A trade intertwined with history

Pringle of Scotland has links with the Scottish Borders which date back to the early 19th century

In the year Pringle of Scotland was founded, Napoleon was suffering an historic defeat at Waterloo.

Robert Pringle set up the company in Hawick in 1815 - initially as a manufacturer of hosiery and underwear.

Along with a number of other firms, it helped to ensure that the stories of textiles and the Scottish Borders remained closely intertwined.

There are few places where the ups and downs of the industry have been more keenly felt.

Robert Pringle's founding principles of quality, style, authenticity and innovation are still of the utmost importance today Pringle website

At its peak, there were thousands employed in making the garments, which proved a huge success both at home and abroad.

Pringle boasted some glamorous customers in the 1940s and 1950s including the likes of Jean Simmons, Grace Kelly, Brigitte Bardot and Margot Fonteyn.

More recently, its attire has been worn by Madonna, Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, Claudia Schiffer and Scarlett Johansson.

And, courtesy of Nick Faldo, its famous diamond pattern was almost obligatory on the golf course for most of the 1980s.

Despite that worldwide reputation, the company has always been proud of its Hawick roots.

"Pringle is one of the oldest names in the Scottish Borders, the birthplace of the British knitwear industry," says the company website.

The company has made efforts to move into "high fashion"

However, those historic links have been getting much more slender in recent years.

In 1998, Pringle shut its 280-worker Berwick operation and cut jobs in Hawick.

It was part of an intense scaling down of the business which had seen employee numbers fall from 2,000 to about 450 in the space of five years.

In 1999, its parent company, Dawson International, put it up for sale and it was eventually purchased by the Hong Kong-based Fang Brothers in 2000.

Shortly afterwards, they announced bold plans to put the Pringle name back on the catwalk.

The aim was to rebrand the business as a "high fashion" product.

A total of �45m was invested in Hawick with that goal in mind.

Like so many other textile firms, however, Pringle has found trading conditions in the global marketplace increasingly difficult.

'End of an era'

After eight years under its new owners, plans were unveiled for the potential closure of the Hawick site with the loss of 80 jobs.

The company blamed "changing customer demands and the competitiveness of the industry".

Local politicians described it as "the end of an era".

"Robert Pringle's founding principles of quality, style, authenticity and innovation are still of the utmost importance today," says the Pringle website.

However, the town where he set up the business nearly 200 years ago may no longer have a manufacturing role to play.

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