> "Over the last several years, the company's financial position has been severely impacted by the challenging macroeconomic environment," Tupperware's chief executive Laurie Ann Goldman said in a statement to investors, external.
I agree that their food storage products, which is what Tupperware is most known for, have suffered from the abundance of next best alternatives in the market. However, I just went on their website and all their products and product lines feel so uninspired.
I would blame their decline in demand due to lack of innovation as a way to stay relevant. They could’ve ventured into other areas that capitalise on their ‘airtight’ applications. That’s what made Tupperware unique when it was founded.
For example, a consumer product line of waterproof bags or cases for electronic devices and other important items. Due to brand awareness and trust, they could’ve really leveraged the ‘Tupperware’ brand there in a way that other brands couldn’t.
Or highly invest in R&D for more industrial and scientific applications that require airtight solutions or vacuum spaces. This would’ve created highly lucrative partnerships that would’ve kept them afloat even if sales for their consumer products dwindled.
> That’s what made Tupperware unique when it was founded.
I suppose they were making a unique product, but it was the grassroots marketing that made them a standout and a household name.
I believe that those suburban home-based "parties" bridged the gap between door-to-door salesmen and catalog/online sales.
In my neighborhood, "Tupperware parties" were not stigmatized or dreaded, but just seemed like a fun way to pick up some durable modern containers.
In the 1970's and 80's, Tupperware was functionally superior to widely available alternatives. If you wanted a reliable tumbler with fitted lid that didn't leak or a bin to keep celery fresh, Tupperware was the way to go. Pyrex glassware was available but the lids were leaky and/or low durability...most of them still are. And it looked good.
There really wasn't anywhere for Tupperware to pivot, and the death seems natural.
And it wasn't Earl Tupper who did the marketing. It was a woman (of course I now forget her name), who invented the Tupperware Party and was basically the face of the company for many many years. She was then fired by Tupper and basically erased from the company's history until recently. There's a good documentary on it, very interesting.
They could have also entered the food delivery market, providing clean&green reusable packaging. During the covid lockdowns they could have targeted urban restaurants to package their to-go food. There are some companies that tried/are doing this (I’m thinking recup and similar) but maybe Tupperware would have been able to make this much more ubiquitous.
Re: adjacent markets: I saw a Dyson branded hair curler the other day, which threw me for a loop! There was a big poster with a quote (from the CEO?) about how they want to become experts in this domain, implying they just decided to branch out one day. Does anyone know more about this?
Edit: I don't know much about hair curlers, but apparently Dyson's airflow expertise gives them an edge here.
I don’t know about curlers, but for hair dryers, bio ionics are great.
I really wanted to like the Dyson hair dryer but unfortunately the performance is lackluster. I can get better airflow and weight/space efficiency (important when travelling) out of a budget model.
Wait till you hear about Dyson hair styling products (creams etc)
I don’t know if this applies to all the 40 countries Tupperware is selling to, but at least here in Germany, the need to „eintuppern“ (to put something into a Tupperware container) has massively decreased. Up until the 90s it was much more common to cook in abundance e.g. on the weekend and store the leftovers to eaten throughout the week or even deep frozen. These days it is much more common to cook only what you intend to eat right away.
At the same time, the trend went away from buying huge packs of stuff that need to be put in a container to not go stale, towards buying smaller-sized packages, for a multitude of reasons.
In Ireland, it feels like everyone's going the opposite direction. Smaller families with more leftovers, more meal prep, far wider range of ingredients used and kept for longer, and a bigger focus on food safety. I'm not sure I know anyone who doesn't use loads of containers.
That said, the German low cost supermarkets sell much cheaper food containers and if you want higher end, brands like Sistema always seem to be better value than Tupperware.
According to https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/which-food-storage-cont... the Ikea 365+ ones are some of the best and they are stupid cheap.
Yes, I am using only the IKEA ones and they are great
All that is true, but food containers still sell. People have lunch boxes etc.
Tupperware has not innovated, patents have expired. Same injection mold plastics that eventually gets color stains from the food.
Cheap knockoffs everywhere.
Higher quality plastic containers available.
Tupperware brand is associated with grandmothers and valued only by them. Younger people don't buy them.
People who are ready to pay more use metallic containers or borosilicate glass containers with plastic lid. Buy one with good silicone-rubber seal lid and they last forever.
There is nothing going on with Tupperware.
I actually really wanted to buy Tupperware,specifically because it lasted.
Imagine my surprise when it turned out I'd need to go to a Tupperware party to do so.
Buy glass containers with silicon lids instead. They also last but don't get stained by the food you put inside.
The ones from Ikea are great. Lid also works for a large variety of containers.
