Bob Kealing - Life of the Party: The Remarkable Story of How Brownie Wise Built, and Lost, a Tupperware Party Empire

Copyright 2008, 2016 by Bob Kealing

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

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Crown Archetype and colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Photos on : John and Sharroll Waugh.

Originally published in hardcover as Tupperware Unsealed by the University Press of Florida, 2008.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kealing, Bob, author.

Title: Life of the party: the remarkable story of how Brownie Wise built, and lost, a Tupperware party empire / Bob Kealing.

Other titles: Tupperware unsealed

Description: New York: Crown Archetype, 2016. | Originally published in 2008 by University Press of Florida as: Tupperware unsealed: Brownie Wise, Earl Tupper, and the home party pioneers.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015048495 | ISBN 9781101903650 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Tupperware CorporationHistory. | Tupperware Home PartiesHistory. | Wise, Brownie. | Tupper, Earl Silas. | Home parties (Marketing)United StatesHistory. | Plastic container industryUnited StatesHistory. | Plastic tablewareUnited StatesHistory. | BISAC: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women. | HISTORY / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV).

Classification: LCC HD9662.C664 T865 2016 | DDC 338.7/668497092273dc23

LC record available: http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048495

ISBN9781101903650

eBook ISBN9781101903667

Cover design by Elena Giavaldi

Cover photograph: Brownie Wise Papers, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

v4.1_r1

a

In memory of

J AMES L. K EALING

and

D ONNA R OSS

It may be the most brilliant marketing scheme ever devised, for it is based less on sales pitch than on friendship.

Morley Safer, 60 Minutes

Believe me, there can be no better thing in your life than the ability to wish, sincerely, to improve the world about you.

Brownie Wise, Best Wishes, Brownie Wise

For Brownie Wise, January 29, 1958, began unremarkably; it was just another of the sunny central Florida mornings to which she had long become accustomed. As the days heat started to set in, she pulled away from her fashionable lakeside home and navigated her trademark pink convertible on its usual routeKings Highway, Neptune Road, and finally Orange Blossom Trailtoward the Tupperware headquarters she had helped to build. Now the head of the companys Home Party Division, the forty-four-year-old, divorced single mother with an eye for fashion and flair had come up with the definitive method to sell Earl Tuppers revolutionary product and then guided his companys explosive growth.

Since Wise had perfected her approachselling Tupperware through home parties that showcased a feminine, social, soft-sell approachthe world of direct selling had never been the same. From Hilo to Bangor, Battle Creek to Sante Fe, Americans were buying the money-saving pastel products in record numbers. By 1958, Tupperware boasted more than ten thousand dealers and $10 million in annual sales (which would be more than $80 million today).

Build the people, Wise preached, and theyll build the business.

Many dealers idolized Wise as a kind of fairy godmother who spoke of wishing, not as whimsy or as psychobabble, but as a road map to success. In return, the dealers held Tupperware parties with sick children or ailing parents in the other room, pushing themselves to their physical limit in hopes of reveling in her presence and praise. These devoted dealers, in turn, inspired Wise to wake early each morning and grind out new ways to motivate the sales force to push their numbers higher.

Now arriving at Tupperwares headquarters, Wise pulled into her parking space and prepared herself for another day. Leaving her convertible behind, she walked up to the front doors, and then back to her office, saying bright hellos to staff she met on the way. The chorus of responses she received left no doubt who Brownie Wise was, and who was in charge. However, beneath her assured countenance lay the stress of a tense standoff shed been in with her bossone that had put her career at risk. But she would have plenty of time to worry about that later. Right now, she had Tupperware to sell.

Earl Tupper, on the other hand, never made grand entrances. Instead, Tupperwares eccentric Yankee inventor seemed to blow in and out of central Florida like afternoon thunderstorms sparked by a July sea breeze. He didnt care much for the razzle-dazzle of Brownie Wises Home Party Division, the companys sales arm that had helped him rake in millions. Nor did he enjoy the high-octane dealer pep rally known as the annual Tupperware Jubilee. The only picture Tupperware photographer Jack McCollum remembered taking of Tupper was of him sliding in the companys back door. The cloak-and-dagger stuff, everyone knew, was just his way.

So when the phone had rung at the homes of top Tupperware executives Hamer Wilson and Gary McDonald on an otherwise unremarkable Monday morning, they had been surprised to hear Tupper announce that he was in townand that they should meet him the next morning, January 29, 1958, at the Angebilt Hotel in downtown Orlando. Must be good news, McDonald had thought; maybe Tupper had a new idea or, better yet, a secret invention that he wanted to share with them. He had no inkling of the bomb his boss was about to drop.