The story of our company's origin is simple. Like millions of others around the world, I’m a huge fan of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, and so are my children. A couple of months before the release of the Deathly Hallows, I began working on costumes that our kids could wear to the Midnight book release party at our local book store. The costumes turned out very nice, except for one thing, they still needed wands. So we hit the stores. No luck. Determined as we were for the costumes to look authentic, plastic wands were out of the question, and all of the wooden wands we found were either too small, uninteresting, or too expensive. And so, as a woodworker for more than twenty years, I decided to make their wands myself.

Designing and constructing the wands with my children turned out to be very enjoyable. The wands came out beautifully, and so now we were finally ready for the party.

After a week or so, my kids friends began expressing interest in the wands, so I made some more. That’s when the idea struck me. I approached  Davis Kidd Bookstore and asked the marketing manager, Katherine Whitfield, if she would be interested in having a wand making booth at her store’s book release party. I showed her some samples of the different wands I had made and she thought they looked great. Katherine said she would love to have a wand making booth at the party. Well we sold so many wands at the party that after words Katherine told me she would like to start carrying our wands in their stores. It was a very appealing proposal and it spawned an even bigger idea in my mind, “Why not take this even further?”

I went home and began doing some serious market research. Before  committing myself to becoming a full time wand maker, I wanted to be sure we had something valuable to offer to the public. The more I studied, the more excited and convinced I became that I did have something to offer. After scouring every wand making website on the internet, I soon came to see that I may have come upon something. While there were many other wand makers out there, and some with truly beautiful offerings, those wands were also quite expensive. As I continued my research, I was delighted to see that our wands compared favorably with wands costing $75.00 to $100.00, almost double of what I was charging. I had found our niche.

And so Thordarson Wands was born.

Since that time we've enjoyed tremendous growth, as collectors and fellow Harry Potter fans continue to purchase our Wands in increasingly larger numbers.

My family and I will continue to produce quality wands that are both suitable for collectors, yet affordable enough for all witches and wizards. We will also be frequently adding new designs and new products to our collection in order to give you the most choices possible. For those of you who have expressed an interest in our work, my family and I offer you our most sincere thanks.

Joe Thordarson

Founder of Thordarson Wands

With Rocky the Redbird and friends at the Davis Kidd Midnight book release party

My son with his wand