History of Direct Selling

In 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward produced the first mail-order catalogue for his Montgomery Ward mail order business. In 1967, Lester Wunderman identified,named, and defined the term direct marketing. Wunderman- considered to be the father of contemporary direct marketing.

What is direct selling?

Direct selling is dynamic, vibrant, rapidly expanding channel of distribution for quality products through independent business people. The sale of a consumer product or service, in a person-to-person manner, away from a fixed retail location, where the company offers opportunities to an independent contractor sales force.

Direct Marketing Channels

Person-to-Person Party-Plan or Group Presentations Multi-Level Marketing(MLM) Network Marketing

Classical Direct Selling

Selling products directly to a wide customer base, earning financial rebates or volume discounts on all products sold Emphasis in classical direct selling is for the direct seller to sell products to a wide base of their own customers, thereby earning rebates on all products they sell.

Do we really need an excuse to party?

About Tupperware
Year 1938- Earl S. Tupper founded the Tupperware company. It started by using mold parts for navy signal lamps and gas masks. Its products were durable and easy to handle. Year 1946-designed the renowned air tight, liquid proof lid. Year 1946- products were displayed in hardware and department stores, which failed in generating demands.

Cont.
Late 1940s- Brownie Wise a Sales woman who has selling household products for Stanley Home Products was hired by Tupperware company. She introduced the unique Party Plan method of marketing. Year 1948- First home party for Tupperware was conducted. Home Party : Here what happened was that Tupperwares products and usage were demonstrated to the customers. Which justified the reasons for the high cost of Tupperwares products.

Tupperware
It entered in India in the year 1996, started its operations from New Delhi Appointed 15 distributors in the 1st 12 months. Its initial focus was on utility rather than style. These 15 were given training on a 14 week designed training program. It launched 11 products in India, which were useful rather than decorative.

 Within four years of operation in India, Tupperware India became the fastest growing market for the company in developing countries. In 1996, the company had a turnover of Rs.100 million In 2000, the companys turnover touched Rs.570 million.

The Tupperware Model

It adopted a three-tire structure where as Amway another direct selling company followed a model where the distributors were the centre of the model. In case of Tupperware the network structure had three levels. And Finally at the top level was the Distributor. The network of Tupperware in any country had 90% women employees, whereas in India it was 100% women employees.