Tupperware
| Tupperware Brands Corporation
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Corporation |
| ISIN | US8998961044 |
| founding | 1946 |
| Seat |
Orlando , Florida , United States
|
| management | Chris O'Leary ( CEO ) |
| Number of employees | 13,100 (2014) |
| sales | 2,606,000,000 US dollars (2014) |
| Branch | Consumer goods |
| Website | www.tupperware.de |
Tupperware ( Standard German [ tʊpɐˌva: ʁə ], also originally [ tʌpəwæɹ ]) is a brand name under which the same American companies mostly of plastic existing kitchens - and household products as well as cosmetics - and personal care products markets.
Companies
history
The company was founded in 1938 by Earl Silas Tupper , the son of a farmer and a laundress, as the Earl S. Tupper Company . Tupper had no relevant training, but like his father had initially worked in agriculture. He failed with his first business idea. At the chemical company DuPont , Tupper got to know the plastic polyethylene and appreciated the promising properties of this material. In contrast to the materials metal, glass and porcelain that were still common in households at that time, objects made of plastic were unbreakable, flexible, lightweight and easier to manufacture. The material could be colored as desired and was largely tasteless and odorless.
Tupper first made food containers out of polyethylene. In 1944 the company was renamed the Tupper Plastic Company and, at the beginning of the USA's entry into World War II, received some lucrative orders from the military to manufacture parts for gas masks and signal lamps for the US armed forces. After the war, Earl Tupper developed plastic products for the growing household market. One of the first civilian products that he launched on the market in 1946 was the wonderlier bowl , an airtight and watertight storage jar with a safety lock that keeps food fresh longer. At a time when a refrigerator was not yet part of regular kitchen equipment, it was a revolutionary product for storing perishable food.
Tupperware saleswoman Brownie Wise, who invented the concept of Tupperware parties, gradually became head of sales and vice president of Tupperware Home Parties. She relied on a strong emotional bond between customers and sellers and the Tupperware brand. Since she had a relatively free hand due to her success, she threw a big party for all sellers every year, which ended up being worth $ 48,000 at the time. Earl Silas Tupper, however, feared that the seller was bound to Wise and not to the products, and in 1958 dismissed them without official justification. None of the 2000 salespeople in attendance followed Wise to her new cosmetics sales department, as the connection established was with the product instead of the Vice President. Tupper then had Wise deleted from the company's history. The company's founder retired from active business in 1958 and sold the company to Justin Dart of the Rexall Drug Company for $ 16 million .
Corporate development
Tupperware Brands Corporation had become an international company and has been represented in Germany since 1962. The company employs around 12,800 people worldwide, including around 900 in the United States . The sale of kitchen and household items is still the main business today, but between 1996 and 2006 Tupperware had to accept a drop in sales of up to 26% and an even greater drop in profits in this area. From its peak in 1996, when the company had sales of $ 1.369 billion worldwide with the exclusive sale of kitchen and household items, global sales in this division fell to just $ 1.013 billion in 2002. Sales in the home market of North America fell with kitchen and household items fell by almost half between 2002 and 2006. In Germany, Tupperware also had to accept a decline in sales of over 20% in 2005 and 2006.
In view of this development and a 60 percent drop in profits between 1996 and 2000, Tupperware was forced to change its previous corporate strategy. The new business strategy provides for the expansion to include additional consumer goods. This began in October 2000 with the takeover of the cosmetics company, BeautiControl Inc., which made only a modest contribution to sales. With the takeover of the direct sales division of Sara Lee Corporation in December 2005, Tupperware took an important step towards building its second pillar and at the same time changed its previous company name from Tupperware Corporation to Tupperware Brands Corporation .
In 2007 the company had sales of $ 1.8687 billion. The sale of kitchen and household items amounted to almost two thirds of the turnover and only a little more than half of the profit. In 2008, sales were reportedly increased to $ 2.2 billion, of which $ 1.5 billion came from Tupperware branded products.
A major drop in sales and profits was reported in early 2020.
Products
Tupperware sells a wide range of kitchen and household items as well as cosmetic and personal care products under the brand names Avroy Shlain , BeautiControl , Fuller , NaturCare , Nutrimetics , Nuvo and Swissgarde .
distribution
Tupperware Brands Corporation sells its products primarily through direct sales via a sales system that, according to the company, consists of around 1.9 million independent sales partners. Almost 900,000 of these are in the kitchen and household items sector and a little over a million in the cosmetics and body care sector. In Germany there are around 60,000–70,000 female advisors, not all of whom are active, as well as around 4,000 female group advisers who are assigned to one of the 159 so-called district actions nationwide.
Tupperware party
In the early years of the company, the products were still offered in normal household goods stores. However, they didn't sell very well. Tupper looked for new sales channels to better market its patented safety lock. In 1948 he became aware of Stanley Home Products , a distribution company where two salespeople, Thomas Damigella and Brownie Wise, sold significant quantities of Tupper's products at home shows. The idea of the "Tupperware Party" was developed together with them. Brownie Wise became Tupperware's sales director in 1951 and was the first woman to appear on the cover of Business Week . In 1954 it achieved annual sales of $ 25 million.
The concept envisages using personal relationships and friendships in order to win new customers. Those outside the company who are interested in a sideline make their apartment available for a sales event to which they invite and entertain friends and acquaintances. The hosts are rewarded for their efforts in the form of free products, discounts or bonus points, and guests usually receive a free product when they place an order. A trained salesperson is present at these events, who demonstrates the company's products and accepts customer orders. Addressing the hosts' acquaintances directly in connection with the lack of comparison with competing products is an important factor in being able to sell the comparatively expensive products. According to the company, 11.9 million such sales events took place worldwide in 2006. Even today, they are still the most important, if not the only form of distribution of Tupperware products.
