Not Mom's Tupperware
September 26, 2005
By Joe Dziemianowicz
Like your mom in midlife crisis, 59-year-old Tupperware is trying hard to be cool.
It's cozying up to younger people, wearing flashy colors and hanging out with stars.
On Thursday, the company famous for plastic containers sold in living rooms around the globe lured luminaries like Cynthia Nixon, Isaac Mizrahi, Molly Ringwald and Donna Murphy to a Tupperware party, not in Aunt Bonnie's basement but at the W Hotel Union Square, in honor of the supercool Drama Department.
"We wondered what we could do that'd be fun," says Douglas Carter Beane, artistic director of the downtown theater troupe whose members include Sarah Jessica Parker and Patricia Clarkson. Tupperware was a perfect - if not, air-tight - fit for the potluck fundraiser.
And it marked Tupperware's latest effort to go from functional to, well, fabulous.
That's why the company hooked up with celebrity magazine Life & Style to sponsor its "best party of the week" page. And at Cynthia Rowley's Fashion Week show, she put her models in orange plastic Tupperware headbands and slippers with see-through plastic heels.
Tupperware is focusing its efforts at re-imaging on young adults, people more apt to mix cocktails than fret over the freshness of their leftovers. Hence an expanded line of gizmos from corkscrews and ice cream scoops to margarita glasses.
"The way you move to a new place," says Tupperware CEO Rick Goings, "isn't by targeting the core customer. You aim for the edges." Translation: Trend setting twenty-somethings - what he calls "the hip and happening group" - are in the corporate cross hairs.
The company hopes to make the stuff groovier, too. That's why colors are kickier. "The good news about the original milky white colors is that it never went out of style," Goings says. "The bad news is that it never was in style." New tones include ruby and amethyst.
Why the race to be cool and reek chic? Although Goings claims a Tupperware party starts every 2.5 seconds, business is still sagging. Tupperware reported a loss in North America of $31 million last year. It posted a $22.4 million loss in 2003. Attracting and maintaining customers are keys to survival.
That said, experts agree it's an uphill battle to shift an established brand image.
"Unless you make Tupperware parties really fun and cool and hip," says Renee Miller, president of The Miller Group, a creative boutique agency in Los Angeles, "I'm not so sure 20-year-olds will go to one."
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