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The group's main retail premises and headquarters
in North Street, Bourne
The J H Wand Group that now prospers from its
headquarters in Bourne is one of those successful family companies
that owes its existence to one man, in this case Jack Wand.
Despite contracting polio as a child and a medical diagnosis that he
would not live past the age of 20, he has seen his business grow
from a one man venture with a capital of £15, to a small but
effective multi-million pound concern trading world-wide in
electronic equipment and employing around 60 people.
John Holliday Wand was born at Rippingale, near Bourne, in 1925 and
left school when he was 13 to work in a bakery. By 1941 he had
graduated to an apprenticeship in the radio trade for a Bourne
shopkeeper where he learned to repair wireless sets and charge
accumulators. But other responsibilities came his way and in 1948,
seeing the advantages of television which he had seen demonstrated
during a visit to the Radio Olympia exhibition in London, and
realising that his employer did not agree, he left to set up on his
own, using his meagre capital to build his first premises with wood
and zinc bought from the Saturday market.
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Jack Wand's first showroom cum
workshop was built by himself with materials bought from
the local market alongside his council house home at
Rippingale and, as he admits, it was little more than a
shed, but the business he did there laid the foundations
to the successful company that thrives in the Bourne
area today. |
Photo: Courtesy Jack Wand
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It was little more than a shed but the business soon
expanded, opening his first shop at Billingborough in 1960 and in
1971 he took over the business of Burton & Waltham, ironmongers,
in North Street, Bourne, which is still trading today as a
successful electrical and hardware store together with the
Billingborough shop that is still in business and another shop in
the High Street at Stamford. The firm has become a small but
effective rural empire with a respectful customer base in South
Lincolnshire, selling and servicing the entire range of electrical
and electronic appliances as well as hardware and household goods.
In 1999, Jack was awarded the MBE in the New Year Honours List for
his services to the electronics industry and he has now happily
retired, leaving his three sons and son-in-law to run the business
that flourishes over a far wider area than he ever envisaged. |
