World’s Most Popular Manufacturer Goes Bankrupt (???)

Another victim falls in the quest for infinite growth.

I have begun hunting for old Tupperware in second-hand shops. I am tired of throwing out 2-year-old discoloured, bubbled, brittle, breaking, cracking, unsealing, non-water-tight, chemical-leeching kitchenware while my mother’s and aunts’ cupboards remain flush with containers created 50 years prior.

I was not an early bird to this hunt, and so have had little success. Ever since Tupperware left NZ in 2022, and probably even before, old Tupperware has become like finding gold.

I’ll add these to a long list of items from yesteryear that you can no longer buy without needing to replace nearly immediately. My aunt’s coffee-coloured dinner set, older than I am, once retired but now pulled back out of its boxes after its replacement bit the dust only a few years in. The steel garlic crusher matching my Mum’s that I brought off Trademe that was advertised as: “Might suit a museum”. Memories of white plastic Sunbeam jugs that lived as long as the next five of them combined.

“Things aren’t built to last anymore.”

And the things that are built to last can’t be bought anymore! How is it possible that THE kitchenware container manufacturer, still a global household name, so popular it has the country hunting through cardboard boxes and car boots and second-hand shops for plastic that have been on this earth longer than I have, has gone out of business? If a Tupperware shop opened here tomorrow, it would have lines out the door.

So how is it that such a popular brand has gone under? Seriously. Because RNZ attributes it to its sales model not working:

However, its sales slumped in recent years as the company struggled to place more of its products in retail stores and online sales platforms. Tupperware has historically relied on independent sales representatives to move its products, but that strategy has failed to reach modern consumers, according to the company.

But even from this quote we can see that they were attempting to diversify away from its Tupperware Party model and place its expensive but everlasting items in shops. So how does a business like that fail?

Reuters says Tupperware succumbed to “poor demand”.

Susan Streeter of Hargreaves Lansdown says:

"Shifts in buyer behaviour pushed its containers out of fashion, as consumers have started to wean themselves off addictions to plastics and find more environmentally conscious ways of storing food."

But that’s just not true. Consumers have not weaned themselves off plastic. Consumers are buying more plastic than ever, and the cycle is only sped up by the sale of cheap plastics doomed for the landfill within a few years of purchase. Where a single tupperware container lasted twenty, thirty, fifty years before it hit the bin, keeping demand low, modern manufacturing quality ensures customers must return to the shop within five to ten years MAX of purchase in order to replace it.

Longevity isn’t something you can shop for, only guess at, and so it has limited relevance in an age of fast fashion. Tupperware’s decline is not self-induced or caused by less need for plastic kitchen containers, it is caused by a flooded market of goods that sell on style and branding over substance. Consumers have been swept up by marketing campaigns of companies who can innovate faster and price themselves cheaper, and who used their better retailer connections to keep the old Titan of their industry out of their much more modern and reliable market.

Peter Drucker said businesses must “innovate or die”, and this is a criticism that has been levelled at Tupperware — but frankly, what Tupperware needed wasn’t innovation, it was less innovation.

I declined attending a Tupperware party about five years ago, not realising it would be the only Tupperware party I would have a chance to attend. But the reason I didn’t go was because what was on sale, and what was affordable (which was very little) was modern in design and notably not the things I knew and respected tupperware for. I don’t want a pair of Tupperware-made scissors in the latest ergonomic design; I want bowls that don’t degrade and lids without loose rubber seals that fall out or break in the dishwasher.

And while modern designs might catch the eye, they also make Tupperware look like every other type of plasticware, which of course has you wondering “Have I not heard of Tupperware for ten years because they’re just shit now?”

I also, notably, don’t want to attend a Tupperware party. I’m in my 20s and it’s 2024. We’ve come up with better ways of doing this by now. Often involving the internet. Or even old-fashioned physical shops.

That invite would be my only ever opportunity to buy new Tupperware, but it was an opportunity to buy items that looked identical to what was already in shops, just for double or triple the price. That didn’t motivate me. When your memories of Tupperware are brown and mustard-yellow plastic that could only have been produced in the 80s, products with rubber-covered grippable handles and bright pastel plastics signify that these items might have picked up other modern design traits, namely their short lifespans, and provide a significant disincentive to purchasing questionable kitchenware at 3-5 times the price I would normally be okay with spending.

Does Tupperware just not have a place in a modern world? Or is that the pressures of fast-fashion and planned obsolescence have created a market where longevity is unmarketable, and so other markers of “quality” attract better sales?

Is it Tupperware who have an innovation problem, or is it us?

Last week I paid $450 to access my laptop because someone threw it’s screws down the drain, and I was unable to source those screws in this country. I had to buy an older model of my laptop and use those screws so that I can work while I wait to be shipped some knockoffs from China. Because there is no legitimate way to replace those specific but regularly-lost screws. This was after I had fixed an issue that would have cost over $2000 for the manufacturer to repair. The part I bought off Ebay cost me $30.

There is pressure at the moment to expand consumers’ Right to Repair. For some years, the EU has been our greatest ally on this. (They’re also responsible for getting rid of proprietary phone chargers. Remember having a different charger for every phone? If companies and markets were left to do what they wanted, that would still be the situation today.)

The cost of fast-fashion

But situations like Tupperware’s bankruptcy reveal a dark truth beneath these attempts to make manufacturing more consumer-friendly. They are the visible planks of wood atop a rotting foundation. Market forces and manipulation are pushing in the other direction. These companies don’t want to sell you good products; they want to be profitable, and often, the sale of quality products will be a barrier to future profitability.

Earth.org has a good summary of the harm fast fashion does the environment. And while fashion makes you think of clothes, kitchen containers are just as fashionable, just as influenced by trends. Tiktok and Temu and the like have only sped up this process and provided better ways of emphasising these “fashion” elements of cultural consumerism.

And no hate to anyone who uses Temu or has fallen victim to Wish ads; I say all this as someone who’s had multiple Temu deliveries this week. It’s the old “it’s hard to live in capitalism without participating in capitalism”, and it’s even more impossible when you don’t have the money to be picky.

But somehow Tupperware, the world’s most respected kitchenware manufacture, is bankrupt at a time when people are wanting sustainable plastics more than ever.

The markets are broken.

I’m sure if we tinker around the edges some more, that’ll fix it.