust to sell. And the sales model grew outwards. She had followers who were obsessed enough with her to try and win her dresses and send her fan mail. So they were gonna buy her stuff and they were gonna sell her stuff using her system. The whole thing was really about her. It was never about the Tupperware containers or the Wonder Bowl, or whatever they wanted to call it.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  And of course, she didn't own any of it. So when the guy who did own it wanted her out, that was it. She was gone quickly and forgotten quickly. It is, as Rob, you said, a cautionary tale for millions of people who use trust and networks to sell things on social media to this day. Kind of a lesson in the importance of owning equity in the thing that you're building.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Yep. Get it in writing.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Get it in writing. Own something.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Own something.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  Don't be so easily vanquished.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  Are you an influencer?

• 39:24Speaker 00

  No. What do I influence?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 39:28Speaker 00

  No, I certainly hope nobody sees me that way.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  It's a bit somber, that finishing note.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  So let's do two truths and a lie.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 39:38Speaker 00

  Fact number one was, at Tupperware's annual Jubilee conventions, top performing saleswomen literally dug up buried mink coats and diamond rings from the ground using spades. That's true. Very weird, but true.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Bizarre.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Maybe you had to be there. Maybe it made more sense if you're there. I don't know.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  Again, context is everything. Fact number two, when Earl Tupper fired Brownie Wise, he had hundreds of copies of her memoir physically buried in a hole in company property, ordered staff to never speak her name again. Also true and completely unhinged, really, and effective. It took decades for her to reappear in the official record and really, she still doesn't get the credit she deserves, despite all the media coverage that she got at the time. Very weird, actually.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, bizarre.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Really weird.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Like, you'd think there'd be a lot of records. I mean, it's early days for TV and stuff. Like, but you'd think there'd be more stuff of her around.

• 40:31Speaker 00

  I suspect that a lot of prominent and hardworking business women will say, this isn't that weird.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  Second half of the 20th century for women was not a good place to be in the corporate world. And you are quite often and easily overlooked in the efforts that you do and the credit that you get is often minimal compared with the effort. I think that's probably, like, this is two guys talking about this story.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I'm an expert on feminism being a bloke, so yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  It's the same. Who's better placed to tell the Brownie Wise story?

• 41:01Speaker 01

  I don't know. Yes, no.

• 41:02Speaker 00

  I think it's important to, it's important to sort of give her that credit. And this is really her story, but I suspect that a lot of women out there would.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  I mean, I mean, I'll be honest, until you sent me the notes of this episode, I had never heard of her.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, fair enough. It's one of those, but it is one of those stories. It's quite important. Fact three. After leaving Tupperware, Brownie Wise built a second successful business, a cosmetics company called Vivienne Woodard with 40,000 saleswomen and profits of over $3 million by 1965. That one is the lie. She tried, she tried at least once with a cosmetics venture. None of the things that she tried really caught on. And I said Vivienne Woodard, which is a bit tricky, Rob, because that was a business at the time. It just wasn't hers. So, sorry for being tricky.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  It's a bit of a bummer.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  It's a bit of a bummer. What do you make of the whole Tupperware story? Is Earl Tupper straight up and down a villain? Did he do what he had to do? Is Brownie Wise the sort of, the champion who was forgotten?

• 42:07Speaker 01

  She definitely was the champion who was forgotten because without her, this thing probably doesn't grow the way that it does. And then, you know, maybe someone else with a different name comes along with the same product and they do it better.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Earl, yeah, like, like a lot of people we speak about, a bit of a dick, but also kind of from that time, that behaviour is pretty common. And yeah, just a lot of references to digging holes. I mean, I might go watch Holes with Shia LaBeouf after we finish recording this. After this, that's now stuck in my head.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Maybe it's all about Tupperware in the end. Yeah. Look, I think it's interesting that the, this is basically our MLM episode.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  It was a really important thing and it gave particularly women financial freedom from their husbands in a lot of cases. And it was kind of, the femininity of it was not a bad thing, it was a good thing. And then it sort of just, over time, over decades and using social media, it became predatory and problematic and it's a shame.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  As so many things do. But it's important that the way that we see these sorts of sales models now is not necessarily how they used to be. You know, caution surrounds that world these days.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  As it should.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  But back then, it was liberating. It was kind of good. And that was thanks to Brownie Wise. So that's Tupperware, a product that didn't sell, a woman who figured out how to sell it, an empire built on trust and social networks and throwing tubs of grape juice around. And it was about status. It was about money, power struggles, and it was about Brownie Wise, who had a hard life and did incredible things and was given no credit for years. Rob, that's Tupperware.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  That's Tupperware.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  I'm Chris Cole. Thanks very much for listening to How We Got Here. Tune in next time as we talk about buying things that don't exist in the real world. There's a hint. See you then. Rob, as always, thank you very much.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  See you next time.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  See you next time.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Tupperware did something the economy wasn't offering at the time. It gave everyday people a way to build their own income on their own terms, right from the kitchen table. A quiet revolution, one party at a time. That's the energy behind what IG is building with their new app, IG Markets. Backed by 50 years in global financial markets, and now they're bringing that same expertise to investing. No parties, no quotas, no containers that you'll never get the lid back on, just shares, ETFs and crypto, all in one place from a team that knows how markets work. Tupperware proved that when you hand everyday people the tools and skip the gatekeeping,

• 44:50Speaker 00

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• 45:11Speaker 00

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