LEILA FADEL, HOST:
We have news about one of the longest-lasting brands in your refrigerator.
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UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) If you want to lock in freshness, Tupperware...
FADEL: Tupperware's business is no longer locked in. It's filed for bankruptcy. The company cracked under massive debt and a business model stuck in the past. NPR's Alina Selyukh reports.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: One of the largest Tupperware collections in the U.S. lives in an archive above the National Museum of American History in Washington.
FATH DAVIS RUFFINS: Little cups, bigger storage bowls.
SELYUKH: Curator Faith Davis Ruffins opens a cabinet to a rainbow of pastels and earth tones. It's like a dream 1950s cupboard, except you have to wear surgical gloves.
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RUFFINS: Well, you know, we're in the forever business.
SELYUKH: The forever business was certainly Tupperware's dream. The brainchild of inventor Earl Tupper, after World War II, he created the softer plastic with a double-sealing lid, said to be inspired by the paint can. Here's an early ad.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: You can freeze it, stack it any which way.
SELYUKH: The invention needed a show and tell. Enter a single mother in Detroit named Brownie Wise, who convinced Tupper to sell at Tupperware parties. She led their runaway success and became the first woman on the cover of Businessweek for letting generations of homemakers see themselves as saleswomen.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: The girls get together and meet their old friends and make some new ones. Then there's a demonstration by one of....
SELYUKH: Tupperware spread everywhere. Even the Queen at Buckingham Palace was said to keep cornflakes in a Tupperware. When Tupper's patents expired in the '80s, his special lid became common, and his company name outgrew the company. Now we might buy Rubbermaid or Glad or Oxo, but is it plastic for leftovers? That's a Tupperware.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Like, yeah, containers.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: You know - yeah.
SELYUKH: At the American History Museum, I ran into some high school students by a display of classic Tupperware.
How many of you knew it was an actual name of an actual brand?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Is it a brand?
SELYUKH: It's a brand.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: OK.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: No, I thought it was...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I know, right?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: ...Just the regular name...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: ...For, like, containers.
SELYUKH: Today, Tupperware's debt is far bigger than the company's value, and it never really focused on online retail. To this day, individual sellers are how Tupperware makes most of its money - tens of thousands of dealers hawking cold brew carafes, cake pans and ice pop molds. In the bankruptcy filing, Tupperware says this model has become a weakness without a digital strategy. Ruffins, as a historian, takes the long view.
RUFFINS: Many American companies do not last 75 or 80 years.
SELYUKH: Tupperware says it's not going out of business but using the bankruptcy to restructure its debt and transform into a, quote, "digital-first company." There's a saying that everyone dies twice, once with your last breath and again when your name is spoken for the last time. By that measure, even bankrupt Tupperware has cracked the forever business.
Alina Selyukh, NPR News.
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