The first recorded sighting of the kiwi bird by an Englishman occurred in 1801 and was described by Dr. George Shaw, (cf. platypus) in his 1813 version of The Naturalist’s Miscellany. Shaw describes a “wingless bird from the South with the name apteryx australis.” The term kiwi was likely assigned to the bird by the English missionary William Yate who studied the Maori language spoken in New Zealand and wrote about his missionary work in his 1835 Account of New Zealand: and of the formation and progress of the Church missionary society’s mission in the Northern Island. There he describes the kiwi as “the most remarkable and curious bird in New Zealand.” It took until 1851 that the first kiwi found its way into the London Zoo and even now it is quite rare to find a kiwi either in captivity or in the wild. Only some 15 zoos worldwide show kiwis and in New Zealand there are only some 70,000 of the birds left.
The fame of the kiwi is more than anything else due to a creative Scotsman married to a New Zealander. William Ramsey set up a factory in Australia for making boot polish in 1904 and two years later started the Kiwi Shoe Polish which featured the bird prominently on the logo. The product was an instant hit, first in Australia, and then all over the world. By 1912 Ramsey had opened his first branch London extensively marketed his product in Britain and the United States. Today, Kiwi Shoe Polish is sold in almost every country of the world and has a global share in the shoe polish market of more than 50%.
And ironically the fame of the iconic brand has now passed into American hands.
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