Sandy Bannerman: Nick Bannerman - Johnsons of Elgin

The official hand over night was held in The Buccleuch Hotel last Thursday when Tommy Mulvee outgoing Club President welcomed his successor Scott Elliot who assumes his second tenure of office. Tommy thanked all club members for their support during his year of office which he had enjoyed very much, he wished every success to Scott for his year, and presented him with the President's chain. In his turn Scott thanked Tommy for all his work in leading the club during the year, and presented him with his Past President's badge. Then President Scott presented Vice President Sandy Bannerman with his chain of office, and congratulated Mairhi Tricket on becoming Junior Vice President.
The guest speaker was Nick Bannerman, Managing Director of Johnstons of Elgin. The company had been established back in 1797 with 8 employees, and much expansion had taken place over the years, currently their main workforce comprised 260 employees in Hawick, 450 in Elgin, The company had offices in Tokyo, Dusseldorf, London, and New York, Burberry were their biggest customer, and they dealt with a number of high quality customers such as Chanel, Nick related a number of his experiences on travelling around the world, saying that all travel was not glamorous, airport regulations and security could become tedious and frustrating. However there were compensations in that there was the opportunity to meet some very fine people, one businessman was worth 6 Billion dollars and had 75 companies connected with the internet. Personally he travelled widely - Europe, The U.S.A. The far East, He had encountered certain locations which were in his view "out of this world" such as Nantucket Island, U.S.A. possibly the richest county in America, originally a whaling location, it's now "the" place to have a home, and one resident bought a house there for 7 million dollars and sold it for 59 million. it's reached by a small aircraft and is beautiful if every aspect. Another of his favourite spots was Marin County at one end of the Golden Gate bridge at San Francisco. Nowadays there is a much closer liason between local knitwear companies than in the early years, and this benefits the textile industry as a whole. Recently Johnstons of Elgin had been visited by H.R.H. Prince Charles and Camilla, the couple really were a credit to The Royal family and had taken a genuine interest in everything connected with the visit. The company has been honoured with a Royal Warrant which would be a great boost for future trading. During his travels there had been lots of laughs as well, and sometimes he himself had been caught up in some of natures disasters, such as hurricanes etc. Johnsons of Elgin were promoting an apprenticeship scheme, for it was important to ensure that for the future we had a young workforce who could replace in due time the older workforce maintaining the high quality garments for which his company was known the world over. Past President Tommy Mulvee proposed the votes of thanks to Nick for a superb talk.