J H Wand Group

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.

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.

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