M&Co

M&Co is a Scottish fashion retailer, traded for decades as Mackays, whose roots go back to a pawnbroking business recorded as founded in 1834 and which turned to clothing in 1953. It sold affordable family clothing from high-street shops across the United Kingdom until it collapsed into administration in December 2022. Since February 2023 the name has belonged to Yours Clothing Group and trades online only.

Six pawnshops become clothing stores

Wikipedia gives 1834 as the founding date of the business. The clothing story starts much later. In 1953, Len and Iain McGeoch began converting the family's six pawnshops into clothing stores, a change that tracked the postwar decline of pawnbroking and the growth of ready-to-wear on the high street.

The company grew by buying other people's shops. In 1970 it acquired Ghinns, which gave it a footing in the London area. In 1986 it bought Apparel Affiliates, owner of 140 retail stores in the United States, an unusually bold move for a Scottish value chain. The sources the museum checked do not say when the American stores were sold or closed, and the company's later history plays out in Britain and, through franchises, the Gulf. For most of this period the shops traded as Mackays.

The 2005 switch from Mackays to M&Co

In 2005 the company began converting all 270 of its stores to the M&Co banner. The new name kept the M of the old one.

For the museum's purposes, M&Co belongs to the same family as other British value retailers for whom underwear is a dependable, unglamorous category: multipack briefs, simple full briefs and pajama sets bought on the same trip as everything else. The museum could not read M&Co's own lingerie pages, so this is a description of the market, not of a specific M&Co range. Retailers such as JD Williams and Littlewoods served a similar customer through catalogs. M&Co did it through a chain of high-street shops.

Headquarters in Paisley, then Inchinnan

The company long ran its business from Caledonia House in Paisley, Renfrewshire, west of Glasgow. Its later headquarters was in Inchinnan, also in Renfrewshire, with a buying office in Mayfair, London. In March 2012 the first of several international franchise stores opened in the Dubai Mall, with more planned for the United Arab Emirates.

Administration, 2022

The pandemic hit hard. In June 2020 M&Co was reported to be seeking new backers after a slump in sales, with Deloitte supporting the search for investors and a pre-pack administration among the options considered. The business survived that round, but not the next. In December 2022 M&Co went into administration, with Teneo Financial Advisory appointed as administrators.

On 6 February 2023 it was announced that all 170 remaining stores would close that spring, the last of them by the end of April. The closures removed a familiar name from 170 high streets at once.

Yours Clothing Group and the online M&Co

In February 2023 Yours Clothing Group, the British fashion business, announced it had bought the M&Co brand. Saeed Hatteea was named chairman and Andrew Killingsworth chief executive. The shops were not part of the future: M&Co now trades online.

Under its new owner, M&Co sits in a group of fashion labels that includes Evans, Long Tall Sally and Yours Clothing itself, each aimed at a different body type or size range. Wikipedia reports group revenue of about £257.6 million for 2025. The museum's archive lists close to 60 products under the M&Co name. The old shops are gone, but the brand that started as six pawnbrokers' counters in the west of Scotland still sells clothes, now from a website rather than a high street.

Last updated October 7, 2026