No plastic talk

Success is scientific, believes Rick Goings, CEO of Tupperware. He shares his incredible rags-to-riches journey with Abhilasha Ojha

All of us have a story to tell, but most of us hide our stories,” says Rick Goings, chairman and CEO of Tupperware, sitting in a plush conference room at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi. For Goings, however, this is not a time to “hide” anything: His company, after all, has just posted a turnover of $5 billion this year, apart from winning the prestigious Red Dot award for the best design team of 2009. But it is not just his professional success that Goings will talk about. Instead, he is ready to share, without a hint of embarrassment, his own incredible journey, from rags to riches.

“Most people who look at me think, ‘Oh, here’s a guy who was perhaps raised in a well-off family, studied at Yale and therefore did well in life,’” he says. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In his younger days, says Goings, he had to join the US Navy only because he couldn’t afford to complete full-time school anywhere else. He went on to become a navigator on a ship, but then decided to do “something different” after a while. “When I joined the Navy, I was glad that I’d never go hungry like I had in my childhood. But after a while, I definitely wanted to do something different, something else. That’s when I realised it was time to navigate the course of my own life, too,” he says.

Opting out of the Navy, Goings went on to complete his education with the help of the government funding offered to underprivileged students in the USA. To supplement his income, he worked in a men’s clothing store, after study hours. And he turned entrepreneur. While still in college, Goings became drawn to Buddhism, meditation and the teachings of Gandhi, and, though it had nothing to do with philosophy, also started a small company that leveraged the direct sales marketing methods. Today, he says, he combines number crunching with philosophy and often uses his marketing skills to understand “why some people succeed and most don’t”. In his view, success is not an art, it’s a science.

Is Tupperware’s success scientific? Goings, who is at no loss for words otherwise, searches for an answer: “We have a 50,000-strong sales force in India and it is one of the top five markets for our company.” Tupperware, when it was launched 12 years ago, he says after some thought, was “too shallow and too wide. After lots of tweaking and changes, it is today recognised as a superbrand.”

Interestingly, many other stories from the Tupperware family in India bear striking resemblance to Goings’s own tale of rising from the very bottom of the social ladder. In fact, in the middle of our conversation, Asha Gupta, managing director, Tupperware (India), shares some of these stories where women have been able to create (at least a modest amount of) wealth for themselves, and have thus become much more confident. She talks about a woman in Kolhapur who now attends meetings in high-heeled shoes — a consequence, no doubt, of enhanced self-image after she started making a living through Tupperware — as well as of a widow from Bangalore who, after losing her husband and her only son in an accident, found support from her “Tupperware family”.

Goings is listening intently to all this. He instantly invites Gupta to share these stories with his team in the US. “We have always wanted to tap the strength of women in India. We are here to leverage the natural power of Indian women and we are proud to offer them a chance to sustain themselves through our brand,” he says.

The brand has taken Goings a long way, too. He now owns a 15,000-sq ft mansion in Florida and has golfer Tiger Woods for a neighbour. He poses with Brooke Shields (the face of the company’s new campaign, called “chain of confidence”) and rubs shoulders with the high and mighty. (Goings narrates an interesting episode, where, he claims, he refused to let former President Bill Clinton give a speech to his Tupperware team: “Not Clinton, no way,” he winks.) The rich life apart, Goings finds time to meditate, read and travel, and says that he is always aware of the fact that “from where I started, it’s been a long journey.” In fact, that’s one reason why he, along with the likes of actor Denzel Washington, supports dedicated clubs (Boys & Girls Clubs of America, for instance) which help in securing the lives of street children.

“Denzel, after his father abandoned him, was rescued by a similar club. To say that his life changed for the better is an understatement. We just need to keep on changing the lives of many other kids for the better, too.” Along with his wife, Goings recently opened a similar club in Mexico. “Hopefully, less-privileged children will find a way to sustain and secure themselves. We just anchor them,” he says.

So, what anchors Tupperware’s success? Goings pauses to think before he says, “We don’t have a nationality. We are from all over the world. We are truly a global brand. That’s why we are a success.” It’s a philosophical answer.