Sir Thomas LiptonFrom the tea garden to the tea pot: Sir Thomas Lipton's Vision
Tea Plantation
An aromatic, uplifting beverage savored for centuries around the world from India and Ireland to the U.S.A., tea was once an expensive drink, enjoyed exclusively by the wealthy. And with early packaging and transportation issues, it was also variable in quality and taste.
Lipton was born in Glasgow on 10 May 1848. His parents, Thomas Lipton senior and Frances Lipton (née Johnstone), were Ulster-Scots, who came from County Fermanagh. The Liptons had been smallholders in Fermanagh for generations, but by the late 1840s, Thomas Lipton's parents had decided to leave Ireland and move to Scotland in search of a better living for themselves and their young family. By 1847, the Liptons had settled in Glasgow. Lipton's father would hold a number of occupations throughout the 1840s and 1850s, including working as a labourer and as a printer.
Thomas Lipton was educated at St. Andrew's Parish School close to Glasgow Green between 1853 and 1863. By the early 1860s, his parents were the proprietors of a shop at 11 Crown Street in the Gorbals, where they sold ham, butter, and eggs. It was with the aim of supplementing his parents' limited income that Thomas Lipton left school at the age of thirteen and found employment as a printers errand boy, and then as a shirtcutter. He also enrolled at a night school, the Gorbals Youth's School, during this period.
The Liptons Shop in Glasgow
In 1864 Lipton signed up as a cabin boy on a steamer running between Glasgow and Belfast and was captivated by life aboard the ship and the stories told by sailors who had traveled to the United States. After being let go by the steamer company, Lipton quickly used the wages he had saved to purchase passage on a ship bound for the U.S., where he would spend five years working and traveling all over the country. Lipton had a number of jobs during this time: at a tobacco plantation in Virginia, as an accountant and bookkeeper at a rice plantation in South Carolina, as a door-to-door salesman in New Orleans, a farmhand in New Jersey, and finally as a grocery assistant in New York.
He returned to Glasgow in 1870, initially helping his parents run their small shop in the Gorbals. The following year he opened his first provision shop—Lipton's Market—at 101 Stobcross Street in the Anderston area of Glasgow. This enterprise proved to be successful and Lipton soon established a chain of groceries, first across Glasgow, the rest of Scotland, until finally he had stores throughout Britain. While Lipton was expanding his empire, tea prices were falling and demand was growing among his middle class customers. In 1880, Lipton invested in the young stockyards of Omaha, Nebraska, founding a large packing plant in South Omaha. He sold it to American interests in 1887. In 1888, when his empire had grown to 300 stores, he entered the tea trade and opened his tea-tasting office. He started bypassing traditional trading and wholesale distribution channels (most UK tea-trading was focused in London's Mincing Lane) in order to sell teas at unprecedented prices to the untapped poor working class market. In order to provide his shops with goods Lipton bought plantations and in doing so - amongst other things - he established the Lipton tea brand which is still in existence today.
Thomas Lipton visited Sri Lanka in the 1890s and made business deals with James Taylor the man who introduced tea plantations to Sri Lanka (Ceylon), with working people from India (Tamil people). Lipton's company purchased tea from Sri Lanka and distributed it through Europe and the USA.
In 1893, he established the Thomas J Lipton Co., a tea packing company with its headquarters and factory in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Lipton® teas were an immediate success in the United States and the United Kingdom. In recognition of his exceptional contribution, Thomas Lipton was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1898, and became Sir Thomas Lipton at the age of forty-eight.
Sir Thomas Liptons legendary yacht Shamrock
King Edward VII and King George V both shared their interest in yachting with Lipton and enjoyed his company. Between 1899 and 1930 he challenged the American holders of the America's Cup through the Royal Ulster Yacht Club five times with his yachts called Shamrock through Shamrock V.[2] His well publicised efforts to win the cup, which earned him a specially designed cup for "the best of all losers", made his tea brand famous in the U.S
Those of you with an eagle eye might have spotted an ad for Twinnings, the great rival of Lipton, but this will be another story
