The NWAR Name

NWAR has a bit of history and over the years NWAR (NW) has stood for a couple of things. Now, we will leave it up to you what it means. 

Originally started, if I recall, in the late eighties in Anniesland, Glasgow it was Ness Watt Appliance Repairs as the company was originally formed by Allistair Ness and James Watt as a sort of offshoot of Loudoun Group Services (LGS). It was its own limited company. 

NW was intended to be used for sales though, with some appliance repairs thrown in for good measure for contractual reasons at the time. Back then, appliance manufacturers had enough sway with contracts to make crazy demands that they'd never get away with today. 

Over time NW stopped sales, Allistair left and it more or less became a Candy service agency with some others thrown in run by myself for a few years. Latterly I went off to run WATCO, an appliance parts operation based in the same Anniesland industrial estate. 

Then the mid/late nineties rolled around and the financial woes of the era caused the demise of Loudoun Group and WATCO leaving only NW that changed to being North West Appliance Repairs Limited when Allistair left. 

Although Phil in Blackpool didn't check if the name was available before deciding to use the same name, so we will sometimes get enquiries about their stuff as people get confused. We're not them, we don't repair TVs etc and never did. There's another company using NWAR as well, I've no idea what that's about. But there's never any doubt about who was first; just look when this domain was registered by me in 1999, which predates all, although NW was trading as such long before that. 

Anyway, three of us decided to continue with NW, just doing service for Candy/Hoover, NESN and some others but it was no longer viable or sensible to remain in Anniesland paying high costs for a unit we didn't need. And, we didn't want the travelling costs either. 

So we moved the business into a private home in Stewarton, Ayrshire and till the early 2000's it stayed that way. Of course, as with any business, there were a few dramas from time to time but, nothing much changed. 

At that time we'd already secured this domain, had a website and so on which was way ahead of its time and, most anyone else in the industry. 

The industry started to change, though, and seeing this, I registered and started to work on UK Whitegoods in 2002. 

In 2004 UK Whitegoods Limited was formed, largely to deal with a contract we got from Proctor & Gamble to train engineers but it means we needed a company number, VAT number, employ staff and so on. There was no option but to form a proper company to deal with that. 

Around late 2004/2005 we moved into a small office unit in Nursery Street, Kilmarnock to deal with the P&G stuff, phone calls, booking etc and NW followed into that space as it was just easier to manage as NW was still a very active repair business at the time. 

In 2008 UK Whitegoods Limited moved to the units in Bonnyton as they needed more space for ISE and then spares, NW went with that. 

Until around 2014 (I think) when due to the loss of one founder, James Watt and some contracts being changed it became increasingly clear that NW wasn't really viable and it wasn't getting the time and love it needed from me as I was too busy with other stuff. So, it was decided to close it down, which we did. 

The name carried on, Robert continued to do service work on his own for a while but ever so slowly NW faded into the background. The name forgotten and the website unloved and not maintained. 

NW however has been a bit of a baby to me and, I've worked with it for 30 years or more so, I can't let it go. 

Now in 2024 I've revived the website, starting from scratch with it so that I can say what I please, free from any of the shackles placed by UKW or pretty much anyone really and to look at perhaps some consultancy work etc. 

About Me

Some people regard me as an almost professional gobshite, a troublemaker and doubtless more besides for a number of the things I've written or done over the years. But that will often be because what I said hasn't fitted with somebody's narrative. 

Understanding a little about myself may help you understand why that is. 

Back when I started in the industry and, as my father worked in it since the 1970s, running his own business in the late 70s before I left school, I've never really known a time when, in some way, I wasn't exposed to the appliance industry. I wasn't even supposed to be in the industry, I was far off doing other things, but circumstances meant I got roped into helping when I was 17, running about making tea for the guys, out meeting up with them for two-man repairs, uplifts and so on. 

Basically, I started out at the lowest of the low. 

From there, I learned about how the appliances worked and how to repair them and then went onto the call handling and administration side of things. Ultimately running NW for Candy and a number of other authorised agencies whilst helping to manage LGS and the major contracts it had like Zanussi at the time. Whilst running, that part of my remit was to be on the road when needed, be that we were busy or to cover holidays and illness, which I could do, as I was trained on all products, hot, wet and cold, including gas. 

I was then asked, as I had all this experience in admin and parts to go run WATCO, a local distributor of spares. 

In the time I spent managing service and administering it, I had learned. a lot having to deal with customers (obviously), claims for warranty and extended warranty jobs, contracts with manufacturers, insurers and so on. 

Then it was the huge change and downsizing, moving to Stewarton and running a much smaller operation which, I could almost do in my sleep. With the odd jaunt out on the road to cover for holidays etc. 

At some point my father had a heart attack, on the way to Edinburgh to do a job for De Dietrich (it was memorable) and I was back out on the road for a long time while he recovered. 

Already nwar.co.uk was in place. 

But during all this and having seen the effects of contracts, the implications of many of them and seeing repairers up and down the country essentially being screwed over along with customers not being very well informed about what they were buying I decided to start UK Whitegoods to try to help and inform people. But that was off the back of a Yahoo mailing list that I had started for repairers that some had repeatedly tried to have shut down and threatened me with legal action over. 

You see, it turned out that some were not at all happy that the repairers were talking to each other and were even slightly organised. It mean the whole "oh but so and so is doing it so you should too" approach no longer worked. 

So for a time, till 2004/5 I worked and earned from NW whilst running UKW as a side project that was not for profit. Along with helping trade associations and more. 

We got the contract to train repairers on detergents from Proctor & Gamble and UK Whitegoods Limited (UKWL) was formed to deal with that. A little later online spares sales was also wrapped into UKWL as was ISE, our own brand that in my opinion was not correctly handled at the start and we likely should not have done but, we did. Due to changes with manufacturers ownership that had wrapped up in 2013/4 as supplies were no longer possible and a heap of other stuff I forget. 

Around the same time NWAR Limited was also wrapped up.  

During all of that we had started to operate Amica service in the UK, handling all the service calls and so on as I was, for ISE and Amica poacher turned gamekeeper and that saved Amica a small fortune along with delivering a very good service and, that's not by my account but that of others who have asked if it could be replicated. It could but, the cost to do so is for some prohibitive. 

In late 2015 Amica bought CDA and decided to wrap Amica service into the CDA operation. 

UKWL went to being only an online retailer. 

In 2023 the accountant for UKWL royally screwed up and despite telling us we didn't owe money to HMRC, they owed us for claims made etc, HMRC issued a winding up order and UKWL almost went under. I saved it from that but it transpired to be a stay of execution as we had to carry way more debt to sort that out incurring costs, credit limits were reduced or removed due to it by suppliers and so about a year later the closure of UKWL was inevitable. 

UKW, which is still (at the time of writing) my own personal website continues as ever it did with the grace and help from some friends to keep it going. 

You could say that I was "seasoned" in most aspects of the industry in some way or another with a mass of experience in dealing with many areas. From being in the field, to running service handling over 10K calls a year, managing the staff, national service, own brand, logistics, spares the list just goes on and on of what I've had to turn my hand to over the years. 

All this has meant that I have opinions and I try to, best I can, inform and protect the repairers and customers. Which is why, going back to the first sentence of this piece, that some people appear to take issue with me about some of the things I've said, especially so if it was tearing down a plan they had to screw over the repairers. I don't and never will apologise for that as, after all, if you are not prepared to stand by your own principles, of what value are you to anyone? 

But with all that said, I have helped a number of parties not get themselves into that mess in the first place, finding a compromise that everyone can live with. Which, to my mind, is a way better outcome for everyone.