The brand Tupperware has become so synonymous with food storage that many people use its name when referring to any old plastic container. But the 77-year-old US company is seeing cracks form in the once revolutionary air-tight sealing business that made it famous, with rising debts and falling sales prompting a warning it could go bust without investment. Despite attempts to freshen up its products in recent years and reposition itself to a younger audience, it has failed to stop a slide in its sales. The firm's 'Tupperware parties' made it an icon during the 1950s and 1960s consumer revolution, and its air-tight and water-tight containers took the market by storm. But its core business model of using self-employed salespeople who sell primarily from their own homes has been going out of fashion for a while, and was retired altogether in the UK in 2003. Now company bosses have admitted that, without new funding, a brand name which has passed into common parlance could vanish from the market. Sales have slid again since then, largely because the firm has not been "innovative enough" over the past 10 to 20 years to keep up with its rivals, according to Ms Shuttleworth.
