The iconic brand failed for years to adapt to a changing market. Now, nearly 150 factory workers are about to be out of a job.
I have a distinct memory from when I was a little girl growing up in the 1980s of my mom hosting a Tupperware party at our house.
She spent a long time getting ready, cleaning the house and laying out a perfect spread of appetizers and other party fare. All of her mom friends came. I’m pretty sure my grandma was there, too. I don’t remember who the person selling the Tupperware was — a neighbor, perhaps? — but I do remember that afterward, we had a brand new set of pink plastic Tupperware containers to store our leftovers.
The Tupperware party memory is almost universal among elder millennials like me. A quick text poll of my group of fellow neighborhood moms found that many of their moms also had Tupperware parties. One even remembered going to a Tupperware party hosted by a friend sometime around 2010.
That’s right: Tupperware’s main method of business was still those old school parties well into the 21st century — and it’s one of the reasons why the company now finds itself in far different place today than it was during its 20th century heyday. And as is often the case, it’s the people who make the company’s product line who are paying the price.
Tupperware announced this week that it will close its last remaining U.S. factory in early 2025, laying off 148 employees. Production will shift from South Carolina to Mexico, where the company already has a presence. It’s a cost-cutting measure, as a Tupperware spokesperson told Modern Retail that the company sold the factory last year, and the layoffs are part of “a multi-year strategy to simplify Tupperware’s supply chain.”
At first glance, some might view this as business-as-usual, with a company offshoring production to cut costs and increase profit margins. After all, Tupperware is hardly the first brand to close an American factory in search of cheaper labor down South.
But that’s the wrong lesson to learn here, as plenty of Tupperware’s better performing competitors in the food storage space still maintain a robust U.S. manufacturing presence. Rubbermaid, for example, makes 80% of its products in the United States, including much of its food storage line. Ball glass jars also continue to showcase a Made in USA label, while Pyrex has a U.S. factory in Pennsylvania where it makes some of its glassware. Heck, even Walmart sells plenty of cheaply priced food storage containers that are Made in the USA, and many single-use containers sold by the retailer also are made stateside.
What ultimately doomed Tupperware wasn’t its U.S. production, but rather a whole host of bad management decisions.
CNN outlined the company’s many struggles in a lengthy piece published in April 2023, just after the company announced it may go out of business. As many of the analysts interviewed for the story noted, Tupperware was so iconic that many Americans call any kind of plastic food container “Tupperware,” no matter the actual brand.
But like other icons before it — looking at you, Sears — Tupperware relied solely on its historic name recognition alone for far too long. The company failed to innovate, and in more ways than one. As Amanda Mull wrote for The Atlantic earlier this year:
Much of Tupperware’s range still looks at least a little bit like it did decades ago—textured, pliant plastic that obscures what’s inside. Some of these products are a clear nostalgia play to tempt younger shoppers with the retro, rainbow-colored bowls and tubs their mom used, but many of the products just look dingy, clunky, old. And nostalgia is not necessarily something buyers want in plastic kitchenware…
Tupperware’s competitors have multiplied in recent decades, and most of them have been more adept at signaling newness and cleanliness to customers. OXO, Pyrex, and Rubbermaid, for example, all sell popular lines of containers that use crystal-clear hard plastic or glass and have mechanical latches or seals to prevent spills and keep food airtight. They look neat and orderly—even expensive—in the bright, cool-toned LED lighting of modern refrigerators.
Not only was the Tupperware product line stale, but it continued to rely upon direct sales via Tupperware parties as its main source of revenue generation. The main problem with that, of course, is that people don’t really have Tupperware parties anymore. While direct marketing is certainly still a thing, Tupperware has a whole lot of competition at a time when there’s declining interest from consumers; some have argued there’s a legitimate backlash underway.
By the time Tupperware realized it needed to switch sales tactics — it didn’t even start selling its products at Target until 2022 (!!!) — it was too little, too late. Changing consumer habits following the Covid-19 pandemic didn’t help either, as Christie Nordhielm, a marketing consultant and adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, explained to CNN:
The pandemic, which affected most businesses negatively, just exacerbated those failures of Tupperware to adjust to changing consumer behaviors and competitive landscapes.
“You could have seen them making that transition very beautifully, but instead they moved into brick and mortar stores,” Nordhielm explained. “If you go and look at Tupperware in a Target, all you’re doing is seeing how incredibly undifferentiated they are, how many other substitute storage containers there are available.”
Instead, people tend to compare the products based on price, Kahn said, and Tupperware’s most valuable asset — its brand equity — loses all its meaning. Tupperware has also failed to innovate in response to these changes in competition and consumer behavior, Nordhielm said. As a result, Tupperware’s sales have been declining for years.
Tupperware has brought in new leadership, with former Avon CEO Laurie Ann Goldman taking over the company in October 2023. Goldman, who also served as CEO of Spanx, took part in an NBC News segment earlier this year themed around her leading a “revival” of the Tupperware brand.
Time will tell whether Tupperware will innovate enough to regain market share, but it doesn’t look promising. Tupperware warned in late March that it could go out of business entirely within a year.
It’s not the failure of the factory workers in South Carolina to blame, of course. They simply made the products the company told them to make. But they are the ones who now bear the greatest cost for decades of failed company leadership.