Derbyshire family-run shop to close after more than 50 years serving the community

Wayne Vaughan, 58, has been running Wisebuys, on Market Street in Staveley, since he was 17 years old, when he stepped in to help mum June, now 86, after the death of father and husband Victor.

As the high street changed around them, the shop has remained a first port of call for customers seeking all manner of hardware goods, household essentials and odds and ends they might struggle to find anywhere else offline.

Wayne, whose wife Lindsay also works in the shop, said: “We’ve seen customers grow up, have kids and now their kids are grown up and coming in too. We know everybody and feel very much part of the community.

“I’ve had a couple of health issues and so we’ve decided now’s the time to call it a day. I’ll be spending more time playing golf and enjoying our caravan in Hornsea. Mum still likes coming in to work on the till and socialise, so she says she’ll get bored at home, but I’m sure she’ll find other ways to keep going.”

He added: “We’ll be open as normal all through January to run the stock down, then have a final discount sale for whatever’s left in the first two weeks of February.”

The family will be a hard act to follow, having built up the business from Victor and June’s door-to-door sales and market stalls before opening their first premises on High Street then relocating to the Market Street shopping precinct when it was built around the star 1970s.

Wayne said: “It’s survived a lot of things – Covid was an absolute nightmare for getting supplies in – but we’ve moved with the times by responding to whatever people were asking for over the years. We used to do stuff like haberdashery and knitwear but today it’s mostly hardware, cleaning and decorating materials, toiletries and confectionery.

“A lot of the stuff we sell, you could try to buy on the internet but you wouldn’t get the same level of service. If someone comes in looking for something and we haven’t got it, we can usually sort it out by the next day.”

Alongside the Vaughan family, customers have been able to rely on shop assistant Pat Morgan, retiring at age of 84, and Andrew Page who is now contemplating a new chapter in his career.

Wayne said: “The thing we’ve enjoyed most is the day-to-day chats with people, all of them with different stories. We’d like to thank our customers for all their support over the years.

“The response we’ve had since we put the news out on Facebook makes us fee like we’ve done a good service. We’ve sold the lease on the shop and I don’t know what they’ll do with it now, but hopefully someone else will come along and pick up where we leave off.”

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