The Tragic Fall of the Tupperware Brand

Most children of my generation are quite familiar with searching through a cabinet filled with plastic Tupperware containers and lids to find the right match for packing up leftovers. The ubiquity of the Tupperware container defined the experiences of generations of families from the post-World War II era through the Seventies and Eighties and up through the turn of the Century. Spurred to tremendous popularity by a revolutionary marketing strategy that introduced easy-to-use and often unusually colorful products aimed to keep foods and drinks fashionably fresh, Tupperware containers seemed to be in every household in America. Unfortunately, the Tupperware Brand, once it lost its market leader status, was unable to keep up in the modern-day, post-pandemic market. It recently filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware.

So Many Things To Do; So Little Funding To Do It

The start of a new business is a pivotal time for any entrepreneur. Unless you happen to be a serial entrepreneur who has played this game before, you are likely overwhelmed with your to-do list and rarely feel like you have a good sense of whether you are making the right strategic choices for your fledgling company. Many first-time entrepreneurs are laser-focused on the product or service they are hoping to bring to the masses, but with that laser focus they may overlook some important considerations, like having the proper legal protections in place.

Even those entrepreneurs who have thought through legal considerations as part of their business planning process often try to get by with the bare minimum in the early days. Let’s be honest, the term “legal” often conjures thoughts of grey clouds in an entrepreneur’s otherwise sunny and optimistic vision for their new company. One of the key drivers of a start-up not putting in place all the legal protections that will help it to be successful as it continues to grow is a lack of funding to obtain expert advice. With minimal available resources, most entrepreneurs prefer to focus their initial dollars on getting their product or service to market.

The 2024 Paralympic Games

“I will not be participating at the Paralympics. I will be competing.”

-Hunter Woodhall, Paralympic Gold Medalist in the Men’s 400M T62 Category

The 2024 Paris Olympics were a highlight of this past summer, with 30.6 million viewers tuning in across all NBC platforms, making it the most-streamed Olympics. Among many other highlights, Noah Lyles (USA) and Letsile Tebogo (Botswana) battled it out for the title of World’s Fastest Man, Katie Ledecky’s (USA) swimming prowess made her the most-decorated female American Olympian across all sports, Yusuf Dikeҫ (Turkey) stunned viewers with his nonchalant silver medal shot, and Cindy Ngamba won the Refugee Olympic Team their first ever medal with a bronze in Women’s Middleweight Boxing. My favorite event this year, by far, was the men’s 1500M. Cole Hocker and Yared Nuguse (USA) pulled off a huge upset and absolutely smoked Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen! Watch it here.

With all the excitement surrounding the Olympics this year, people were understandably disappointed when the Closing Ceremony wrapped up. A common sentiment I heard was, “Well, what do I do now?” I wanted to yell from the rooftops, “It’s not over yet!”

Fall, Football, and Figuring it Out.

I love September. When the calendar flips to September, it means a lot of things to a lot of people - it’s the arrival of Fall (Fall is the best season, by the way), students begrudgingly returning to school to the delight of their parents, and for a lot of Americans, its marks the return of their favorite sport, FOOTBALL.

About 72% of Americans identify as football fans, that’s more than 241 million people. Football is big business. The NFL generated roughly $20 billion of revenue in 2023 and during the Super Bowl, companies paid $7 million per 30-second commercial. College Football TV rights alone accounted for roughly $4 billion in 2023. That doesn’t include College Football’s merchandise, ticket sales, sponsorships, or any NIL deals, including the recent deal with EA Sports to use the Name Image and Likeness of current College Football players in their new videogame, “creatively” named (in a generic way my trademark colleagues would hate) “College Football 25.” Football is America’s favorite sport, but its also becoming the favorite business of many Americans too.

To Do or Not to Do: That Is No Longer the Question (at Least in 2024) – Time to File Beneficial Ownership Information Reports (BOIR) Under the Corporate Transparency Act

For those familiar with the beneficial ownership information (“BOI”) reporting rules under the Corporate Transparency Act of 2021 (“CTA”), you may be aware that on March 1, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama issued a ruling in the case of National Small Business United, d/b/a the National Small Business Association (“NSBA”) v. Yellen. The court concluded that the CTA exceeds the Constitution’s limits on Congress’s power and issued an injunction against the Department of the Treasury and FinCEN, preventing them from enforcing the CTA against the plaintiffs. The Justice Department, representing the Department of the Treasury, filed a Notice of Appeal on March 11, 2024, and the litigation is ongoing.

Michael Lewis, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (W. W. Norton & Company, 2010)

As summer begins to wind down, and as we begin to anticipate less of the happy and carefree and more of the autumnal nose-to-the-grindstone vibe, may I suggest a beach read that has enough substance to satisfy even the most focused entrepreneurial reader?

You may know this author from some of his other books, including The Blind Side and Moneyball, also movies. You may know this story from the movie of the same name. If you don’t, skip the movie. The book is far more enlightening and entertaining.

A Post for National Pickleball Day (August 8, 2024)!

As frequent entreVIEW readers know, I am among the legions of people who became pickleball enthusiasts over the last several years, many of us (present company included) spurred on by the global pandemic. The statistics show that pickleball remains the fastest growing sport in the US, with about 50 million people in the US having played in the last 12 months, an explosive annual growth rate (over 85% in 2022). Contrary to popular perception, the average age of these players is 35 years old.