McLauchlan & Co Jewellers

The first shop was located at 20 High Street and subsequently moved to 46 High Street. During that time the business developed its trade by directly importing china and crystal from Czechoslovakia and other countries in Europe. They also started selling beads, Whitby jet and costume jewellery. When Kate McLauchlan passed away in 1941 her son John McLauchlan took the reins. He had been a commercial traveller and in the 1940's and 1950's he developed the sale and repair of watches and clocks and had his own watchmaker on the premises. McLauchlan & Co were always ingenious in creating business opportunities. During the Second World War money and goods were very scarce so the shop started operating a savings club which still runs to this day. After the Second World War John's son Bill joined the business and became the third generation of the family to continue trading on Paisley High Street. The business grew at 46 High Street and during the 1950's the business passed on again to John's wife Jeannie McLauchlan who had been a well-known teacher of dancing in the town from the Primrose School of Dancing. China was a mainstay of the business and in 1958 they obtained the permission of Paisley Town Council to reintroduce bone china with the full Paisley Coat of Arms.

The McLauchlan family started trading in the town of Paisley in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It was early in the twentieth century when the newly widowed Kate McLauchlan started trading in her own right in china, crystal, cutlery and fancy goods. She opened a jewellers and fancy goods shop in Paisley High Street in 1909, the year that her son John McLauchlan married Jeannie Primrose.