Tupperware Brands, the American multinational behind the kitchen mainstay, has seen its shares rocket by 160% in a year. Every 2.3 seconds, somebody somewhere in the world hosts a Tupperware party, the company claims, and sales topped $2.1bn (£1.3bn) last year.
In tough times, Tupperware is a rare success story – and it’s a force for the empowerment of women, too, according to its chief executive, Rick Goings.
Goings, a former US Navy navigator, is something of an alpha male who oversees an overwhelmingly female global sales network from Tupperware’s headquarters in Orlando, Florida. A lean, dark 64-year-old with a penchant for black turtlenecks and a daily routine of transcendental meditation, Goings believes he understands the female psyche. “I identify very much with that Mel Gibson movie, What Women Want,” he says, referring to the romantic comedy about a sales executive who is able to read women’s minds after getting an electric shock in the bath. “I haven’t gotten into trying on a pantyhose and seeing what it looks like on me. But I live women; I love the company of women.”
“The average retail store is open 12 hours a day but the other 12 hours of rent is built into the cost of the product,” says Goings, explaining Tupperware’s shunning of the high street. “If somebody buys our products, they get incredible value. There’s no heating, no air conditioning, no rent, no advertising [to pay for]. It’s a great product and it doesn’t cost a lot of money.”
While the Tupperware party may once have had a Stepford Wives image of suburban stay-at-homes swapping tips on kitchen economy, the modern reality is altogether sharper. Tupperware’s range spans knives, teatowels, pans, electrical appliances and, following a series of acquisitions, beauty products under names such as Naturcare, BeautiControl and Nuvo. The company has 2.4 million part-time sales Âreps, the large majority of them female, of whom 814,000 are classified as regularly “active”. The army is multiplying, particularly in emerging markets: Tupperware’s active reps rose by 32% last year in Asia and the Pacific, by 14% in North America and by 6% in Europe.
Logo from Tupperware