FOR US Brits, Boots has become pretty ubiquitous.
But when you’re popping in to fill your prescription or to pick up some painkillers, have you ever stopped to wonder why Boots is called… Boots?
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Turns out, the high street powerhouse got its peculiar name from its founder – John Boot.
But Boots’ beginnings were very different from what we see of the health and beauty retailer today, which boasts over 2,200 stores across the UK.
It all started in 1849, when John opened his first herbalist store in Nottingham.
The shop offered affordable alternatives to traditional medicines, Boots said on its website.
John’s son Jesse took over the business in 1870 and, along with his mum Mary, begun trading under the name M & J Boot, Herbalists.
Far from the rows of bottles and packets you’ll see if you pop into a Boots store today, the sale of herbs was a big feature of the early business and included roots, plants, and flowers collected locally.
Many of them would have been dried on the parlour walls at the back of the shop and then ground to a powder.
Jesse took sole control of the business in 1877 and latched on to the growth in popularity for patent remedies instead of herbal medicine amongst working classes.
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He appointed the store’s qualified pharmacist in 1884, Edwin Waring, who made sure to offer his dispensing services at half the price charged by the other chemists in Nottingham.
While manufacturing of the medicines took place in a small cottage close to the store in Nottingham in the business’s early years, demand grew as the store network expanded.
A space was found in a factory on Island Street in Nottingham in 1885, but Boots took over the whole building and acquired further properties nearby within a few years.
The company was named Boots Pure Drug Company Ltd. in 1888, a little closer to what we know it as today.
Jesse even open a a flagship department style store for Boots in 1892, which had a dispensary, perfumery and stationery on the ground floor and pictures, glass and fancy goods on the upstairs gallery.
Fast forward to World War I, when Britain lost its supply of chemicals from Germany.
In order to bridge the gap, Jesse brought together a team of experts to begin the research and manufacture of key synthetic chemicals such as aspirin.
The company was soon supplying the British Government with medicines for field hospitals and manufacturing products such as water sterilizing tablets which claimed to destroy the organisms of cholera, typhoid, coli and dysentery in about thirty minutes.
By 1925, Boots opened its first 24 hour pharmacy in Piccadilly Circus.
And the retailer launched its ‘Number Seven’ beauty range in 1935.
Boots became the first UK chemist store to introduce self-service stores in 1951, with the first opening its doors in Burnt Oak, Edgware in London.
It was amongst the first examples of self service in retail in the UK, according to the company.
So next time you pop into a Boots on the way back from work – or at the airport when you’re looking for your travel minis – why not cast your mind back to the retailer’s humble beginnings at a little Nottingham store stocked with locally collected plants and flowers.
In other news, people are only just realising where Calpol got its name from.
And pharmacies across England are set to offer a range of new prescriptions you can get without going to your GP, after the Government announced pharmacists can issued scripts for seven common ailments.
