Boot polish and social changes

The Age newspaper reported on January 2 that Kiwi boot polish would be no longer sold in Britain. This was not really a matter of empire, but it does set one’s mind going on the use of boot polish and the social changes those uses represent. I’m being serious.

My grandfather, and his grandfather, did not polish their boots. Thy used a sort of Dubbin to waterproof them and preserve the leather. Those boots were made for working. Nor did they wear trousers that were ironed with a crease in them. Look at your old family photographs. The obligatory crease seems to have started with the upper classes in the 1930s and become de rigueur after the Second World War.

From the 18th century shiny leather shoes were worn by the very wealthy but the shine was due to many different products, mostly beeswax, and it was not a ‘hard shine’.

I cleaned my father’s shoes before his various meetings when I was a little tacker in the 1950s. He went out in shoes, not boots, and I’m not sure my grandfather ever had any shoes as we now know them. He wore boots, good, solid, long-wearing boots that could stand up to many years of re-soling but that never had to face a polishing brush.

There were a few commercial preparations for cleaning and preserving boots (and shoes if you had them) before 1900 but having your shoes shine was not an issue.

After the turn of the century things changed. Kiwi Boot Polish arrived. A good shine became possible and desirable, and it was an Australian invention, despite the name. William Ramsay and Hamilton McKellar, both Scots who’d migrated here, set up a factory together in the Big Smoke producing boot polish, among other things.

In 1906 they had managed to create a boot polish that restored the colour of the leather (provided it was black), preserved it and could be buffed up to a high polish. Two years later a dark tan version was introduced. The two Scots, now Australians, named their polish Kiwi, and as it spread around the world it made the real Kiwi far better known. There is a reason that particular name was chosen. Ramsay had married Annie Elizabeth Meek. She was from New Zealand and Ramsay dipped his hat to her background in naming the polish.

The introduction of Kiwi dark tan came with further development and now made the leather waterproof (mostly) and helped keep it supple. The Kiwi brand, then with only the two colours that have remained the standard right up the present, became a worldwide success almost immediately. Other colours were to follow quite quickly, but people my age remember black and dark tan as the norm.

Even before the Great War Kiwi boot polish was being sold in Europe, in Britain and in New Zealand. Ten years earlier Ramsay had sold it to farmers from the back of his cart. The Great War cemented the company’s name and future because the Allied armies had a great need to look after leather as boots, belts, harness, holsters and all manner of things. There were other brands on the market but the Kiwi reputation made it the first choice of the American and British armies and, of course, ours.

Kiwi polish saw the start of ‘spit-polishing’ in the Australian army. I can remember learning in 1966 to set fire to the polish in its little round tin, let it melt, then spread it thinly on my boots and rub it in with the back of a teaspoon stolen from the mess for that very purpose. When it was rubbed as far as you could get it you’d brush it up to a shine, then use spit and a soft cloth to polish it to a finish that resembled laquer. These boots were your ‘spitties’ and you tried to keep them safe for parades and guard mountings. Your other boots were cleaned normally and never really had that glassy, high-gloss shine of the ‘spitties’.

Now our soldiers wear boots that are no doubt practical but that look about as good as a worn out pair of my grandfather’s work boots. Spit-polishing is a skill that may be disappearing. I read on the web that in WW2 American military boots were made with the rough side of the leather on the outside, which makes sense, and that in an attempt to look smarter the GIs would trade with the Aussies and the Brits for Kiwi boot polish, which gave the flat little tins much greater value, just as cigarettes were a form of currency in the Vietnam War.

Kiwi boot polish is now sold in more than 150 countries around the world, from factories in 12 countries. It is the dominant brand in most markets, though it has many competitors and has had to produce many colour variations.

The Kiwi Boot Polish Company set up in 1913 changed its name to the Kiwi Polish Company in 1916 and stayed under that name until 1971 when it became Nicholas Kiwi, joining with another great Australian company, the makers of Aspro, among other things. In 1984 this was bought out by Sara Lee (the Consolidated Foods Corporation). Sara Lee then sold the pharmaceutical side of the business to Switzerland’s Roche but it kept on producing the Kiwi polishes.

This once-Australian icon was now a part of a giant US commercial company whicha lso owned Meltonian and the Reckitt and Colman range. That included the foam-tipped squeeze pack that we used to whiten our runners.

Britain was also looking at limiting the monopoly power of Sara Lee, so all the shoe care parts of the company were sold to S.C.Johnson.

Now the Kiwi products face ome marketing problems as sneakers and trainers (remember when they were sandshoes or runners, and were mostly made by Dunlop?) have become more acceptable in public, even with business clothing. More people in the UK are working from home, too, and the men of the shoeshine stands are finding it tough. Some have added recolouring and repair of trainers to their offerings to stay with the changes.

So Kiwi is withdrawing from Britain, but it is still the dominant shoe polish across the world. Wikipedia even tells us that “kiwi” has become a recognised verb in Bahasa Melayu meaning ‘to polish one’s shoes’.

The only rival I knew of, as a young tacker, was Nugget. That was a UK company but I know nothing more about it – yet.

The flat, round tins of Kiwi polish, with the little ‘twister’ on the side to open the tin, are still an Australian icon, and much more use than Vegemite.