Clarks and Coats
If the successful spread of the game of football worldwide could be said to be due to a single source it would be Paisley in Renfrew and both the management and workers of two organisations, two companies, two makers of the mundane, cotton thread, Clarks and Coats. Coats is now preeminent but it is difficult to know if either was chicken or egg and it matters little because in 1893, just as football, began its truly international spread, that is outwith the British Isles, the two companies combined.
What made Clarks and Coats was not initially war, the Napoleonic Wars, and the mechanical sewing machine. It had been invented in 1755 in Britain by a German but the versions that would be mass-produced for the home were American, Elias Howes' in 1845 and then in 1851 Isaac Singer. In 1856 2,564 machines were produced. In 1860 it was 13,000. A new production plant was built in Elizabeth in New York. In 1873 the first overseas plant was opened, Clydebank, and sewing machines needed thread.