Towards the the end id the nineteenth century a modern shopping industry began to appear in Scotland, offering low prices and high quality. The most famous of the new shopkeepers was Thomas Lipton.
Thomas Lipton was born in Glasgow in 1850. When he left school he was only nine years old, but he found work and had soon saved enough to buy a ticket on a liner to New York.In New York he got a job in a grocery store. Three years later still a teenager he was back in Glasgow bursting with the new ideas he had seen in the New York shops. When he opens his own shop in 1870, he began to try these ideas out.
Within a few years new Lipton’s shops were opening all over Scotland at the rate of one week. England came next, and by 1885 more than 600 Lipton shops were busily trading.
At first shops sold mainly hams, eggs, cheeses and butter.
Next, Lipton entered the tea market, and again with dramatic success. Lipton became a very wealthy man as a result of his business successes.
Later in his life he was well known for his love of sailing and for the beautifully made yachts always called Shamrock,, that he bought and raced in Britain and America.
But when he died in 1931 he was still known best for the great changes he had brought to shopping.
Biography of Sir Thomas Lipton