Lipton with this keen sense of business soon started learning more about the tea trade from London brokers. By then, the growing demand for tea in England had caused much stir and traders of all kinds began to see it as a profitable venture. Willie produces weekly posters for him that leads to a huge surge in popularity.īy 1890, with nearly 300 stores, Lipton turned his attention to the tea trade. He employs the talents of Willie Lockhart, a leading cartoonist. It was with stunts and advertising that Lipton went on to make his mark. By 1882 he had shops in Dundee, Paisley, Edinburgh, and Leeds. Spending an average of 18 hours in his shop, often sleeping on a makeshift bed under the counter, his efforts paid off in heaps, with his shop at Stobcross doing so well that in 1876 he moved to larger premises at 21/27 High Street.
He uses ‘fresh’ as bait to attract more customers. Using another selling technique, learned from his mother, he cuts off middlemen & directly deals with Irish farmers for fresh farm produce. His store brings a new experience of retail in Scotland! Using attractive bright lights and displays, the store serves as a great attraction. In 1871, at the age of 21, Lipton went on to open his first store – Lipton’s Market at 101 Stobcross Street in Glasgow. Soon after his return, he takes over his parent’s shop & turns its fortunes around using all his learnings. On his arrival, he hires a cab & places on top a rocking chair & a barrel of flour for his mother. Lipton’s arrival to Glasgow has remarkable historical significance. At a time when immigrants were traveling to America seeking opportunities, he displays an unconventional streak and decides to return back to Scotland. It is in 1869, that he again goes against the grain. Working in the store, he picks up the American way of salesmanship & advertising, that would serve him a lifetime. A chance encounter with another Irish entrepreneur Alexander Turney provides an opportunity, working at a departmental store, that would change his life later. Later he returns to New York in search of another adventure. He gains finance and book-keeping skills at Coosaw Island, skills that later serve as a good grounding in running his enterprise. In America he soon immerses himself in a plethora of jobs available to immigrants, working in tobacco and rice plantations of Virginia and South Caroline. At the time he leaves for America, he is barely 17 years old! His main takeaway from the job, however, was his lasting fascination with America and after his dismissal, he used his savings to buy a steerage passage to New York. The joy of the job was short-lived as he was soon dismissed for allowing a cabin lamp to smoke and discolor the ceiling. In Lipton’s words, his experience with the Burns Line company, “it was good to be alive and better still to be a cabin-boy on a gallant Clyde-built steamship”. The job enthralls him and it is here, with stories from seasoned sailors, his fascination with America first begins. The job held much appeal for the young Lipton as stories from seasoned sailors steadily built his fascination with America. It earned him a wage of 8 shillings a week. Denied the much-needed raise, he quit & in 1864 went on to work as a cabin boy on the Burns Line between Glasgow and Belfast. Despite a raise, the overtaxing work left him feeling underpaid leading him to demand a whopping 25% increase in wages. But, the desire for more had already taken root in young Lipton who soon left to cut shirt patterns for double the wage at Tillie & Henderson. Needing to support his family economically he got his first job as an errand boy in A & W Kennedy, Stationers at half-a-crown. However, given the dire circumstances of the family, he was soon forced to leave school, early on in 1860.
It is there that he mastered the basic three Rs of education- reading, writing, and arithmetic. Andrew’s Parish School paying a fee of 3 pence/week. Growing up in a penny-pinching environment, a young Lipton managed to attend St. As emigrants, they lived in a four-room tenement at 10 Crown Street-Hutchesontown, in the poverty-stricken Gorbals area of Glasgow. His parents were of Irish origin, but they emigrated to Glasgow (Scotland) to escape the Irish potato famine which lasted from 1845-1852 and wiped out a population consisting of millions of people. Lipton.īorn on May 10th, 1850, to Thomas Senior and Frances, Thomas Johnstone Lipton was the youngest of five children. Despite its tragic end, how the 131-year-old tea brand emerged from the slums of Glasgow is a fascinating tale of the entrepreneurial spirit of the iconic founder Thomas J. Recently the world’s largest tea brand Lipton has been put on the block by FMCG giant Unilever, sounding the final note for a century-old company.
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