Ambitious and enterprising since boyhood, Tupper tinkered with ways to improve farm chores. At age ten he took his parents’ produce door-to-door to boost sales.
After high school graduation in 1925, Tupper continued to work in the family greenhouses in Shirley Massachusetts for two years. Tupper was an ambitious young man, though, and he was determined to earn his first million by the time he was thirty.
A self-taught inventor and domestic entrepreneur, Tupper fashioned a wide-ranging personal curriculum that included taking correspondence classes, visiting libraries and trade fairs, reading widely, and writing regularly. He worked for many enterprises until he established the Tupper Tree Doctors, which was specialized in landscaping and tree nursery business, from 1928 to 1930.
In 1936, Tupper met Bernard Doyle, the inventor of Viscoloid, the plastics manufacturing division of DuPont, located in nearby Leominster, Mass. He went to work for DuPont in 1937, but stayed there only one year. Tupper took the experience he had gained in plastics design and manufacturing at DuPont, and struck out on his own.
In 1938, he formed the Earl S. Tupper Company, advertising the design and engineering of industrial plastics products in Leominster, Massachusetts. After 1949, storage cups were decided to be the main product group of the company.
In the late 1940s, Thomas Damigella in Massachusetts and Brownie Wise in Florida attracted Earl Tupper's attention because they were the largest sellers of Tupperware. He met them and in 1948 developed a new sales strategy – the Tupperware party.
Tupperware's success stems from the combined genius of Earl Tupper, the self-styled Yankee inventor and entrepreneur and Brownie Wise, the consummate saleswoman and motivator.
The company was owned by Earl Tupper until it was sold to Rexall Drug Company for $16 million in 1958. Earl S. Tupper died on October 5, 1983.
Earl Silas Tupper: Businessman and the inventor of Tupperware
