Stumbled across a link to a PBS “American Experience” show I saw six or eight months back on Tupperware. The show covered the Tupperware history. I found it interesting how many of the leading “Party Sales” companies have the same roots. Brownie Wise of Tupperware started as a Rep for “Stanley Home Parties” the original home party company.

Here is a quote from the PBS website: Alan Luce, Tupperware’s longtime in-house legal counsel, likened the history of the business to the “begats” of the Bible’s Old Testament. One can trace the lineage of any of today’s home party selling companies back to the original home party businesses. Stanley Home Parties, the most influential party plan company of the first half of the twentieth century, trained Brownie Wise, Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics, and Mary Crowley, the founder of Home Interiors, among others. And Tupperware, in turn, launched a number of people who went on to build companies like Longaberger Party Baskets and Partylite. “Each company,” Luce said, “has spawned sales leaders who then in turn go out and start new direct selling companies using the party plan method of selling.”

Here is a link to story at PBS http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tupperware/peopleevents/e_direct.html

If you get a chance to see the show on PBS I highly recommend it.

Technorati Tags: Party Sales, Tupperware , Mary Kay, Partylite, PBS