Text Version of Audio Story: Brownie Wise - copyright 2007 Nelson Lauver - May not be reprinted, reproduced or published without permission

In 1950�s America, it was a man�s world. Men worked; women stayed home. In the decade prior to the fifties, women had stepped up to the plate and proved that they were more than capable of getting the job done in this so-called �man�s world.�

Known as Rosie Riveters, women worked the World War II home front, building planes, tanks, ships. And building them as well as any man could. With Allied victories in Europe and the Pacific, men came home, got married, and the post World War II baby boom was on. Women were again tethered to the home. Opportunity abound for the hard working man, but for the woman it was a different story, �change that diaper; mop that floor; dinner on the table at five.� It was considered a mark of shame for one�s wife to work outside of the home. Then came Brownie Wise.

She was a young divorcee who had grown up in the Deep South. She made ends meet by hosting home parties where she demonstrated and sold household cleaning products. A young friend one day took her to a local department store and showed her a new product. Brownie took one look and knew instantly it would be a profitable hit at her home parties. The product was Tupperware.

Tupperware was the invention of a tinkerer from New England named Earl Tupper. Earl was somewhat of an oaf. His people skills were� well, he didn�t have any people skills, and he was the first to admit it. Tactful he wasn�t. He had a great product though, but it really doesn�t matter how great your product is. If you can�t sell it, you�ve got nothing. Earl Tupper knew that.

The young divorcee Brownie Wise started buying product wholesale from Tupper and selling it like gangbusters at her home parties. Tupper was enamored with the stylish young woman and her selling strategies.

Brownie convinced Tupper to stop selling his product in stores and instead, sell it exclusively at home parties. Brownie was so convincing, Tupper agreed and hired her on the spot to run the show. Brownie started recruiting, turning housewives into Tupperware ladies. It was the marriage of a great product and marketing strategy, and who better to sell it than the women who used it. Soon, there were tens of thousands of Tupperware ladies throughout the United States. And many of these women, who had been relegated to a life of housewifedom, were now making more money than there husbands.

Earl Tupper became a multi-millionaire. Brownie Wise not only became a hero to women all over America, she became a business icon. Her model of selling was the model by which all other sales models were modeled. She sold, through her army of Tupperware ladies, more Tupperware than the factory could produce.

She pressed Tupper to produce more. Tupper bristled. And Brownie continued to press, and Tupper bristled even more. Soon, what had once been considered one of the greatest business relationships in America became adversarial. Eventually, Tupper would fire Brownie Wise � the woman who had made him a multi-millionaire. At the insistence of other Tupperware executives, Tupper finally broke down and begrudgingly gave her $35,000 in severance pay. He wanted to give her nothing.

Earl Tupper later sold Tupperware for countless millions, brought a private island and retired. Brownie Wise lived to be an old woman and died in obscurity just several miles from the palatial marketing headquarters she had created.

From somewhere behind the radio, with the music of Johnny X, I�m the American Storyteller.