The brand name was acquired by the retail company Shinola in 2011. It was popular during the first half of the 20th century and entered the American lexicon in the phrase, "You don't know shit from Shinola," meaning to be ignorant. The suffix -ola is a popular component of trade names in the United States. "Shinola" was a trade name and trademark for boot polish. The Shinola Company, founded in Rochester, New York in 1877 as the American Chemical Manufacturing and Mining Company, produced the polish under a sequence of different owners until 1960. Shinola is a defunct American brand of shoe polish.