• NPR's "All Things Considered", Tuesday, July 20, 2010 8:48 AM

When Glascow's own Tommy Lipton arrived in America at the end of the Civil War, he was 17 and penniless. When he went home five years later, a series of odd jobs had taught him all he needed to know about how Americans ran their businesses, Michael D'Antonio, author of A Full Cup: Sir Thomas Lipton's Extraordinary Life and His Quest for the America's Cup, tells Guy Raz.

"He learned that it was far better to scrub up your little store and light it brightly, and display your goods with some flair than to try to hide the flaws in your merchandise and pass it off as first-rate goods," D'Antonio says.

Lipton opened a store that not only had quality goods and excellent lighting; he also brought an element of fun to the enterprise. But as successful as he was at retail, he decided to get into the tea business. Lipton, in fact, offered "the first consistent brand of tea that was the same from package to package, from location to location, every time you bought it," D'Antonio says. And it didn't hurt that it cost half as much as his competitors'.

Raz' interview is fascinating; an excerpt from A Full Cup runs at the bottom of the Web page.

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