Brothers pull plug on tech store

Brothers Allen and Andy Ward, who once had 12 full-time employees as one of the largest cellphone dealers in northern New England, are closing the Northgate Plaza shop on Thursday, Nov. 30. They have sold their business to retail giant W.B. Mason, which is taking over the hundreds of Ward’s active accounts.

“We had the opportunity to sell” and decided to capitalize on it, Allen said. “There are a lot of faces we’re going to miss seeing.”

“It’s a changing world. It was time to do it,” Andy added.

The brothers built Ward’s from the ground up with their father, Dewey Ward. Andy and Dewey started the company in 1981, working on computers and custom code-writing software and programming in the basement of a house on Union Street. Allen came on board soon after, and in 1985, by popular demand, they began selling office supplies in addition to their tech offerings.

To help get that portion of the business off the ground, they opened a retail store just off Portland Street in the space now occupied by Critters’n Things.

Their willingness to change, adapt and offer new products and services helped the brothers succeed in business so long.

“You’ve got to stay with the times,” Andy said.

The company continued to grow and thrive after the move, eventually outgrowing the space on Portland Street. The brothers were looking for a new, larger space in 1997 when they had a stroke of good luck; nationwide electronics dealer RadioShack was looking for a new local partner in Lamoille County.

The brothers struck a deal with RadioShack and moved into their current store in the Northgate Plaza soon after.

Selling cellular

Adding RadioShack’s electronic products meant the introduction of cellphones to the local market. The new technology was just taking off, and sparked a business boom for the Wards. They became the largest distributor of Cellular One phones and contracts in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine for several years.

In the late 2000s, they had 12 full-time employees and several part-timers as they continued to build computer software and sell electronics and office supplies.

Things began to change for the Wards, partly because Cellular One was bought out by larger communications companies, and partly because they had stopped writing their own custom computer software and programming — although they continued to provide support for the businesses using their systems for years, and actually still use their own software at the store.

Then, RadioShack declared bankruptcy in early 2015, ending Ward’s days as a cellphone dealer.

“We still offer prepaid phones, but that was a huge loss for our business,” Andy said.

Added Allen, “It was pretty challenging.”

Their employee roster shrank as a result, and the staff was down to five full-timers when the brothers decided to sell to W.B. Mason.

Tech takeaways

Both brothers say their business has diminished as people began to bypass the store and shop online.

“Internet sales definitely haven’t helped,” Andy said.

Allen said that electronics, the thing that made them the most successful, “we became a victim of.”

“The technology we sold helped to make us less relevant,” Andy said.

Fewer people try to repair or build their own computers these days, so that aspect of the business has dwindled as well.

Ward’s landlord, Howard Manosh, owns commercial and retail space all over Morrisville and Lamoille County, and he’s seen lots of small, local retail stores suffer because of internet sales.

“You hate to see those little stores go out. They were handy,” Manosh said. “Everyone goes online and buys their stuff.”

Ward’s Services will stay open until the end of the month, but W.B. Mason has already hired Ward’s traveling sales staff to continue servicing the company’s accounts.

“It will still be the same faces,” Allen said. “They’ll just be getting their product from W.B. Mason.”

The Massachusetts-based company won’t be operating a local storefront as part of the new arrangement, and the Ward brothers are moving on, although they’re not exactly sure where next.

“We have no clue what we want to do,” Andy said. “We’re not ready to retire.”

Both brothers have hobbies that also serve as part-time jobs. Allen is a photographer who shoots pictures and writes press releases for a few local racetracks, and Andy is a licensed battlefield guide who spends part of every year giving tours at Gettysburg.

“I’d really like to expand on that,” Andy said.