Sales markets
Tupperware Brands Corporation sells its products in around 100 countries worldwide. Around 84% of total sales are generated outside of the United States. The largest sales market is Mexico , where Tupperware Brands Corporation generated over 20% of its worldwide sales in 2006 with 370 million US dollars. The reason for this is the acquisition of the cosmetics and personal care direct sales division of Sara Lee Corporation, which had previously achieved high sales in Mexico. The second largest sales market is the United States with US $ 285 million and 16% of sales, followed by Germany with US $ 198 million and 11% of sales.
criticism
Direct sales
The direct sales through a network of "independent" and on a commission basis paid distributors, network marketing, network marketing, or multi-level marketing called, is often considered critical. One form of criticism is directed against the form of organization itself, i.e. against network marketing, where members are promised high commissions on the sales of the members they have recruited.
A second point of criticism is directed against any form of direct sales. As with many companies that work on the basis of this sales system, the Tupperware sales network is also very bloated and therefore highly inefficient and administratively very costly, which is also reflected in the sales prices, which are often described as high. The average annual sales revenue per consultant is only $ 900. The commission costs for the approximately 1.9 million sales partners, which represent nothing more than marketing costs, amount to around 25% of sales. The total sales and administration costs devour 56% of the total sales of Tupperware. That is significantly more than with other consumer goods companies.
A third point of criticism is the obligation to buy a starter set that costs around 70 to 100 dollars in order to work as a Tupperware consultant. In addition, the concept of “ independent ” sales partners also harbors a social risk (see the main article on network marketing ). In Germany, the starter equipment with a sales value of 195 euros is offset against the profits generated by the Tupperware parties within the first 13 weeks. During this period you can consider whether you want to carry out this activity or not. The return of the starter set is also possible at no additional cost.
According to the company's own information, 11.9 million Tupperware parties were held worldwide in 2006 for Tupperware kitchen and household items alone. Tupperware advertises that such a sales event takes place every 2.5 seconds worldwide. However, the informative value of this number is heavily criticized as it does not reveal anything about the actual sales success. In 2006, Tupperware achieved worldwide sales of around one billion US dollars in the kitchen and household items division, which results in an average sales of 84 US dollars per sales event, thus putting the success of these sales events into perspective. There is a similar order of magnitude in Germany, where Tupperware states the number of Tupperware parties held in 2006 at 1.5 million, in which over 14 million guests are said to have participated. According to the official annual report, Tupperware generated sales of 198 million US dollars in Germany, which corresponds to an average of 132 dollars per Tupper party and thus 14 dollars per guest. The average turnover per Tupperware party is actually a lot lower, since not all of the company's turnover is generated through such sales events.
For Germany, an average monthly commission of 100 US dollars can be assumed, although many consultants do not hold a sales party every week. In the context of an empirical study on Tupperware Germany it has been shown that "top executives" can achieve a weekly commission of 800 euros (gross), but only around 1–3% of the members ever achieve such a value.
Product quality
Tupperware advertises its products with the statement "Often copied, never matched - Tupperware products are unique in their quality and manufacture." Tupperware has received many design awards for its products. In independent quality tests, however, Tupperware products do not necessarily achieve the top spots. Tupperware's Freezer Mate fresh food jar landed flat in a comparative test by consumer magazine Ktipp in March 2017 in 10th place out of 12 cans tested and was 28 times more expensive than the cheapest competing product, which was rated better.
literature
- Helene Mühlestein, Rebecca Niederhauser: Tupperware. Order, cleanliness and hygiene in the household. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore. Volume 103, 2007, pp. 21-59. ( Full text )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ tagesschau.de: Interim boss Chris O'Leary (...) replaced Tricia Stitzel, who had resigned from her post. , accessed on Feb 26, 2020
- ↑ a b Tupperware Brands Corporation 2014: ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15 (d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 , ( Form 10-K report), PDF 1.1 MB, accessed November 20, 2017.
- ↑ a b Tupperware pioneer businesswoman in bowl position. In: Der Spiegel . Retrieved September 24, 2012 .
- ^ A b Tupperware Brands Corporation - Financial Information, SEC-Filing Form 10-K ( Memento from April 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
- Jump up against the crisis with bra slings. In: Spiegel Online . April 13, 2012, Retrieved September 25, 2012 .
- ↑ tagesschau.de: Tupperware gets one on the lid. Retrieved February 25, 2020 .
- ↑ a b Claudia Groß: Multi-Level Marketing - Identity and Ideology in Network Marketing. VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-531-15936-2 , pp. 103, 105, 106f.
- ↑ Mimi Minnick: Brownie Wise Papers. ( Memento from December 16, 2011 on the Internet Archive ) National Museum of American History. (English)
- ↑ Thomas Hammer: After the sales party, the disillusionment can follow. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. April 5, 2006.
- ↑ Party is over for Tupperware UK. In: BBC News. January 22, 2003.
- ↑ Useful information on the Tupperware Germany website, accessed on March 23, 2017.
- ↑ Awards on the Tupperware Germany website, accessed on March 23, 2017.
- ↑ Food storage containers: Not very tight. (Short version) comparison test. In: Ktipp . No. 6, March 22, 2017, p. 16 ff.