Seams Sewn Long Ago: The Story of Coats the Threadmakers

Few people know much about the J&P Coats sewing thread business. Yet in 1910, it was the third largest Industrial company in the world, bigger than Shell and General Electric. This is the story of a single Scottish family, who began in 1825 in a humble weaver’s cottage in Paisley and ended up millionaires after 70 years of bitter rivalry with their main competitors at the other end of town. When the two merged in 1896, the newly named J. & P. Coats Ltd. was set to dominate the thread industry and the UK stock market for the next 30 years. But that growth and prosperity couldn’t last forever. The second century was far less easy for what had become a huge multinational. The Coatses gradually relinquished control and the corporation struggled to maintain its growth through two World Wars and a period of radical change of fashion and technology. Yet it has adapted and survived. This was the first truly multinational industrial company. Their people went into regions of the world where others feared to tread, met inflation before anyone else knew what it was, and the organisation inspired the type of employee loyalty that would be the envy of businesses today. This is their story.