Jumpers are winners for David Stevenson

since his Edinburgh Woollen Mill produces jumpers of the wearing variety

while his racehorses clear the fences in a hot pursuit of the winning

post.

Mind you, the chance of ultimate glory for one of his four-footed

friends came a little unstuck at Aintree the other week when the heavy

conditions meant the withdrawal of Langholm Dyer, which was strongly

tipped as a Grand National winner.

David's 83-year-old father, Andrew Stevenson, the original Langholm

Dyer (having formed the family dyeing company), was poised for a

Liverpool visit on the big day but the best-laid schemes of mill-owners

and publicists do gang agley, not aft but sometimes.

''There's always next year,'' says a philosophical David Stevenson,

who would have welcomed that piece of publicity much more than his other

foray into the public eye last year, when he was listed among the elite

of Scotland's businessmen who pay themselves many thousands per week.

It was all to do with pension contributions, he assures me, and the

salary which he actually pays himself is much, much less; a bit over

#100,000 per annum.

Whatever the sum, Stevenson earns his corn from the effort of

masterminding the woollen company which he and the family run from their

native Langholm, in the Scottish Borders -- a private concern with a

turnover of #45m and owned by the Stevensons to the extent of 95%.

It all began with Andrew Stevenson, who moved in the 1930s from the

employment of Turnbull of Hawick to Arthur Bell, tweed manufacturer of

Langholm. In 1946, he put forward an idea to the three local mill-owners

that, with their financial assistance, he could start a dyeing and

finishing company to serve all three.

Andrew took about 10% of the company and launched himself in business.

Elder son David went from the local school to Dumfries Academy and on to

Edinburgh University, where he graduated as a Bachelor of Commerce

before studying chartered accountancy.

''My father encouraged me to go elsewhere,'' he remembers,

''emphasising that, with a C.A. qualification, the world is your oyster.

Well, I had a brief altercation with the steel industry before deciding

that I was more suited for being my own boss!

''So I joined the family business in 1967. Meanwhile, my brother Neil

had taken a degree in dyeing at Bradford University and came back to

look after the technical side.''

By 1966, Andrew Stevenson's enterprise had 25 employees and an

turnover around #80,000 to #90,000.

But another excitement had stirred in the family. Son David had

developed as Scotland's champion pole-vaulter, jumping for Scotland in

the Commonwealth Games in Australia in 1962 and Jamaica in 1966 and for

Britain in the Tokyo Olympics of 1964.

When due to compete again in the Commonwealth Games of 1970, in

Edinburgh, he and his family produced a special tartan which they gifted

to the Scottish team.

As a means of promoting the Games tartan, they opened a shop in

Randolph Place, Edinburgh, gained a taste for the retail business and

decided to form a company.

''We thought that Langholm Woollen Mill lacked a certain cachet so we

called it the Edinburgh Woollen Mill,'' David Stevenson recalls.

The company had also hit an unexpected snag, facing a claim from a

Yorkshire firm for whom they had dyed some cloth in the wrong shade.

They compromised through buying the cloth in question before cutting it

up and offering it to the public at a factory sale.

The retail bug had truly bitten. From that one shop in Edinburgh (they

now have a racehorse called Randolph Place), the Stevensons began to

expand to Carlisle, Dumfries and Hawick.

There was no strategic plan. The business just evolved until, today,

there are no fewer than 125 retail outlets, stretching from Ullapool and

Inverness to Canterbury and St Ives in Cornwall.

Meanwhile, they bought the Heather Mills in Selkirk for the spinning

of yarn and weaving of cloth and developed their own manufacture both

there and at East Kilbride.

To that they added Coatbridge, when Dawson International closed their

factory there. The Stevensons took on 160 of the employees to produce

knitwear.

''In 1980 we also bought Romanes and Paterson of Princes Street,

Edinburgh, a business which included a mail-order service,'' says David

Stevenson. ''It was making a loss when we bought it but it is now

profitable.''

They create their own designs and sub-contract much of the tailoring

to small companies in the Glasgow area.

The company had also bought Antartex of Alexandria, the sheepskin and

leather people, though the once-popular sheepskin coat has now gone out

of fashion.

The exciting development of the moment is to establish a craft village

at the Antartex site, renting out space to others who can manufacture on

the spot and benefit from the visitor aspect. The Princess Royal is due

there in July.

So the Stevensons create their own styles and sell them, all the time

retaining their spiritual base in the Muckle Toun of Langholm, which is

the headquarters for storage and distibution as well as administration.

They sponsor Ian Stark of Selkirk, the horseman who collected silver

at the last Olympics, and keep their eight racehorses in training with

Gordon Richards at Penrith.

Most of them have names beginning with Tartan. But put a note in your

diary for next year's Grand National. With firmer conditions, Langholm

Dyer will be out to prove that, like his employer's woolly jumpers, he

really is a natural winner.