In 1925, after graduating from high school, Earl S. Tupper set out to make his fortune. A farm boy from New Hampshire, USA, Tupper started a successful business in tree surgery and landscaping. But Tupper Tree Doctors went under during the Great Depression. Tupper found a job in DuPont's plastics division. A year later, he left to form his own plastics company, supplying gas masks to American troops fighting World War II.
After the war, Tupper turned to producing plastic consumer goods. The plastic available then was brittle, smelly and slimy, so he first invented a process to change polyethylene slag, a by-product of petroleum, into a plastic that was not only durable and solid, but clean and clear. However, what made Tupper’s plastic containers revolutionary was an air- and water-tight seal.
By 1946, Tupper was selling a variety of plastic containers in a range of colours, but sales weren't brisk. It was when he adopted the method two local salesmen were using, to sell Tupperware worldwide, that his profits skyrocketed. They introduced the products to housewives at a ‘party’ hosted by one of the women at her home! Tupperware Home Parties became a national, then an international, phenomenon in the 1950s. It enabled Earl Tupper to sell his company for $16 million in 1958.
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