JAKARTA: Tupperware Brands Corporation, known for its airtight plastic containers, primarily for storing and serving food, has officially ceased its local operation after more than three decades of selling its products to Indonesian consumers.
Many people recalled being a loyal Tupperware customer over the years as the brand became a kitchen staple in homes nationwide, from food containers and tumblers to utensils.
The brand has a strong presence among the country’s housewives as well as on social media platforms, which are filled with various memes making fun of the horror of losing a Tupperware container, to the extent that doing so could invoke a mother’s wrath.
Tria Patrianti, 52, a mother and educator in Jakarta, has been involved in numerous Tupperware parties and in buying products from sellers and at events for decades.
“The last time I bought Tupperware was last year, at a [shopping] mall exhibition,” she told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
Tria said Tupperware’s established community of direct sellers had introduced her to the brand, which she deemed “more expensive than others but worth the quality”.
Its door-to-door delivery of attractive catalogs also played a part in making her a loyal Tupperware customer since the late 1990s.
The company is widely known for its direct selling approach, recruiting individual resellers to join its “sales force” and market its products directly to consumers through networking activities, among them the fabled “Tupperware party” at a seller’s home.
This strategy has mainly attracted women as the brand’s largest market segment and empowered them as key players in its direct selling model.
This business model, which made Tupperware a strong proponent of multilevel marketing (MLM), has also reached the vast market of younger consumers across the globe.
Agus, now 24, once helped his mother sell Tupperware products via MLM starting in 2017, when he was in senior high school.
Recalling his experience, he said demand rose to a peak in the two years until 2019, when stainless steel tumblers by other brands gained momentum and online marketing gradually eroded the company’s direct selling approach.
“There was no online [marketing], resellers were only allowed to collect the products for marketing offline,” he told the Post on Wednesday.
The company’s in-person marketing approach became no longer effective, Agus said, and was exacerbated by declining demand that signalled the company’s impending collapse during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In September last year, Tupperware filed for bankruptcy in the United States following a multiyear decline in sales, its revenue falling from US$2.25 billion in 2017 to $1.14 billion in September 2023.
And on April 11, the company posted on its social media accounts that it had officially shuttered the doors of Tupperware Indonesia on Jan 25 as part of a strategic measure.
The Asia-Pacific was leading when sales peaked at $2.67 billion in 2013, accounting for a third of total sales, and Indonesia was a key destination in this emerging market, contributing up to $200 million in sales.
For years, Tupperware had been top-of-mind when it came to tumblers, according to Top Brand Award, a nationwide survey conducted by industry publisher Majalah Marketing in collaboration with marketing consultancy Frontier Research.
However, the company’s performance started declining in 2021, and its share among survey respondents fell from 50 to 30 per cent on the Top Brand Index in 2024.
Local brand Lion Star emerged as a fierce competitor in the plastic food container category, consistently maintaining a share of over 30 per cent on the index, while Tupperware trailed behind as its share decreased from 25 per cent in 2022 to 16.3 per cent last year.
In its bankruptcy filing, Tupperware acknowledged that it had been “late to the party” and failed to attract modern consumers, noting that 76 per cent of housewares were purchased at offline stores and around 20 per cent on e-commerce platforms, where Tupperware products were historically unavailable.
“The company has struggled to make the products consistently available online and for the sales force,” it wrote in the filing.
It also said the technology used to support the Tupperware sales force was “a step behind that of the company’s competitors, resulting in further frustrations and sales force deterioration
Responding to the closure of the company’s Indonesian operations, Agus said Tupperware products were “replaceable” due to the rise of other brands offering similar products.
Tria, a loyal Tupperware customer, said she would “just move on” and find alternatives, while applying the same standards she learned from the Tupperware community when shopping for food containers, tumblers and other products.
Vivy Ana, a former sales force member of Tupperware Indonesia, told the Post on Wednesday that despite her decades-long experience as both a Tupperware seller and customer, she had turned to other brands.
This was because a variety of plastic food storage containers similar to Tupperware products were now available in the local market. “[The other products] are even more varied in terms of their colour and shape. That’s what made Tupperware lose its [draw],” she added. - The Jakarta Post/ANN