Yeah that's what I ended up with.
From a sustainability standpoint ikea is the way to go.
They have the glass containers and even plastic if you want something more light.
They are safely impilable (the lid is a little shallow)
The best thing about them is the fact that you can buy the lids and containers separately (the hinges of the lids tend to break after sometime)
> Tupperware brand is associated with grandmothers
Where I'm from Tupperware is associated more with multilevel marketing. While plastic containers are common Tupperware branded are not.
The biggest problem with Tupperware, at least for a long time, was their multi level distribution network, I think.
Tupperware was only available on those "Tupperpartys" but I don't want to sit through a whole evening when I only want to buy some containers.
I think they have shifted to selling online, too, but they really missed the train and now it's too late.
Qualitywise Tupperware is really great I think. I'm still using containers my mother bought at least 20 years ago.
People are also more aware of plastics in their food and using plastic tupperware in the microwave might add a large amount of plastic to the food [1]. Due to this I also switched to glass containers, which are also easier to clean.
[1] https://news.unl.edu/article/nebraska-study-finds-billions-o...
Nobody sane microwaves their food in plastic containers. They are used only for storage and transportation.
Wish my neighbours and relatives would listen - tell them that and they are quick to pick one of those plastic containers, flip it, and point to the text at the bottom that says "Microwave Safe". (And I am talking about no-name, cheap brands that are probably from China).
This isn't true, and certainly wasn't for most of the 20th century.
> Nobody sane
You'd be suprised by the amount of people who haven't got the memo.
Here in Spain, any sort of food container is generally referred to as "a tupper", but I don't know a single person who buys Tupperware-branded "tuppers". There are cheaper and easier to find alternatives everywhere.
Plus, people are becoming aware that plastic containers suck and they prefer buying glass container for home use, since they're easier to clean and don't get permanently stained.
More than the stains, it is the smell that can be troublesome.
I am using a fairly pungent dish detergent, which keeps the bugs away, but every plastic vessel would readily absorb the scent, and I stopped wanting to store or eat anything in them.
Now, I avoid immersing any plastics in the sink until I'm ready to rinse immediately, so it's an extra step of labor, for the privilege of plastics.
un táper.
First Madoff, now Tupperware parties - pyramid schemes are having a hard time ;-).
I wonder if the decline of Tupperware's plastic container use has to do with the fact that people either cook afresh, for 1-2 meals max, use microwaves to heat up ready meals from supermarkets (instead of "cook on Sunday, eat for the whole week") or they go out and grab fast food.
Or people are saving by buying unbranded Chinese plastic containers.
I think it’s a combination of things. There is more competition, the brand is not trendy with younger generations, plastic containers are neither stylish nor considered healthy, the company is probably typical of most older brands in regards to inertia and mismanagement, etc.
I imagine many folks associate Tupperware with “those old stained and warped plastic lids in the back of the cupboard”.
Personally I just stopped using plastic containers and have sets of glass ones, mostly French Pyrex ones which are still made of borosilicate glass. I can cook in a large one (things like lasagna), put in the fridge/freezer and back into the oven without caring it might break.
Don't really enjoy how stained plastic containers get with sauces and stuff either, they never "felt" clean afterwards.
Absolutely this. Less microplastic FTW.
For lasagna we cook the ragu etc for multiple times eating, then we prepare the glass boxes as if they went to the oven, but put them to the freezer. Finishing this is basically: put the box from the freezer to the oven, then turn on the oven and bake for ~75minutes instead of the usual 60.
IKEA and DM (in Germany) have also nice glass boxes which are not as expensive as the Pyrex ones, but especially the cover of the Pyrex are better IMO.
Where can I even buy a Tupperware container if I don't wanna go hang out in someone's home for an hour?
A thrift store? eBay?
I remember my mum having a Tupperware party in the early seventies. She had all her friends round for a social gathering and to buy plastic containers. It sounds bizarre now.
Not as bizarre as two Texas narcotics officers going undercover to sex toy parties and busting women for selling vibrators.
How are vibrators narcotic? Am I just not using them right? Is it possible to overdose?
Sex Toy Party:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_toy_party
>A woman was arrested in Texas in December 2003 on obscenity charges for hosting a sex toy party for undercover narcotics officers, but the case was dismissed by the judge in July 2004.
Texas housewife busted for hawking erotic toys / Sales rep for Brisbane firm sold vibrator to undercover agents:
https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/texas-housewife-busted-...
>"It makes you wonder what they're thinking out there in Texas," Davis said. "They sound like prudes, with antiquated laws. They must have all their street crime under control in Texas if they're going to spend tax money arresting us."
