When his father died in 1889 he left £500 to Herbert, who likely put the money towards the setting up of his own hat shop that same year at 45 New Bond Street.

[2] In 1975, the firm of Herbert Johnson was forced to leave its old premises at 38 New Bond Street, owing to a proposed rent increase from about £3,500 a year to almost £35,000.

Robin Benson, whom the firm appointed as managing director in 1984, embarked on a programme of expansion based on the use of Herbert Johnson as a brand name.

It was when the John Crowther Group bought Herbert Johnson (Bond Street) Limited and Herbert Johnson (Sales) Limited that the firm was relocated to 30 New Bond Street, as the first stage of an ambitious plan to open other shops at home and abroad and set up a network of concessions within department stores.

The firm's line of business was to design and commission headgear from hatters in London and the hatting workshops of Luton and Stockport.

In spite of being underwater for almost a hundred years, one of Herbert Johnson's collapsible silk top hats was recovered from the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, which sank in the north Atlantic on the night of 14–15 April 1912.

Sir Stirling Moss wore a white version of the Herbert Johnson racing helmet when he won the British Grand Prix at Aintree on 20 July 1957.

[4] Other hats have been used in British television drama: Patrick Macnee's John Steed sported a Herbert Johnson bowler hat in The Avengers; Arthur Lowe's Captain Mainwaring wore a floating-bevel peaked cap in the sitcom Dad's Army; and Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who wore a Herbert Johnson felt fedora.

There can be little doubt, however, that the most famous cinema exposure for Herbert Johnson was when Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones sported a broad-brimmed, high-crowned "Poet" felt hat in Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).