Who's a pretty ploy then?
The Pattison brothers could have taught media guru Max Clifford a thing or two about promotion.They even used parrots to promote their whisky. Ian Buxton reports
Every age has its ‘bubbles’ and every age seems determined to repeat the mistakes of the last. Think of the South Sea Bubble; of Victorian railway bonds; of the mania for tulips that possessed Holland in the 17th century; of the dotcom boom.
Then, think whisky. Yes, whisky had its own period of financial madness – and though in many ways it shaped the industry we know today, like booms everywhere, it ended in bust.
For a while it seemed it would never end.
By 1890, the ‘whisky barons’ of Victorian Scotland had never had it so good.
The demand for whisky, on the back of the increasingly popular blends, Scotland’s fashionability and the ever-expanding British Empire, seemed limitless.
New distilleries were built (some 39 in the decade to 1900). New brands were launched.
New markets conquered.
In an age of flamboyant entrepreneurship modern marketing was invented and firms strove to outdo each other with ever more extravagant campaigns.
Two brothers stood above all. Robert and Walter Pattison inherited partnerships in a small whisky blending business in Leith, initially built up by their father.
In 1896 they floated it as a company, Pattisons Ltd, taking all of the ordinary shares, a quarter of the preference shares and £150,000 in cash as payment for their business.
Just as in the dotcom boom, the share offer was six times oversubscribed.
Just as in the dotcom boom the directors could initially do no wrong. They began hiring salesmen (‘travellers’ as.....
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By Ian Buxton
Section : Whisky History
Page number : 52