>[...] Webb said she was amazed that the town's narcotics squad would be put on the case. "We have a real problem with drugs in our schools," she said, "and they're using our narcotics officers to entrap me for selling a vibrator."
Sex toys and porn on her terms:
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4314184
>Passion Parties, a company in Brisbane, Calif., that markets adult toys such as vibrators, oils and romance kits through home party "consultants," has been in the news lately. It seems the brave police in Burleson, Texas, sensing the danger of women armed with dildos, arrested rep Joanne Webb, 43, because she explained how to use a sex toy. She faces a year in jail for obscenity.
BRISBANE / Vibrator case dismissed in Texas:
https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BRISBANE-Vibrator-case-...
>She was facing a year in jail for selling the vibrator in October to a pair of undercover officers posing as a dysfunctional married couple.
It makes me wonder how they demonstrated they were dysfunctional?
> It makes me wonder how they demonstrated they were dysfunctional?
Sounds like the default state for two people pretending to be in a relationship, tbh. No unity/chemistry lol
Now a tactic saved for supplements and conspiracy theories
Oh, yeah that sounds bizarre...
I've heard of tupperware parties but I always assumed that it was like a picnic where you brought your own food (in tupperware (or similar) containers) and shared with others.
Oh no, and it was way worse than that: No-one was allowed to leave until they had bought the inventory AND the next host was designated. Under penalty of social ostracism.
The host was trained for that before hosting. It was basically a pyramid scheme.
Being presented with an invitation was very rude. And you didn’t know what to do with it.
Tupperware parties were predatory behavior, and you’d host them and pretend everything is alright because you wanted to give the hot potato to someone else.
For once a bankruptcy not directly caused by private equity.
Although if you look at the history of “Tupperware Brands” there is definitely some financial fuckery going on which I’m sure took away from producing actual products.
My take: the stuff is (or was) too good. I still have Tupperware from both my grandmothers. The stuff just doesn't break. My box is full. I cannot buy more.
That is apparently what you get for producing good multi-generations products.
Probably cloned to dead by counterfeits.
Glass and silicone tap is heavier but more clean and removes the risk of plastic leaking chemicals on the food.
I wouldn't be that sure about silicone. Most of them are flaking a lot and degrading after they are freezed, probably have a lot of plasticizers too.
There are a whole bunch of symbols imprinted on those containers which indicate safe usage. Dishwasher, freezer, microwave, etc.
Used as directed, as safe as anything else. Sort of like talc...
I noticed this effect on silicone tray intended for freezing water cubes. It would seem that it should be safe for freezer, but after freezing it, cubes were partly colored by silicone part of tray. I won't use silicone for freezing anymore. Those trays for baking are not that confidence-building either. Good fast test if you should buy anything for food - if it smells of fresh car or plastic when new, don't use for food.
The typical fresh car smell is almond wax added to the plastic. Coffe, Aloe or Avocado are also used.
Transparent silicon should be more inert than dyed silicon. I assume that they should be using food grade colorants in any case.
The silicone is not in contact with food , it is just to provide the seal
Surprised they lasted that long given there are both cheaper substitutes and better (such as glass) ones.
You aren't kidding. The price for a lot of their storage options looks to be 2-4x what you can find in a grocer in the US. Even a Costco set of Snapware glass is significantly cheaper than Tupperware.
It's really hard to find tupperware containers, when I look for quality I usually buy rubbermaid
Does Tupperware make glass containers?
I made a purposeful switch away from plastic food storage a few years ago. I imagine Tupperware suffered a loss at the top to glassware and at the bottom to cheaper alternatives.
Maybe they didn't "keep a lid on" their company outgoings? ;)
My lids are sealed.
Tupperware would have kept a lid on the news but they couldn’t find one.
I just remember how ubiquitous Tupperware was growing up in the 1980s.
Every family I knew had the exact same Tupperware pitcher in the fridge, and it was always full of Kool-Aid or Sweet Tea. (Looking on Amazonm this single pitcher is now $38?)
https://www.amazon.com/Tupperware-Floresta-gal-Red-Pitcher/d...
It's gotta be about $0.25 in materials to make. Spending too much money on ads? And not sure where they are spending money -- most of the designs on the Tupperware site seem dated, even "heritage" themed. Ha, so it's not going into R&D!
Anyway I tossed the last of my plastic containers over a decade ago and replaced them with Pyrex Snapware.
Costco will periodically have sales on this set, and I scooped up 3-4 packs (I think I paid $20 / each). Haven't needed to buy anything in a decade, they're all still going strong.
https://www.costco.com/Snapware-Pyrex-18-piece-Glass-Food-St...
Same subject, 3 days ago, 75 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41579852
Obligatory Seinfeld reference: