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Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
March 4, 1992
Column: JAMES DEMPSEY
MANY CHANGES SINCE TUPPER STARTED WARE
Author: James Dempsey
Edition: ALL
Section: PEOPLE
Page: D1
Index Terms:
CENTRAL MASS, COMPANIES, PLASTICS, HISTORY, PRODUCTS,
Estimated printed pages: 3
Article Text:
Fifty years ago Earl Tupper opened a plastics factory in an old mill
building on Ferry Street in Grafton. The business
would grow into a corporate empire, and its
product achieve a fame rare for commercial items. As a pop artifact,
what Tupper made was matched only by the classic Coca-Cola bottle, perhaps,
or the
post-Warhol Campbell's Soup can.
It was, of course, Tupperware, whose earlier items are in the permanent
collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art. Why Tupper chose Grafton
for his
factory no one seems to know, but then Tupper wasn't the kind to tell
anybody anything.
He was the quintessential eccentric inventor, an intensely private man
who refused to talk to groups. "He never appeared anywhere socially," said
Tom Damigella,
an Everett distributor of Tupperware. "He never became a public person
in any way. He would only speak to people one on one. That's the way he
was."
Which makes it all the stranger that Tupper's success was founded on
something he himself would have found excruciating, a gregarious gathering
that was equal
parts coffee klatch, demonstration and sales pitch - the Tupperware
party. The sophisticated may smile disdainfully, but the Tupperware party
was a stroke of
marketing genius, the perfect complement to Tupper's inventive but
reclusive genius.
According to the statisticians at Premark International Inc., the conglomerate
that now owns Tupperware, last year there was a Tupperware party or
demonstration every 2.7 seconds somewhere in the world.
Tupper, a native of Berlin, N.H., founded the company in 1938 and moved to Grafton in 1942. By the mid-1940s he had developed the burpable, bouncing, unbreakable containers we know as Tupperware.
Damigella comes as close as anyone to being the person who invented
the Tupperware party. "We were already doing home demonstrations of other
products," he
said. "Then my wife got this product and I knew it was entirely different
from anything I'd seen. The seal was marvelous, tighter than water tight.
Tupper told me he
got the idea from a paint can lid, except that he made it in reverse.
And I just knew the way to sell it was the home party."
Tupper began to notice that Damigella and his wife were selling huge
amounts of Tupperware, and in 1947 asked for a meeting. "We showed him
what we did and
he fell in love with the concept," Damigella said. "He decided to go
for broke." Tupper pulled out of retail stores and focused on home sales.
Tupper lived with his family on a farm in South Upton. It was reported
that he rarely entertained and was something of a recluse. He built a new
factory in Rhode
Island in 1955, and in 1958 sold out to Rexall Drug Corp. He retired
to Costa Rica and died in 1983. The Ferry Street factory is now occupied
by another
plastics company, Tredagar Molded Products.
From his retirement Tupper watched the American economy change. Manufacturing
moved to countries where labor was cheaper. The buzzwords became the
"service" and "high tech" industries. In the 1980s would come the era
of real estate speculation, junk bonds, savings-and-loans thievery and
leveraged buyouts, but
even before much of this transpired Tupper saw a change for the worse
in this country.
Seven months before his death in 1983 Tupper told the Burlington (Vt.)
Free Press, "I think the U.S. has lost its objective: to do things with
verve. I doubt they will
ever recover because they lost what they were aiming for. They became
dulled."
The outgoing Damigella was obviously fond of his shy boss. "He was a
perfectionist, and he believed totally, 100 percent in an individual having
the right to go to
the top," Damigella said. Damigella spoke with such feeling about the
old days I asked him if he felt the business world had lost something over
the last half-century.
"The time when I grew up and today are two entirely different worlds,"
he said. "Have we lost anything? I think so. But if corporations have changed,
it's because
the world has changed."
You know what's really embarrassing? Writing about language and making
a mistake, that's what. The mail brings a letter from Polly Lindi, wife
of the late Dick
Lindi, my former boss. Dick Lindi was for many years Big Kahuna Nit-Picker
of The Evening Gazette, a position more commonly known as chief copy editor.
