Borgstena Textile

AB Borgstena Textile , originally Borgstena Trikåfabrik , is a Swedish manufacturer of car upholstery. The company was founded in 1925 by Gustav Johansson as a textile factory focused on making underwear. Gustav Johansson visited the world exhibition in Gothenburg in 1923 and saw there a machine that knitted fabric. He then took his inheritance of SEK 1,000 and bought his first knitting machine which he installed in the basement of his home in the town of Borgstena and started by knitting and sewing socks and underwear for the defense . Gustav Johansson's son Gösta later took over Borgstena Trikåfabrik. Gösta Johansson, who later took the surname Borghed, [ 1 ] realized during a hot car holiday with the family in the USA in 1963 that something should be done about the sticky car upholstery. He wondered if it would not be possible to use the company's knitting machines to make a more comfortable seat. Ten years later, Borgstena got her first contract for car upholstery. Since then, Borgstena Textile has developed into an international company with production on several continents. Borgstena Textile also acquired a number of well-known clothing companies, including AB TH Lapidus [ 2 ] , during a period when both clothing and car clothing were still being manufactured. During his most active period in business, Gösta had several external board assignments, including he sat for a period on PK-Banken's central board [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] together with e.g. Stig Malm (LO chairman), Björn Rosengren (TCO chairman) and Ove Rainer . In April 2007 [ 6 ] , the employees at the factory in Borgstena were notified that production there would be closed down and moved to Portugal. [ 7 ] Only the head office with design and sales remained in Sweden.