'By Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen'?

Factual Questions
1

Every so often, I get an item from the UK. (I live in Detroit, MI in case you were wondering.) I don’t get them at a special store or anything. They are for sale in the general market.

And every so often, I notice it says on the label ‘by appointment to Her Majesty the Queen’. It doesn’t say this on all the products from Britain. But it happens every so often. And it also has the coat of arms of the queen too, FWIW.

What on earth does that mean? Does it mean the queen personally inspects it? Or that she uses it herself? I know one time, in a Brookstones, I found a bar of lemon soap. And it did say that the queen indeed uses the soap herself in Buckingham Palace. Is that what it means?

Thank you in advance for your kindly replies:).

:):):slight_smile:

2

It means the product has a Royal Warrant - I.e, that the Queen’s estate purchases it for use in the royal court, either for herself or for guests etc.

Recent thread on the topic.

3

And it’s pretty effective at keeping other products from implying that the royals use them.

4

You’ll see the equivalent in the Netherlands too, and for all I know in other countries too.

5

Up until perhaps the 1960’s, institutions around here (vic.aus) used to apply for the use of the term “Royal” in their title. So “Royal Melbourne Hospital”. “Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology”. It didn’t mean much, but it did mean a little bit, since the use of the term “Royal” wasn’t granted unless you really were the best in your field.

Now nobody cares, nobody makes any new applications, and I’m pretty sure that the channel for applying has closed.

6

I’ve seen them in Belgium as well; in Spain it’s not used, but we do have things whose Real comes from a royal endorsement, the most famous of these being three soccer teams (Real Madrid, Real Sociedad de San Sebastián and Real Mallorca, in order by founding year).

7

Just today, I bought a bottle of peacock blue Parker ink, with royal warrants from both HM and the Prince of Wales.

I will feel so regal as I work on my next brief of law.

8

It has the double benefit for businesses in the UK:

  1. It’s a product endorsement, which is a very useful marketing tool.
  2. It stops non-endorsed brands from trying to claim or suggest any endorsement.

Royal Warrants are highly prized for the brands concerned.

To the OP, it means the Queen buys a certain quantity of the product at regular intervals over a period of years. Brands have to apply for the Warrant, and can only do so with these criteria - they can’t gift stuff to the Queen and get one.