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Lipton’s Tea – Surely it was Better then than it is now!!

Paul French — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 23:04:24 +0000

Tea…what is more associated with China than the great brew? Barbaric and philistine coffee drinkers leave the room now please. However, should you be of an English persuasion and like your tea from a bag with some milk and sugar then the modern day Lipton’s tea bag available in China is a pathetic imitation of a real tea bag I think you will find. However, Lipton’s was not always such a crap tea company, that only happened later after Unilever bought them. In the old days, not that long after old Thomas Lipton himself had died in 1931, the brand was still associated with good product rather than the dust off the factory floor it is now as anyone who has been forced to buy their lousy black tea bags in China recently will, I’m sure, concur.

(BTW: I will point you in the direction of a very early post on this blog about my own very weak link with Mr Lipton – here)

A New Bio of Lipton Pops Up

Paul French — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:02:54 +0000

I’ve posted before about the rotten weak tea that is sold under the Lipton’s label in China. It remains no better. Yet Lipton remains a fascinating character from his impoverished Glaswegian roots, his love on showmanship acquired some time in America, his tea business, quest for the America’s Cup and on and on. So any new biography or study of Lipton is interesting and welcome. Here I’ll note Michael D’Antonio’s A Full Cup – Sir Thomas Lipton’s Extraordinary Lie and His Quest for the America’s Cup which is a very easily readable (well I am on my holidays at the moment) account of Lipton’s life. As usual no review but blurb below.

If he hadn’t been so successful, so rich, and so damn charming, Thomas Lipton would have been truly annoying. No one had a better knack for popping up in the middle of big events and getting his name and picture in the press. The Queen’s Jubilee? Lipton puts on a banquet for 40,000 and earns a knighthood. Admiral Dewey’s return from Manila? There’s Lipton at his side for the daylong parade in New York. War breaks out in the Balkans, and yes, it’s Lipton who recruits doctors and nurses, and steams into the fray at the helm of a hospital ship. The guy was everywhere for half a century, and yet no one tired of seeing him. Indeed, for a time when he wasn’t around, people flocked to the theater to see a look-alike actor play him onstage.

Long before anyone heard of Richard Branson or Larry Ellison or, for that matter, Bill Gates, Thomas Lipton created the persona of the happy captain of industry who used self-promotion, or philanthropy, or sport (he used all three), to become a household name. Before him, no self-made rich man had had so much fun becoming famous. After him, everyone borrowed from the Lipton method. He succeeded because he knew, firsthand, the lives and feelings of the poor and working people who were his customers, and they knew that as improbable as it was, the story he told about himself was almost entirely true.

Born in Scotland to parents who had fled the Irish famine, Lipton spent his early childhood in abject poverty. On a journey to America he learned the tricks of modern retailing and the value of an entertaining stunt. Having returned home to open a chain of groceries, he used pig parades and elephants to draw crowds to his stores. He also dropped leaflets from hot-air balloons, scattered authentic-looking Lipton banknotes in the streets, and commissioned the world’s largest cheeses for his shop windows. After groceries he went into tea, and on the strength of outlandish advertising became the world’s largest supplier. But his greatest stunt was a challenge for the America’s Cup, which became a thirty-year quest that captivated millions on both sides of the Atlantic.

Having parlayed his fame into a profitable friendship with the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, Lipton volunteered when Britain needed a rich man to try for the coveted cup. He spent a fortune on his boat and crew and on parties in New York for the social set. He was thoroughly trounced on the racecourse but spectacularly successful with the press and the public. He would mount four more challenges, losing every time and yet winning more hearts. By the last challenge, he had most of America pulling for him and the great Will Rogers begging his fellow Yanks to just let the old fellow win.

What was it, in the end, that made Lipton so popular? First, he was the antithesis of the robber barons and monopolists who were so hated in his time. Second, with his adventures and philanthropy he used his money the way others imagined they would. Finally, he constructed himself with inspiring and loving attention to detail. Lipton loved being Lipton, and his enthusiasm—he called himself The Great Lipton—was infectious. His few critics said he eventually became the caricature he played for so many years. This was, in fact, true, and it made the man happy for nearly all of his days.

–Michael D’Antonio

Thomas Lipton and Me

Paul French — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:48:00 +0000

So I’m staying a hotel with nothing much to do and I decide to make myself a cup of tea. Naturally I select the English Breakfast variety (from Indonesia) as I can’t stand all those flavoured teas like Earl Gray and certainly am not about to start drinking nonsense like peppermint or blackcurrent tea this late in life. I like builder’s tea – strong, a dash of milk and about 3 sugars the way God intended.

I’m about to rip open the pack when I notice that Lipton’s are now putting old Thomas Lipton’s signature on the packs. That seems new but then as he died in 1931 I’m not sure we can take this as a guarantee of Sir Thomas’s personal approval.

I’ve always liked Lipton – Glaswegian, self-made, cabin-boy to millionaire and the man who eschewed the effete tea drinkers of London and pioneered the concept of the cuppa for the masses which has sustained generations of the French family through several wars, the Blitz, Thatcher and now the credit crunch. Don’t you dare suggest a cup of coffee in our households!

I have a few cross reference points with Litpon. He eventually bought a very nice house with large grounds in Southgate, North London and I used to walk past it to Southgate Technical College where I did my A-levels. It was a home for retired NHS nurses when I used to wander past it and later I bought a house in Southgate (somewhat less grand). He died in Southgate but left most of his money to Glasgow and was buried up in Glasgow’s fabulously Gothic Necropolis where, incidentally, I used to wander occasionally while a student in Glasgow (but never noticed his grave).

He did come to Shanghai a couple of times and was apparently refused entry to the snobby Shanghai Club on the Bund – and if it was still there I expect I’d be turned away at the door too. Whether this enraged him or not I don’t know but he was reputedly personally not a snob so he might not have cared.

In a way he got his revenge on Shanghai long after his death by launching the pathetically weak Lipton’s black tea on the market and then introducing green tea bags in a nice example of selling to the Chinese something they themselves are supposed to be famous for.

The only remaining question is whether or not this is really Lipton’s signature or just a fancy John Hancock devised in an art department at some ad agency? Given that we’ve just had hurdler Liu Xiang appearing in an ad with two actors portraying his parents (!!) rather than with his real ones you might well wonder.