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Coats Group plc
Coats makes the industrial sewing thread, zippers, and software that hold the world's clothes and shoes together.
Coats is the company that makes the thread in your jeans. It is one of the world's biggest suppliers of industrial sewing thread — the tough, high-strength stuff that factories use to stitch together T-shirts, sneakers, car seats, and backpacks. If you have ever looked at the seam on a pair of Levi's or a running shoe and wondered who made the string holding it together, there is a decent chance the answer is Coats.
The business works like this: apparel and footwear factories buy thread by the truckload, along with small parts like zippers and buttons, and Coats sells them the whole package. Increasingly, it also sells software that helps those factories track orders, manage inventory, and run their sewing floors more efficiently. The customer is not you or me — it is the factory manager who needs millions of meters of thread delivered on time so the production line never stops. Switching suppliers mid-season is a hassle, so once a big manufacturer is set up with Coats, it tends to stay. Coats has been around since the 1820s, when it started as a thread maker in Paisley, Scotland, and grew into a global brand — the little "Coats" label on a spool of sewing thread was once as familiar as a Coke bottle. Its modern life has been messier. For years it was wrapped inside an investment company called Guinness Peat Group, which did everything from insurance to brewing, until the thread business was separated and took the Coats name back in 2015. It now trades on the London Stock Exchange and is headquartered in the UK.
The business is steady rather than flashy. Coats earns money on volume — billions of garments a year need thread — and its scale lets it squeeze costs and keep prices competitive against rivals. It pays a dividend and has bought back shares, returning cash to investors rather than chasing big risky bets. The vulnerability is straightforward: when the global apparel industry sneezes, Coats catches a cold, because fewer shirts made means fewer spools of thread sold.
Saved answer · last researched 14 Nov 2026