Yes, the brand Tupperware is an mlm and sold directly by sales people. Back in the 50s and 60s Tupperware parties were a thing.
The confusion is likely the whole q-tip/Kleenex thing. We call it all Tupperware but really it is not Tupperware brand most of the time
I'm aware of qtip kleenex aspect of it but since tupperware became the name of food grade plastic containers I just kinda assumed that they would be a mildly respectable brand.
Nope, they are pretty much as bad as the rest of them. I think like 96-97% of their salespeople make basically no money. That was their whole shtick back in the 50s of recruiting housewives as salespeople, you see it in a lot of period dramas and the like.
I know a few countries they operate normal stores because local laws prevent them from doing their whole tupperware party thing, like China. I have heard they are moving more away from that model in other countries too, but I have no idea how true that actually is.
I don't think the actual product is necessarily bad as far as I am aware, but they still have scummy sales practices.
They're doing some direct sales in target now, cutting out some of the mlm-ness in the states
I barely see actual Tupperware containers today, except for a couple of plastic bottles. It's crazy how a glorified piece of plastic (the brand I mean) had such a market, while nowadays all supermarkets sell their own store brand, sometimes made of glass (so actually decent).
My partner will probably never financially recover from her time involved in a MLM. She was involved in one from well before we got together, and she has since escaped thankfully. I am extremely lucky to be in a position while I can reasonably support both of us so she can focus on the debt, but it's not going to be something she ever really pays off.
MLMs make me extremely pissed off, becaues they absolutely ruin lives. They should be illegal everywhere, but only very few countries actually have a blanket ban on them. China and Saudi Arabia are the only countries I know of offhand.
Polish wiki article about this is comical.
At first they have all the history of grift, clearly suggesting it's a grift and nothing more than pyramid scheme, then they posted a table being basically MLM=good, pyramid=bad and that MLM is not a pyramid, only to end with the same as here "99% participants of MLM lose money".
yeah the coolest thing about modern economic systems is that we can culturally recognize the ethically barren landscape of pyramid schemes as a bad thing that we obviously don't get into and even ban in sane places! But economically well yeah sometimes your friend since high school is just going to bumble into an MLM scheme, financially wreck themselves, bomb their social lives, and spew propaganda about being their own boss selling soaps, and that's just ok. that's fine. if anything, it's their fault for falling for it!
