Bonnie Wise
was going nowhere fast. In 1947, she was 34, divorced, working as a secretary,
and had a son to feed. To make ends meet, she rented her attic to servicemen,
and she made rhubarb wine which she traded for butter. (Her
mother gave her the name Brownie because when she was born, she had big brown
eyes.)
One evening
a door-to-door salesman from the Stanley Home Products company came to her
home, trying to sell her mops and brushes. When the luckless man left, Wise
said to herself, "I could do better than that."
She got in
touch with Stanley and started selling its wares. "I needed the money for
me and my kid," she said. "I got out there and made it."
Soon she
was promoted to branch manager, only to be told by the company's founder that
"upper management is no place for a woman."
Before she
left Stanley, a magic moment happened. During a sales meeting, she saw a curious
plastic container on a snack table. In those days, plastics were rarely seen in
home products. Another salesperson told her the containers were selling poorly at
the local department store. She watched as it fell off of the table. It didn't
shatter. Its lid stayed sealed.
A Crisp Snap
It was
Tupperware, the creation of taciturn New Hampshire entrepreneur Earl Tupper.
(He had earlier invented—and struck out with—the fish-powered boat and the
dripless ice cream cone.) In 1949, he patented Tupperware's unique lid. It sealed
with a crisp snap and stayed sealed.
Tupperware held
the promise of making leftovers last longer while also making heroes of thrifty
housewives from coast-to-coast. Tupper had worked hard to create his seemingly
indestructible air-tight brainchild. It was made of polyethylene, a waste product
of World War II manufacturing. It was black. It was greasy. It smelled bad. No
one wanted it. Tupper reformulated it. Now the problem was no one wanted to buy
it.
Wise knew
what to do. She combined her genius at home sales with Tupper's scientific
wizardry. Within months, he noticed that her home sales had outstripped his
department store numbers. He gave her the exclusive right to sell Tupperware in
Florida.
She created
a social marketing system—the 'party plan'—that gave housewives a rare outlet
for business success in the 1950s. This Southern charmer from rural Georgia understood
that housewives would have to see, touch, and feel the product to understand
how marvelous it was.
She told her
party givers that just touching Tupperware would bring them luck. Said Wise:
"Get your fingers on it. Wish for what you want. Then work like
everything, and your wish will come true."
"If
you want to build a business, build the people," she said. Between 1951
and 1958, Tupperware became a social phenomenon. Wise had 10,000 home party
saleswomen spreading her food storage gospel. Tupper smartly pulled his
products from stores and only sold them through home-party sales.
Wise was a
born preacher. Her mother was a union organizer, and young Wise spent hours watching
her address crowds. Then she started giving them. "People were surprised
someone so young could deliver a speech like a pastor," said Wise's
biographer Bob Kealing.
"It is
a proven fact that you will sell more to a group of 15 women than you will sell
to them individually," Wise said. "The social spirit of a party tends
to lower sales resistance of those present, as well as increase a competitive
buying spirit."
Tupper
hired her to be a vice president, and she ran her sales division, Tupperware
Home Parties, from her Kissimmee, Florida, home. In fact, she did so well that
the company built her a lakefront mansion. In 1954, she was the first woman to
appear on the cover of Business Week.
She created
an annual "Jubilee" national convention. Top sellers got lavish gifts
such as motorboats, minks, and Cadillacs. They played games. One involved tossing
around a Tupperware bowl filled with grape juice to prove it would stay sealed.
To motivate saleswomen, she had them sing inspiring songs with lyrics like
"I've got that Tupper feeling deep in my heart."
"Listen to me, woman!"
Tupper,
though delighted with his company's incredible growth, was uneasy with the
amount of publicity Wise received. The two fought. On one occasion, she
protested his interest in a Tupperware dog food container. The stern northerner
barked, "Now listen to me, woman! I do the manufacturing, and you do the
selling!
"Woman?"
replied Wise. "Is that the way you address your wife?"
In 1958
Tupper fired her. She had held a Jubilee for 1,200 guests on Maui. A horrendous
thunderstorm sent 21 guests to the hospital. Lawsuits ensued. Tupper and Wise
had falling out. She owned no stock. As severance, she got only one year's
salary—$30,000 ($270,000 in today's dollars). As a final blow, the company
asked her to leave her mansion. (Though she lived in it, the company owned it.)
Later, Wise
founded Cinderella, a company that sought to sell make-up on the party-plan
system. It went nowhere. Though she never regained the heights she attained in
the 1950s, she broke the mold (or perhaps snapped the lid) by having the
courage and insight to create an entirely new way of selling products—home
parties.
"Remember
the steam kettle," Wise once said. "Though it's up to its neck in hot
water, it continues to sing."
No comments:
Post a Comment