Tupperware Once Employed 1,000 in RI - Now on Brink of Bankruptcy
GoLocalProv Business Team
Tupperware Once Employed 1,000 in RI - Now on Brink of Bankruptcy
The company was founded in 1946 in Leominster, MA, by Earl Tupper — the company once had a major manufacturing facility in Rhode Island.
The iconic Tupperware brand was the epitome of the 1950s lifestyle and allowed "women" to store food easily and earn money from home.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAnd, the product was sold by women to other women via Tupperware “parties.”
"Tupperware parties superficially operated as quasi-social gatherings, the ideal way for a young, socially self-conscious house-wife to widen her claustrophobically small circle of friends. More covertly, they gave thousands of hard-headed fifties house-wives with an insatiable zest for home economics an opportunity to safely fuse entrepreneurialism with the traditional social obligations of home entertainment – and improvement," writes Stephen Fenichell in his book, Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century,
In an SEC filing on Friday, Tupperware said there’s “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern,” and that it is working with financial advisers to find financing to stay afloat, according to CNN.
“Tupperware said it won’t have enough cash to fund its operations if it doesn’t secure additional money. The company said it is exploring potential layoffs, and it’s reviewing its real estate portfolio for potential money-saving efforts,” reported CNN.
In the 1970s, Tupperware employed more than 1,000 in Rhode Island, but by the 1980s, layoffs began to hit the manufacturing facility in North Smithfield.
That factory complex has been converted to residential -- the High Rock Condominiums.
“Seven hundred employees at the Tupperware plant where the plastic food containers and dishware originated faced an uncertain future Thursday because of changes announced by the firm. The company announced Thursday it would stop making Tupperware at the plant by Jan. 1 and turn the building into a custom molding plant,” reported the UPI in September 1984.
“[James] Hagan said the move was prompted by lagging sales and the inefficiency of the old, four-story plant," UPI continued, referencing then then-Tupperward executive.
"Manufacturing at the plant costs $3 million to $4 million more than at the other three, more modern facilities, Hagan said, because of high energy costs, the four-story structure itself and the need to rent space to store inventory,” according to the UPI.
In the end, the closure of the Tupperware plant in Rhode Island was just another in a long list of manufacturing plant closures that hammered the state's economy -- starting in the 1950s and continuing into the 1980s. Functionally, until nearly all of the manufacturing jobs were gone.