Pringle dressed royalty for 185 years — then lost £8M a year and sold for £6M

Pringle of Scotland was founded in 1815 by Robert Pringle in Hawick, Scotland. It became one of Britain's most prestigious knitwear brands — inventing the twinset, the argyle pattern, and the golf sweater. The brand held royal warrants and dressed British royalty for generations. It was acquired by Dawson International in 1967 and grew into a global luxury label.

By the late 1990s, Pringle was struggling. The brand was losing approximately £4.5 million per year. In 2000, Dawson sold Pringle to Hong Kong-based S.C. Fang & Sons Company Ltd. for just £6 million — a fraction of what the brand had once been worth. A turnaround effort led by CEO Kim Winser and designer Stuart Stockdale invested over £35 million.

Despite sales rising to nearly £25 million, the losses only deepened to around £8 million a year as expansion costs mounted. In 2005, control passed to Kenneth Fang, but by 2011 the brand's design director was ousted after less than a year due to stagnant sales. Pringle, which had dressed the Queen and invented the twinset, survived but never regained its former stature.