Welcome to the

Random words, pictures and thoughts of one who always wishes to be on the mind's road to discovery!

About Me

My photo
Connecticut River Valley, New England, United States

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Brownie Wise Was Certainly The Life of All Tupperware Parties!

Life of the Party: The Remarkable Story of How Brownie Wise Built, and Lost, a Tupperware Party EmpireLife of the Party: The Remarkable Story of How Brownie Wise Built, and Lost, a Tupperware Party Empire by Bob Kealing
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Originally written in 2008 with the focus on Tupperware and the company that manufactured it, this new revised edition has as its focus Brownie Wise, Miss Tupperware of the '50's. Those of us of a certain age have attended Tupperware parties, played the games, won little prizes, viewed the demonstration of the products and walked home with our new plastic kitchenware. Some of us even signed up to hostess a party of our own with the promise of hostess gifts and bonuses. Brownie Wise was the brains behind this money making concept--the home demonstration party. Well, the party part anyway. Stanley Home Products for whom she worked first after her divorce had used the concept of door to door selling which included a home demonstration, but Brownie added the idea of the salesperson gathering several customers together in one place and presenting product in a snack filled, game playing setting in a friend's home.
Her sales acumen and drive, headquartered in Florida, where Mr Tupper chose to locate the sales party branch makes for an incredible story. In five short years she and her teams across the country moved the plastic bowl manufactured in Massachusetts into almost every American kitchen and turned the company into a multi-million dollar enterprise. In the process, she also moved herself into the limelight as the first woman ever to grace the cover of Business Week. She rose to greater prominence in American business than any woman before her--vice president in charge of sales of a major corporation--and she took an incredible number of women with her as demonstators, dealers, distributors and money earners allowing them and their families to advance their economic strength.
Unfortunately, Mr Tupper,the brains behind the Tupperware items and President of the company, for reasons that are really unclear, decided that Brownie Wise was getting too much attention and, perhaps, was forgetting her place as his employee. At any rate, in 1959 he fired her and erased all evidence of her existence in the annals of the company. He also divorced his wife of 20+ years, sold the company to Rexall drugs, gave up his US citizenship and moved to an island in the Caribbean--go figure.
An incredible story of a five year flash of success for two very different people which is a fast and interesting read.
I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review

View all my reviews

No comments:

Post a Comment