Since 1860 B Hague & Company Limited have been manufacturing products and creating brands.

Early in the reign of Queen Victoria, in a small workroom on the ground floor of a factory in Roden Street, Nottingham, Mr. Hague and his son Ben started a small engineering firm manufacturing parts for hosiery machines.

They were then joined by 2 apprentices, Harry Shardlow & George Scotton, and in 1860 a small circular stitching machine was invented. This had protruding needles and its purpose was to join the welt (top part) of a stocking to the knitted part of the leg, later to be called a linking machine.

On February 4th 1866 the first linking machine was installed at a Nottingham factory and by 1880, 400 machines had been sold. By now Mr. Hague had left the firm and his son Ben had married Jane, a sister of Harry Shardlow, thus making it a small family business.

Unfortunately Ben died in March 1898 at the age of 52. Mr Harry Shardlow and Mr George Scotton now purchased the business, but kept the name B.Hague & Co.

By now trade was good and in 1915 the business moved to a purpose built factory on Poplar Street and Frank Shardlow brought his son Harry into the business.

In 1918 Harry Shardlow senior retired and on 26th November 1918 the business became a limited company. In 1925 George Scotton senior retired after 50 years service.

The main trade at this time was from Leicester and Hinckley, but quite a number of machines were exported to many parts of the world. During the late 20's and early 1930's trade was poor owing to strikes, lock- outs and the depression, at one period the faithful hand-barrow had to be sold to show a profit on the balance sheet.

Then came the second World War 1939-45, and the manufacture of Linking machines came practically to a standstill. Only odd ones were made when a licence had been granted. Most of the men were re-directed to firms working on munitions or aircraft.

In 1945 Mr Frank Shardlow retired after serving over 50 years with the firm. By this time several of the employees had served fifty or more years with the firm. In 1946 Mr Jack Scotton was brought into the business, this being the third generation of the Scotton's.

In 1948, the topping machine was reconstructed to stitch on elastic for use in the manufacture of surgical hosiery, and was on similar lines to the machine built many years ago.

The outwear trade in Hawick and other parts of Scotland was beginning to boom, so most of the trade went north. The majority of machines supplied to the Scottish manufacturers were fitted with automatic tension. Many machines by now were being sent back to the firm for renovation and change of gauge, so trade was good after the war.

In 1964 Mr. John Scotton, followed by his brother Mr. Robert Scotton in 1965, joined the company, this being the forth generation of Scotton's.

1969 saw the retirement of Harry Shardlow, although he remained a share holder in the company until 1970, when Mr. Jack Scotton bought his shares making the Scotton's the sole owners of the company.

The knitting recession from 1971 saw sales fall and the company had to trade on more general engineering to survive.

An electric version was introduced in 1987 and an updated version appeared in February 1990. Sales peeked at the end of 1990 as home knitting started to decline. These machines are still being sold worldwide though with hundreds of thousands of machines now supplied to customers around the world. 1990 also saw the introduction of a new low cost commercial linker to bridge the gap between the domestic and industrial machines.

In 1996 the company took over the manufacture of PDB Electric Yarn Winders from PDB Engineering and in August 1999 it bought the tooling to re-introduce Tricot Products which had been out of production for several years.

In 2007 John Scotton retired leaving his brother Robert Scotton as the sole owner of the business and his son Mark Scotton joined the team making him the 5th generation of the Scotton family.

As demand started to seriously outweigh supply the factory expanded again and additional staff were employed to help. Further investment was made into a new online store called Cameragrip which sold the Hague Camera Supports range worldwide alongside other major industry brands.

During this time knitting sales remained consistent to the consumer market and a new Hague Direct online store soon followed for the knitting products Hague manufactured as well as the other knitting accessory products which were being resold worldwide.

With production increased and more storage space required for the online stores an additional premises was acquired and the company split across two sites with the manufacturing side of the business continuing at the factory and the warehouse and distribution side moving to the new Hague Distribution site.