Once the ‘Magic Kingdom before Disney,’ Tupperware faces dire future

The year was 1954, and Tupperware was having a party.

The company’s new Osceola County headquarters was dedicated by famed Tupperware executive Brownie Wise during a five-day “jubilee,” which also featured hundreds of women digging for buried prizes, the Orlando Sentinel reported. Two Cadillacs and five Fords were won by Tupperware distributors during the fun.

“Some 220 women shut their eyes, rubbed their hands on a block of polyethylene, and wished – that they might sell more Tupperware,” the newspaper reported.

Tupperware would become a draw for visitors to Central Florida and a vital part of the Orlando community, said Bob Kealing, author of “Life of the Party,” a book about Wise and Tupperware.

“They were the Magic Kingdom before Disney,” Kealing said.

Now, those partying days might be over.

Tupperware Brands warned last month it might not have enough cash to survive in the near term and said there was “substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

Financial advisers were being brought on as the company looked to find additional money or backers.

“There are investors that specialize in this kind of turnaround,” said Eric Schiffer, CEO of private equity firm the Patriarch Group. “The challenge is it’s a short list and the good ones typically wait until this is in bankruptcy and they’ll come in and buy the assets.”

A Tupperware spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.

Coming to Florida in 1952

Tupperware started its move from Massachusetts to a temporary space in Orlando in 1952, the Orlando Evening Star reported, under the headline “Million Dollar Firm Moving to Orlando.”

The annual payroll started at $250,000 with the temporary operations but was expected to reach about $1 million when Tupperware’s development here was completed, according to the story.

Wise was at the forefront of the business in Orlando back in the early 1950s after Earl Tupper created his famous plastic containers in 1946.

She knew how to speak to women’s dreams in a suburban, post-World War II United States, Kealing said.

“She was like Cher or Madonna. She was Brownie,” he said. “Scores of families across America prospered because of selling this product. It worked. People needed it. They needed to stretch home budgets in the days after World War II.”

One of Tupperware’s big innovations — along with its patented “burping” seal — was bringing a social component to selling with the now iconic Tupperware parties, Kealing said.

“It was very revolutionary in the sense that it was a demonstration product,” Kealing said.

To prove how well they stayed airtight, Wise would put liquid in the containers and toss them in women’s living rooms, Kealing said.

“That made an impression,” he said.

Tens of thousands of people were selling the containers by the mid-1950s, Kealing said.

Tupperware dealers would travel to Orlando for recognition, and for celebrations at the headquarters near the Orange County line on Orange Blossom Trail, Kealing said. He added the company established a public art collection, and school graduations have been held in Tupperware Auditorium.

“They were an intrinsic part of the community far beyond the plastic storage products,” Kealing said.

The Central Florida economy also benefited.

“The whole area was largely agrarian and Tupperware … it’s fair to say really started to spark that evolution from agrarian to not only business, but tourism-focused,” Kealing said.

‘Times have changed’

Today, Tupperware’s products are sold in nearly 70 countries, still mainly by independent representatives.

Tupperware’s business and salesforce thrived at a time when women were not as big a part of the workforce as they are now, said Anand Krishnamoorthy, associate professor of marketing at the University of Central Florida. Consumers are also no longer interested in spending hours talking to salespeople when they can shop online, he said.

“The times have changed,” he said. “The problem is Tupperware has not changed.”

Additionally, there are more ways to store food today such as with sealable plastic bags or glass containers, Krishnamoorthy said.

“Consumers are usually unwilling to pay a premium for the brand name alone when there are more products that can serve as substitutes,” Krishnamoorthy said.

After years of declining sales, Tupperware started to see some turnaround during the coronavirus pandemic, when people were eating at home more because of lockdowns. In October 2020, under new CEO Miguel Fernandez, the company reported its first year-over-year sales increase in a quarter since 2017.

Tupperware has also been trying to sell its containers in different ways, with its sales force hosting online parties and Target starting to carry its containers last year.

Sue Skirvin, who held her first Tupperware party in 1980, last year held a Tupperware house party with a luau theme. She showed off Tupperware’s “SuperSonic Chopper,” cutting up and mixing onions, cilantro, jalapeno peppers and pineapple chunks for a pineapple salsa.

A couple of months later, she used the same device to make a tomato-based salsa but during a “virtual party” held over Zoom.

“I still do prefer doing them in person,” Skirvin told the Orlando Sentinel last year. “Being in the same room with everybody, it’s just like night and day to me, but I am getting more comfortable and making use, and learning still, how to make more out of the virtual experience.”

Skirvin deferred to Tupperware for this story. The company spokeswoman then did not grant a request from the Orlando Sentinel for Skirvin to do an interview.

Tupperware’s changes are too little, too late, Krishnamoorthy said.

“Now that the pandemic is almost over, they are back to the problems they faced earlier before the pandemic, which is they did not make the transition to online and big box retailers early enough,” Krishnamoorthy said.

In 2019, Tupperware said it employed about 300 people at its Central Florida headquarters, but in a February 2020 statement that number had fallen to about 250 people. It’s unclear how many people work there today, as the company has not answered questions from the Orlando Sentinel about where the employment figure now stands.

‘It means more pain’

Schiffer, an investment and finance expert, said Tupperware needs to be tapping into the creator economy, using influencers who can reach Millennials and Generation Z. He said Wise would be coming up with ways to get those younger groups on board.

“She’d be figuring out the psychology and what motivates young women to want to connect and also benefit themselves in the process,” Schiffer said.

He put the odds of a Tupperware bankruptcy at more than 50% but said that doesn’t mean the company will go away.

“It will morph in terms of who is driving it behind the scenes,” Schiffer said.

But that’s still not good news for Orlando.

“Sadly, it means more pain because of a failure by leadership to connect the dots and modernize with young women,” Schiffer said.