James Sugden
Textile industrialist who turned Johnstons of Elgin into Britain’s leading maker of cashmere
JAMES SUGDEN, who has died aged 71, was a champion of the traditional British textile industry. Descended from Huddersfield mill-owners, he spent the first half of his career in Yorkshire and the second in Scotland – where he was long-serving managing director of Johnstons of Elgin, the leading UK maker of cashmere products.
In an era when major clothing retailers were increasingly reliant on cheap imports from developing world factories, Sugden multiplied Johnstons’ turnover from £10 million to more than £50 million, tripled its workforce, developed a new knitwear arm and established export sales to more than 30 countries – receiving a Queen’s Award in 1994. Sugden’s enthusiasm for every aspect of textile making and its history, and his eagerness to help young people make careers in it, were boundless.
James Edward Sugden was born in Huddersfield on September 13 1946, and was educated at Sedbergh and Downing College, Cambridge, where he read Economics. After training with Allied Textile Companies in woollen and worsted manufacture, and night school studies at Huddersfield College of Technology, he joined the Bradford yard spinner W & J Whitehead, where he was responsible for sales of knitting yarns.
In 1980 he moved to be managing director of MP Stonehouse in Wakefield, his father-in-law’s firm, which was Britain’s leading worsted spinner of carpet and rug yarns. After Stonehouse was taken over by Readicut International in 1987, Sugden was recruited as sales director of Johnstons of Elgin and swiftly promoted to managing director.
He travelled extensively, both to find new customers and to source raw materials – particularly cashmere, the fine fibre obtained from the fleeces of certain species of goat as far afield as China and Mongolia. Back at base, he invariably started the day by walking round the mill to greet workers, who in turn held him in great affection. When a flood swept through the Elgin plant in 1997, he was immediately on the scene in fishing waders to begin the clean-up and instigate plans to maintain production that turned disaster to new opportunity.
In 26 years at the helm of Johnstons, he experienced “ups and downs, but probably more ups”. In 2005, he moved his office and home to the Borders to focus on the revival of Johnstons’ knitwear operation at Hawick – which had begun in a small way in the 1980s, with the encouragement of the Scottish Enterprise agency, at a time when the region’s long-established woollen industry was heading into decline.
Passionately committed to keeping production in Scotland, he gradually extended the plant’s customer base and product range – including annual production of 200,000 pairs of gloves – and created 250 skilled jobs. “India can do it cheaper,” Sugden observed. “But we have to do it better.”
As a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Weavers, and chairman of its textile committee, Sugden promoted apprenticeship schemes for weaving technicians and prizes for the work of young British textile designers. He was chairman of the Scottish Textiles Manufacturing Association and a leading light of the Boston-based Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers’ Institute, which represents producers around the world.
He was also involved in the Prince of Wales’s project to restore Dumfries House in Ayrshire, where young people were given opportunities to learn new skills. He was appointed OBE for services to the textile industry in 2011.
After retiring from Johnstons in December 2013 Sugden revived the name of T & H Blamires – a Huddersfield mill company specialising in fine woollens, founded by his great-great-grandfather in 1866 but closed in 1961 – for his consultancy business offering technical and commercial advice to other textile businesses.
He greatly enjoyed his roles as a nonexecutive director of Baxters of Speyside, the food company run in idiosyncratic style by his friends Gordon and Ena Baxter – and latterly of Brora, a cashmere fashion brand to which Johnstons was a supplier. Brora’s founder, Victoria Stapleton, credited much of her success to Sugden’s mentoring: “James was forever helping someone out, advising, listening – nothing was too much trouble … Around the textile world his name always brought a smile, praise, and stories of generosity and fun.”
Sugden followed his father as churchwarden of Holy Trinity, Huddersfield, during his Yorkshire days and was later treasurer of the Gordon Chapel at Fochabers, near Elgin. He loved his dogs, his gardens and family life.
He married, in 1973, Linda Apps, who was a ward of his mentor Oliver Stonehouse; she survives him with a son and two daughters. All three children are in the textile business, John as owner of the “estate tweed” specialist Campbell’s of Beauly, Emily as a retail consultant and Rosie as the creator of her own cashmere brand.