Lindi had forgotten more about the English language than most of us
ever knew. "I can hear Lindi screaming from the Great Copy Desk on high,"
Polly says, "so I
had to write."
I wrote in Monday's column that the sentence There was some collateral
damage was an example of the passive voice. Polly writes: " "There' is
actually a pronoun,
subject of the verb "was' (active voice) and referring to the predicate
noun, "damage.'
"Sorry," she adds, "you can't be married to a nitpicker for 28 years without some of it rubbing off."
Copyright (c) 1992 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.
Record Number: 9203048812
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Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
April 3, 1996
Column: People; Local
PEOPLE
Edition: ALL
Section: BUSINESS
Page: E1
Dateline: WEST BOYLSTON; SOUTH GRAFTON; AUBURN
Index Terms:
CENTRAL MASS, WORC, COMPANIES, APPOINTMENTS, EXECUTIVES,
Estimated printed pages: 2
Article Text:
Chase named CEO
WEST BOYLSTON - Micah S. Chase of Worcester has been named president
and chief executive officer of Checkerboard Ltd., a specialty printing
company
with more than 40 employees. He succeeds his father, Arthur E. Chase,
who founded the company in 1990 and continues as chairman.
Micah Chase joined Checkerboard, which produces raised printed social
invitations and announcements, in 1993 as general manager. He is a graduate
of the
University of Rochester, where he also earned a master's degree in
business administration from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business
Administration.
Before joining Checkerboard, Chase was a consultant with Anderson Consulting
in San Francisco.
The company also said Corneliu Purcaru of Worcester has been promoted
to production manager. He joined Checkerboard in 1991. A native of Romania,
Purcaru is a graduate of Bucharest Poly Technical Institute and previously
managed a printed circuit board plant.
Tupper plant sold
SOUTH GRAFTON - The late Earl Tupper's historic 134 Ferry St. plastics
plant, where Tupperware got its start, has been sold to a Pittsburgh company,
Precise
Technology Inc., as part of a broader acquisition of the plant's parent.
The plant, which employs 150, is among five U.S. facilities that are
being acquired by Precise Technology through its purchase of Tredegar Molded
Products Co.
of Richmond, Va. Tredegar acquired the South Grafton plant in 1989.
The new combined company, with sales estimated at $150 million and more
than 1,000 employees, will be known as Precise Technology Inc., and will
have its
headquarters in North Versailles, Pa. Precise is a custom injection
molder.
The South Grafton plant makes injection molded products for the consumer
packaging and cosmetics industries, said plant manager David C. Finlay.
Earl Tupper
founded the company in 1938, moved to South Grafton in 1942 and by
the mid-1940s was developing the containers known as Tupperware.
Loan office opens
AUBURN - Old Colony Mortgage Corp. has opened a loan origination office at 850 Southbridge St. The office manager is Janice Richard of Webster.
Old Colony Mortgage, a subsidiary of The Bank of Canton, has headquarters in Braintree and other loan origination offices in Plymouth and Braintree.
Caption:
Chase
PHOTO
Copyright (c) 1996 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.
Record Number: 9604030107
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Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
October 18, 1999
PLASTICS HALL OF FAME OPENS TOMORROW
Author: Christine Guilfoy
Edition: NORTH
Section: LOCAL NEWS
Page: B1
Dateline: LEOMINSTER
Index Terms:
CM,PLASTICS,HALLS OF FAME,MUSEUMS,OPENING,PLASTICS HALL OF
FAME, NATIONAL PLASTICS CENTER AND MUSEUM
Estimated printed pages: 3
Article Text:
LEOMINSTER - Keith W. Lauer has lots of memories of Earl S. Tupper, the Shirley resident who invented Tupperware and the "burpable" bowl.
Lauer, who is curator of the National Plastics Center and Museum, said
Tupper once told him he developed the plastic tumbler after he overheard
a woman
complain her husband had cut his foot on a glass he broke in the bathroom.
Tupper shaped the tumbler from a sheet of polyethylene given to him by a man who couldn't think of a use for the new plastic product.
"I knew I had something, a tumbler that wouldn't break and wouldn't cut anybody's foot," Tupper told Lauer years later.
And Lauer remembers Tupper's reason for moving to Costa Rica later in his career: He didn't want to give Uncle Sam any more of his hard-earned money in taxes.
Tupper stayed in Costa Rica even though a fear of robbers prompted him to sleep with a pistol under his pillow, Lauer said.
Tupper - who began his manufacturing career in Leominster and used the
city's mold makers even after he left - is one of the 108 members of the
Plastics Hall of
Fame, people who were instrumental in the industry's scientific, business
and technical advances.
An expanded Hall of Fame exhibit will be unveiled at 7 tomorrow night at the National Plastics Center and Museum, 210 Lancaster St.
The nonprofit center is dedicated to promoting plastics and preserving
the history of the industry, the fourth largest in the United States. Only
the electronics,
petroleum and automotive industries are larger, said Barbara C. Bennett,
the center's education coordinator.
Among the artifacts in the exhibit are a Kevlar vest with a bullet embedded
in it, hog hairs (which were used as toothbrush bristles until they were
replaced by
nylon), nylon stockings and a plastic guitar.
The toothbrush bristles were the first commercial use of nylon, Lauer
said. The lightweight-yet-hardy material was used to make parachutes in
World War II.
Nylon replaced silk as the material for women's stockings during the
war.
Nylon was introduced by DuPont in the late 1930s, said center executive
director Valerie A. Wilcox. The name is a combination of the two cities
where it was
simultaneously introduced, New York and London.
Tupper will be joined in the Hall of Fame by plastics industry giants Stephanie L. Kwolek, Paul J. Flory, Waldo L. Semon, Roy J. Plunkett and Wilbert L. Gore.
INDUSTRY GIANTS
Kwolek's work led to the development of Kevlar, best known as the material
used in bullet-proof vests, Wilcox said. The material is also a flame retardant,
used in
clothing for firefighters and others, Wilcox said.
Kevlar also was developed at DuPont, which at the time was best known
for its manufacture of gun powder, Lauer said. The company was looking
for a
more-positive image when it began the research that led to the development
of Kevlar, he said.
Flory won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery of a catalyst
that made it economical to make plastics. Semon invented the plastic bandage.
Plunkett
invented Teflon, Wilcox said.
Gore developed Gore-Tex, a waterproof but breathable material best known
for its use in outdoor clothing. Gore-Tex, essentially stretched-out Teflon,
is also
used to make synthetic knee ligaments, sutures and other medical products,
Lauer said.
Among the area residents in the Hall of Fame are Joseph S. Foster and Bernard W. Doyle.
Foster is the "Foster" in Foster Grant Co., which had its heyday in the 1960s as a maker of affordable sunglasses.
Doyle, a giant of his era, founded the Viscoloid Co. in 1901. The company
made combs and other ladies' fashion items. Doyle became the mayor of Leominster
after he retired.
Three Hall of Fame inductees - John J. Keville, Robert A. Hoffer and
Richard S. Stein - and people from across the country are expected to attend
the dedication
tomorrow night.
Also at the center are an exhibit of plastic sculptures created by artist Mico Kaufman and a Plastics in Medicine exhibit.
The center is open 11 a.m to 4 p.m., Wednesdays through Saturdays. Admission is $2 for adults and $1 for seniors and children under 12.
NAME: PLASTICS HALL OF FAME; NATIONAL PLASTICS CENTER AND MUSEUM
EDITION: NORTH; BLACKSTONE VALLEY
ART: PHOTO
PHOTOG: RICK CINCLAIR
CUTLINE: Graphic designer Brien Allardice hangs an information board for the Plastics Hall of Fame exhibit at the National Plastics Center and Museum.
Caption:
PHOTO RICK CINCLAIR Graphic designer Brien Allardice
hangs an information board for the Plastics Hall of Fame exhibit at
the National Plastics Center and Museum.
Copyright (c) 1999 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.
Record Number: 9910186475
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Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
July 19, 1990
TUPPERWARE TO CLOSE R.I. PLANT
Author: Emilie Astell; Staff Reporter
Edition: ALL
Section: BUSINESS
Page: C1
Index Terms:
RI, COMPANIES, HOUSEWARES, CLOSINGS
Estimated printed pages: 2
Article Text:
Tupperware Corp. is closing a design center and a mold facility in North
Smithfield, R.I., in six to nine months in a consolidation and restructuring
move with its
Orlando, Fla., headquarters, a corporation spokesman said yesterday.
The closings were announced Tuesday in Rhode Island. Another announcement
was made Tuesday in Orlando where 100 employees are expected to be laid
off,
said Lawrie Platt, corporation spokesman.
Consolidation and restructuring efforts will enable the corporation
to reduce costs and develop and manufacture products more quickly; employees
will be able to
interact with sales and marketing staff on-site; and the customer base
is expected to broaden, she said.
The company also plans to lay off 300 employees in two other manufacturing
plants in the United States in Halls, Tenn., and Hemingway, S.C., to save
an
estimated $25.8 million through 1992 and $12.5 million annually thereafter.
SOME COULD TRANSFER
The two Rhode Island operations employ 130 people. Some of the skilled
and technical employees would be asked to transfer to Orlando, Ms. Platt
said. She did
not know the number that would be asked to move.
Tupperware is offering placement services and a comprehensive severance program to laid-off employees, she said.
Thirty employees mold prototypes and do mold repair work in leased space
in a 454,000-square-foot North Smithfield plant that was once owned by
Tupperware
founder Earl Tupper, who started the business as Tupper Plastics Co.
The plant was sold in 1988 to two Worcester investors, lawyer and developer
R. Norman
Peters, and his partner, Herbert G. Ingram, president of Blackstone-Smithfield
Corp.
The complex, dominated by a four-story brick building, overlooks the
historic Blackstone River Valley, and sits just over the Blackstone, Mass.,
town line.
Tupperware began phasing out work at the factory in 1986.
The design and technology center, located about one mile from the plant, has 100 employees, Ms. Platt said. It is owned by Tupperware and would be sold.
Ms. Platt said closing the Rhode Island facilities has been discussed
for some time because it takes technical employees based in Orlando almost
a full day to travel
between the two locations. "We wanted to bring everything down to this
location to have a team approach and so that dialogue would be constant,"
she said.
After consolidation, there will be about 600 employees in Orlando, she said.
Tupperware makes plastic food-storage containers, tabletop ware, entertainment
items and toys, she said. The company is the fourth largest direct seller
in the
world with net sales over a billion dollars last year.
In a news release, Tupperware Worldwide President Allan R. Nagle said
demographics and lifestyle changes in the 1980s caused the company to reorganize
in
order to compete. "Our U.S. operations have faced challenges that struck
at the fundamentals of the business. Profits declined as costs escalated
and the company
became increasingly isolated from its consumers," he said.
Tupperware is a subsidiary of Premark International, Deerfield, Ill.,
a $2.6 billion multinational company with stock on the New York, London
and Pacific stock
exchanges.
Copyright (c) 1990 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.
Record Number: 9007199616
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Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)
March 4, 1992
Column: JAMES DEMPSEY
MANY CHANGES SINCE TUPPER STARTED WARE
Author: James Dempsey
Edition: ALL
Section: PEOPLE
Page: D1
Index Terms:
CENTRAL MASS, COMPANIES, PLASTICS, HISTORY, PRODUCTS,
Estimated printed pages: 3
Article Text:
Fifty years ago Earl Tupper opened a plastics factory in an old mill
building on Ferry Street in Grafton. The business would grow into a corporate
empire, and its
product achieve a fame rare for commercial items. As a pop artifact,
what Tupper made was matched only by the classic Coca-Cola bottle, perhaps,
or the
post-Warhol Campbell's Soup can.
