For Sylvia Boyd, success came in the shape of the airtight, plastic storage boxes that made her a Tupperware millionaire.
In the 1950s she was a housewife, living in California. A former child actress, she had left high school, married her husband Jon, a Los Angeles city fireman, and had two children. However that life of domestic devotion soon became frustrating.
However, one day Sylvia was invited to a party that would change her life.
“We lived in a typical post-war neighbourhood with California bungalows and everybody was young and everybody had babies and was having babies.
“I went to the [Tupperware] party, watched the girl that was putting on the party and I thought, I know I could do that.”
Sylvia became a Tupperware hostess in 1956, holding parties three times a week in which women would gather together to be shown and then sold various lines from the polyethylene range.
Four years on, in 1960, Sylvia and her husband were offered their own distributorship in Indiana. Her husband gave up his job as a fireman and the move was a gamble.
The business grew 500% in the first year and became one of the top 25 distributorships in America in the second year. But after three years the family were given the chance to move their business back home to Los Angeles.
The success continued and in 1983 Sylvia was appointed to Tupperware staff, becoming only the third female regional vice president in the company’s history.
Logo from Tupperware