Fantastic plastic
Tupperware has been empowering and enriching South African women for over 50 years. By Khanyi Ndabeni
OUR local Tupperware lady sold bowels. Spaghetti bowels, bowels to keep your lettuce fresh, all airtight and attractive enough to serve in.
Luckily the ability to pronounce the word “bowl” was not a prerequisite for selling plasticware, though a sponge cake, tea and eager ladies were.
The receptacles and accessories, with innovative names like Quick Shake and Crisp It, were designed to make you a better housewife, a better cook.
They would not melt in the sun or break under pressure, they wouldn’t leak and the airtight lid would last forever, the Tupperware lady promised.
Hundreds of dishes and accessories left her shiny Toyota boot after her “dem”, order pad filled up for the next party.
It was rumoured that she was battered by a drunken husband but had put her children through university and paid off her mortgage by selling the fancy plastics.
She put her children through university and paid off her mortgage
Lots of Tupperware ladies have a story, and it usually ends with them making buckets of money.
Created by an American, Earl Tupper, 60 years ago, the containers have been sold for 50 years in South Africa, and the product has changed in an appropriately menopausal manner.
It has become diet-conscious, eco-conscious, imitation-weary — and snootily expensive. Selling it is no longer about parties but quick business meetings. And some dishes can even go in the oven.
What has not changed is that the $3-billion direct-selling company, with 13 000 employees and 2.6 million sales reps worldwide, is still making women rich. Only 2% of the sales reps are male, but that is their problem.
South Africa’s Tupperware Queen is Betty Moreroa, from Ga-Mothiba village in Polokwane. Moreroa started building her plastic empire 20 years ago. In 2011 she broke a world record by selling R2.5-million worth of Tupperware in a month.
In a way, her life story mirrors that of Brownie Wise, the US sales executive who, in the ’ 50s, pioneered “party plan marketing, presentation and sale of products at women’s social events” or the Tupperware Party. She was the first woman to appear on the cover of Business Week and will be played by Sandra Bullock in a movie about the rise of the plastic container.
Moreroa says men shy away from selling Tupperware but are the first to show off their plastic lunch boxes at work. In her village, and everywhere else, moms and daughters stringently remind each other to bring back their pricey bowls after packing leftovers from dinner.
“People love this product. My clients are mainly rural women and some customers buy it almost every month. Others complain about not having enough storage space yet they still buy and store them in boxes and on top of their fridges,” she said.
The visible storage is not just about a lack of space. In the townships, you display your Tupperware like a medal collection. It shows prosperity, like AMC pots and Avon cosmetics. People are still buying the storage containers, along with classics like the jelly-ring mould, which now sells for R109. Then there are innovations, such as a microwave gourmet steamer for R699 and an Ultra-Pro ovenware set for R1 130.
Moreroa hosts the new version of Tupperware parties every week. She goes to schools, clinics, even mines, but it is not a social interaction. She dems the product, takes orders and leaves. No cake.
As a Tupperware team leader, she manages a group of 30 sales reps in Polokwane, whose monthly commission is between R1 000 and R200 000 — a far cry from the days when Moreroa and her husband were struggling teachers. In the past two decades, she built a four-bedroom house, bought three cars and put her five children through university, all on her commissions.
Charlene Curran, 48, a bank teller turned Tupperware agent from Cape Town, bought her “dream home, with a pool”.
Adolphina Phinyane, 59, from Lawley in Joburg was a tea lady earning R2 000 a month. After starting to sell Tupperware in 2000, she has won sales incentive trips to Turkey, Rome, Argentina, Mauritius and Dubai and is likely heading to Barcelona this year. The mother of three has employed a full-time PA and rents office space.
“I never thought I would go to some of the places I’ve travelled. I’ve upgraded my house and the gifts I earned as incentives are locked up in the garage. There is no space for my car,” she says.
Phinyane was recruited by Maureen Carr, who worked for the company for 41 years and retired in April. Carr said one of the greatest achievements in her sales career was empowering women.
“Some came with no knowledge of business and had never had a bank account before. Some had never flown in their lives, never thought they would drive a car, but they achieved all of that without any formal qualification just by showing people the product.”
SA’s first Tupperware queen was Valerie Leech. The 77-year-old from Durban says “a woman who had a Tupperware product in her kitchen was seen as a woman of class”.
Leech, a former nurse, was the first Tupperware manager in the country. She was awarded a company car at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a Renault 10 De Luxe, in 1967.
She recalls that the most expensive item, a mixing bowl, was R7.
“People who bought the product in the ’60s and ’70s were upper-
A woman who had Tupperware was seen as a woman of class
middle class. Housewives attended our parties not only to buy but also to socialise,” says Leech.
She said the product was popular among white women when it arrived but slowly penetrated the Indian and black market in the ’80s.
“With all that was happening in the country, in our business we were equal and supported and shared our challenges. When the few black women started joining, the company also changed venues for our national conferences, mainly hosted outside the country, where we would be able to sit at the same table mingle and have fun together.” LS — Additional reporting by Shanthini Naidoo