The Macnaughton Group
Last updated | 25/04/2007
The Macnaughton Group is a "new company which has been around for generations", according to group managing director Blair Macnaughton.
The apparent contradiction is easily explained by the recent history of the firm, which saw Blair returning in 1987 from a career in textiles in Australia to take over the reins at his family's Pitlochry-based company. In partnership with his father, also named Blair, who had been running the company since the 1950s, he formed the Macnaughton Group as a new holding company to take over the somewhat stagnant former business and greatly rationalise the fragmented shareholding.
Investment and a more strategic approach to key markets have paid off in spectacular fashion: the workforce has doubled and turnover increased fivefold in just a few years. The company is a long way from its roots in the 1780's when a tenant farmer near Aberfeldy began spinning and weaving cloth for his friends.
Yet the continuity remains. Blair himself is the seventh generation of his family to run the business, which really got going in the early 19th century. Two sons of the original Macnaughton relocated to Pitlochry in order to access new markets via the main road and later railway. When Blair took over in 1987, the business employed some 60 people and turned over around £1 million a year.
"We initiated an immediate change of direction into a new area of fabrics for the upholstery and soft furnishings markets," says Blair. "We deliberately focussed on the softer, sleeker worsted-style fabrics rather than the tweed types then generally available."
Operating under the 'Isle Mill' brand, the Group has now carved out a strong niche as specialists in wool fabrics, recognised as being small but highly flexible and with strong design strengths. Exports have grown phenomenally, going from zero to more than £1 million in the United States in the first three years, for example. Scandinavia and Northern Europe are also important markets.
Wholesaling of highland dress and accessories is a smaller but highly significant component of the business as well, in which the Group has seized an astonishing 65 percent of the world market since 1987 under the 'House of Edgar' brand.
Overall, the Macnaughton Group now turns over about £5 million and employs 115 people in three locations. A weaving mill in Keith (Morayshire) was later joined by a cutting and finishing plant in Paisley near Glasgow. Blair's 'conservative' dividend and reinvestment policy has cushioned the business through the periodic lean times in the last 15 years, and most importantly funded the final piece of the jigsaw: the relocation of the office and warehouse from Pitlochry to a completely new building on Perth's Inveralmond Industrial Estate in 1999.
After more than 160 years in Pitlochry, the move was the end of an era, but in fact almost all the staff came with Blair to Perth, where the workforce has since grown to 45 - just under half the Group total. The choice of Perth was relatively easy, even though Keith and the Scottish Borders were also considered.
"Perth has fabulous communications," says Blair. "I am only 45 minutes from Edinburgh Airport, and 75 minutes from Glasgow Airport, even in the rush-hour. Our products can be shifted easily from Perth all over the world.
"We have better access to new recruits, who are generally better-educated and better-trained than elsewhere. We have had very good co-operation and support from the council's economic development people."
"Ultimately, however, it's just a great place to live. The lifestyle is second to none, and many of our golf-loving overseas customers are particularly impressed by the fact that we're almost equidistant from Gleneagles, St Andrews and Carnoustie. The city just suits us very well."