It was, of course, Tupperware, whose earlier items are in the permanent
collection of New York's Museum of Modern Art. Why Tupper chose Grafton
for his
factory no one seems to know, but then Tupper wasn't the kind to tell
anybody anything.
He was the quintessential eccentric inventor, an intensely private man
who refused to talk to groups. "He never appeared anywhere socially," said
Tom Damigella,
an Everett distributor of Tupperware. "He never became a public person
in any way. He would only speak to people one on one. That's the way he
was."
Which makes it all the stranger that Tupper's success was founded on
something he himself would have found excruciating, a gregarious gathering
that was equal
parts coffee klatch, demonstration and sales pitch - the Tupperware
party. The sophisticated may smile disdainfully, but the Tupperware party
was a stroke of
marketing genius, the perfect complement to Tupper's inventive but
reclusive genius.
According to the statisticians at Premark International Inc., the conglomerate
that now owns Tupperware, last year there was a Tupperware party or
demonstration every 2.7 seconds somewhere in the world.
Tupper, a native of Berlin, N.H., founded the company in 1938 and moved
to Grafton in 1942. By the mid-1940s he had developed the burpable, bouncing,
unbreakable containers we know as Tupperware.
Damigella comes as close as anyone to being the person who invented
the Tupperware party. "We were already doing home demonstrations of other
products," he
said. "Then my wife got this product and I knew it was entirely different
from anything I'd seen. The seal was marvelous, tighter than water tight.
Tupper told me he
got the idea from a paint can lid, except that he made it in reverse.
And I just knew the way to sell it was the home party."
Tupper began to notice that Damigella and his wife were selling huge
amounts of Tupperware, and in 1947 asked for a meeting. "We showed him
what we did and
he fell in love with the concept," Damigella said. "He decided to go
for broke." Tupper pulled out of retail stores and focused on home sales.
Tupper lived with his family on a farm in South Upton. It was reported
that he rarely entertained and was something of a recluse. He built a new
factory in Rhode
Island in 1955, and in 1958 sold out to Rexall Drug Corp. He retired
to Costa Rica and died in 1983. The Ferry Street factory is now occupied
by another
plastics company, Tredagar Molded Products.
From his retirement Tupper watched the American economy change. Manufacturing
moved to countries where labor was cheaper. The buzzwords became the
"service" and "high tech" industries. In the 1980s would come the era
of real estate speculation, junk bonds, savings-and-loans thievery and
leveraged buyouts, but
even before much of this transpired Tupper saw a change for the worse
in this country.
Seven months before his death in 1983 Tupper told the Burlington (Vt.)
Free Press, "I think the U.S. has lost its objective: to do things with
verve. I doubt they will
ever recover because they lost what they were aiming for. They became
dulled."
The outgoing Damigella was obviously fond of his shy boss. "He was a
perfectionist, and he believed totally, 100 percent in an individual having
the right to go to
the top," Damigella said. Damigella spoke with such feeling about the
old days I asked him if he felt the business world had lost something over
the last half-century.
"The time when I grew up and today are two entirely different worlds,"
he said. "Have we lost anything? I think so. But if corporations have changed,
it's because
the world has changed."
You know what's really embarrassing? Writing about language and making
a mistake, that's what. The mail brings a letter from Polly Lindi, wife
of the late Dick
Lindi, my former boss. Dick Lindi was for many years Big Kahuna Nit-Picker
of The Evening Gazette, a position more commonly known as chief copy editor.
Lindi had forgotten more about the English language than most of us
ever knew. "I can hear Lindi screaming from the Great Copy Desk on high,"
Polly says, "so I
had to write."
I wrote in Monday's column that the sentence There was some collateral
damage was an example of the passive voice. Polly writes: " "There' is
actually a pronoun,
subject of the verb "was' (active voice) and referring to the predicate
noun, "damage.'
"Sorry," she adds, "you can't be married to a nitpicker for 28 years without some of it rubbing off."
Copyright (c) 1992 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp.
Record Number: 9203048812