by Jess McCuan   
photos by Sarah Henry

The Tupperware party has come a long way since 1948. Earl Tupper started selling his airtight plastic “wonder bowls” in stores in 1946, but Tupperware didn’t take off until women started demonstrating the tubs’ handy-dandy features in their homes two years later. By the 1950s, home sales parties were everywhere, and companies like Mary Kay and Avon realized they were an extremely effective way to sell a vast array of products. Now, women (and a few men, too) throw home parties to sell everything from kitchen knives to sex toys to canine herbal tea, sometimes with great success. 

In Western North Carolina, Linda Conard has been hosting Tupperware parties for 33 years. For meeting her sales goals, she’s won a piano, a grandfather clock, diamond jewelry and trips to Turkey, Austria and Greece. “It’s a great income, and I am my own boss,” says the 55-year-old mother of five. Jean Hollingsworth, 73, has sold Mary Kay products from her home in Candler for 30 years, and so far she’s won 13 cars—12 of them pink. 

Home parties today can be quite stimulating—Alana Carrott, 30, says there’s often a lot of giggling at her “Passion Parties” when she encourages attendees to taste edible body lotions or inspect other sensual products she passes around. The parties can also be fairly elaborate. Candace Borum, 34, quit her executive assistant job at Mission Hospital to sell Pampered Chef products full time, and now she wheels a cart of products in at parties and whips up an entire meal for the attendees. Her most popular dish is a cheeseburger salad. “I come and cook, you eat and have a good time,” says the mother of two.

On the following pages, VERVE’s take on the 21st century Tupperware party. 

Name: Linda Conard
Age: 55
Lives in: Candler
Sells: Tupperware products
Years selling at home parties: 33

When Swannanoa native Linda Conard was expecting her fifth child in 1975, she needed a job but wanted to stay at home as much as possible, especially during the day. Selling Tupperware at evening home parties meant she set her own hours, spent a good deal of time with her kids, and, because the products were popular with her friends, she started racking up sales prizes quickly. After she filled her house with furniture—including a bedroom set, dining room set, a grandfather clock and a piano—she started opting for diamond jewelry and trips to Hawaii and Europe. “Thirty-three years is a long time,” she says. “I’ve earned a lot of stuff.” Her favorite Tupperware products are the classics—like the Modular Mates, a set of plastic canisters meant for storing staples like flour and sugar. Today, her best seller by far is the Quick Chef, a hand-powered food chopper that speeds up prep work. She finds that busy moms don’t have time to cook anymore, so she shows women at her parties how to use Tupperware for microwave cooking. Conard says she can cook just about anything in a microwave—except maybe a cake. “Occasionally, something can flop. We just laugh about it and move on.”

Name: Jean Hollingsworth
Age: 73
Lives in: Candler
Sells: Mary Kay cosmetics
Years selling at home parties: 30

In 1978, Jean Hollingsworth ran a sewing business out of her home in Candler and occasionally worked at alteration shops around Asheville. But she was essentially a stay-at-home mom with four children, and the family budget was so tight that her husband couldn’t afford to miss a day of work. “As a stay-at-home mom, you don’t get a lot of praise and recognition,” says Hollingsworth, who grew up in Hendersonville. “The highlight of my day was watching As the World Turns.” That year she got invited to a Mary Kay party across the street, and then she attended one of the company’s regional sales conferences in Atlanta. She and her friends watched a video of the award ceremony for the company’s top seller that year, another stay-at-home mom who got a fur coat and roses and sat on a throne on stage. “I was so happy for her,” says Hollingsworth. “I was sobbing when they turned on the lights.”
Hollingsworth came back to Asheville, set the sewing projects aside, and sold $3,600 worth of Mary Kay products within a few weeks. “It just clicked,” she says. “I knew it was really what the Lord had for me.” She hit increasingly ambitious goals and earned bigger and bigger prizes—diamond rings, pink cars, trips to the mostly-pink Mary Kay mansion in Texas. Eventually, Hollingsworth became a director in the company, managing several women on a regional team, and after her children left home, she took over a den to make a Mary Kay office—complete with a wall of inventory. “My husband always says, ‘If Mary Kay makes it, Jean has it.’”

Name: Candace Borum
Age: 34
Lives in: Asheville
Sells: Pampered Chef kitchen tools
Years selling at home parties: 3

Candace Borum got a business degree in college and never saw herself as a stay-at-home mom. 

But after a few years as an executive assistant at Mission Hospital in Asheville, it became clear she wouldn’t be moving up the ladder there, and she had always dreamed of managing something, of running her own show. When her second child came along and the price of gas went up, she recalls thinking—“And why am I working again?” The numbers didn’t add up. Besides, she had started selling Pampered Chef products—clay stoneware, self-sharpening knives, bamboo serving sets—and she and her husband thought they could make it with his steady gig and her Pampered Chef cash. “Really and honestly, it was my husband’s fault. He said, ‘I love to play with their stuff,’” she says. “The more free stuff I got or earned, the more I enjoyed it.” 

So far, it’s worked. She says she spends more time with her 14-month-old son Isaac and she takes her four-year-old daughter Natalee to parties to help with cooking. The goal of the demonstrations is to show the crowd you can prepare a gourmet dinner in 29 minutes—with the help of Pampered Chef’s products and cookbooks, of course. She admits some recipes do call for exotic ingredients like sesame oil, but most are already in people’s pantries. “Women my mother’s age, they’re like—okay, big whoop, she can cook. Folks my age, they think I spend hours. They’re more impressed, especially some of their husbands,” she says. “I’m finding that they’re looking for quick, easy solutions, too. If they can find a shortcut, they’ll take it.” 

Name: Alana Carrott
Age: 30
Lives in: Weaverville
Sells: Passion Parties sensual products
Years selling at home parties: 3

Alana Carrott was always shy. The 30-year-old Michigan native, a self-described tomboy and computer geek, had worked as a counselor and was living in Utah with her husband in 2005 when she decided it was time to break out of her shell. A friend invited her to a Passion Party, similar to other home sales parties except that the products are sex toys (and related items) and the parties often turn into sex ed question-and-answer sessions. Carrott’s friend tried to convince her to sell Passion Parties products herself. “I thought—there was no way I could ever do this,” she says. “ And then I just decided—I can do it.”

Her husband had no objections, though she admits her family was uneasy at first. She started hosting Passion Parties in Utah and continued when she and her husband moved to Weaverville two years ago. In their house, she has an office with a door, which she closes when they have company over. She hosts parties, mostly at other women’s homes, twice a week and says she rarely gets hassled by anyone about her job. “I never use profanity or slang. We use ‘proper’ terminology,” she says. “There’s no nudity or pornography, and everything has a tasteful name.” Her best-selling product is the Pure Satisfaction unisex enhancement gel, and another is The Progressor, a vibrating couples toy. She also frequently gives anatomy lessons. “I’m very surprised at how many women haven’t had an orgasm, aren’t sure they’ve had an orgasm or don’t really understand their own anatomy,” she says. “When I talk about a G-spot toy, whether they know it or not, they’re going to learn that night.”