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2025 Week 27: Family Business

 In Central Scotland, the name 'Stepek' is well-known, despite the fact the the first Stepek who came to Scotland was my father-in-law, Jan Stepek. Jan arrived as a young man in Scotland in 1946, demobbed from the Polish Navy. (I have written about Jan's experiences during WW2 in other blog posts, detailing his deportation as a teenager with his mother and sisters to a labour camp in Siberia, his traumatic journey from Siberia to freedom and his joining the Polish Navy, but it is when Jan finally arrived in Scotland, the next phase of his life began.)

He had been given a grant to study television and radio engineering in Glasgow and while there in 1947 he met Teresa Murphy at a dance. Teresa had left school at the age of 14 but had studied bookkeeping at night school and worked as a bookkeeper for a small business in Glasgow. They married in February 1949 and quickly discussed the possibility of going into business for themselves. Jan knew how to repair radios (and televisions, though they were very rare in those days) and Teresa knew how to manage and record the finances. They made a good team.

However Jan was not yet a British citizen and had to apply for permission to start a business. This was granted in June 1949.

For the next five years Jan worked tirelessly repairing radios in his new hometown of Cambuslang and surrounding areas of Glasgow. A major change in direction came in 1955, when Jan realised that televisions were about to become the next big thing. He therefore visited a contact in the electrical manufacturing company Philips, which had a factory in nearby Hamilton, and persuaded them to give him a year's worth of televisions for a new shop that he and Teresa would open in Cambuslang. The business took off, selling radios, washing machines, hoovers and other electrical appliances and the rest is history.

Stepeks first store opening in the 1950s in Cambuslang.

At its peak in the year 2000, it employed 350 people, owned 22 electrical retail shops and 8 travel agencies and was one of the top 500 businesses in Scotland. Their 20 year television advertising campaign went 'viral' in its day. In addition to the electrical and travel businesses, they also sold furniture and carpets to tens of thousands of local people.

Stepek Travel and Stepek electrical and furniture store in Hamilton.

 Not bad for "a wee Pole who came to Scotland" as Jan himself put it.

Jan Stepek (1922-2012) in the Polish Navy circa 1943

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