The ECMOD Awards
in association with Royal Mail
On 2nd April 2009, the ECMOD Award Winners for Business Excellence throughout 2008 were announced at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London, by SKY TV and BBC presenter Dermot Murnaghan.
Entry volumes were robust though the organisers did find that for several of the business-to-business categories there were not sufficient entries from which to seek a winner. However, one business-to-business category - educational market - saw an unprecedented number of entries and three companies tied for first place.
Visit our Photo Gallery to see the winners collecting their Award, or the Winners' Video Interviews as they emerge from the stage!
You can also see a full interview with Lifetime Achievement Award Winner - Nigel Swabey, CEO of Scotts & Co here.
And the winners are...
Business to Business categories:
Electronics & Electrical Equipment: Lyco Direct
Niche Trade Supplies: International Dance Supplies
Tools, Fixings, Equipment for Tradespeople: International Decorative Surfaces
Warehouse, Materials Handling, Packaging: Rapid Racking
Medical, Dental, Laboratory, Scientific: Williams Medical Supplies
Educational, Training Materials & Supplies (3 joint winners): Hope Education, Yorkshire Purchasing Organisation & Morleys Early Years
Premiums, Incentives & Personalised Products: Hotel Chocolat
Consumer categories:
Children's Market: GLTC
Men's Apparel & Accessories: TM Lewin
Women's Apparel & Accessories: Joules
Outdoor Pursuits, Sports & Hobbies: Muddy Puddles
Gardening Products: Marshalls Garden Catalogues
Giftwares & Gadgets: Notonthehighstreet.com
Food &/or Drink: Direct Wines
Health & Special Needs: Viva
Homewares: Scotts of Stow
HIGHLY COMMENDED:
A further eight companies were also highly commended and were presented with certificates to mark their achievements:
Craghoppers, MandM Direct, Myakka, Nauticalia, Original Gift Company, Peter Christian, Recycle Works, Smart Turnout
Lifetime Achievement Award
This particular Award has only ever been bestowed upon four previous winners in the history of the ECMOD Awards. Previous recipients are Jim Martin of N Brown Group, Sir David Jones for his work at Next PLC, the late Michelle Kershaw in recognition of her contribution to the Lakeland Limited business, and Tony Laithwaite the founder and chairman of Laithwaites and Direct Wines.
Joining this illustrious "top table" is Nigel Swabey, Scotts & Co chief executive and founder/president emeritus of the sector's not-for-profit trade body Catalogue Exchange.
About the Awards
...A uniquely prestigious & influential opportunity for communicating your brand...
When the ECMOD Awards first launched in 1998 few envisaged how important they would become to businesses in the catalogue, home shopping and multi-channel sector, or to the forward thinking supplier organisations that endorse and support them.
The ECMOD Awards Gala Dinner took place on Thursday 2 April 2009 at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. This very much larger venue offered greater capacity than our previous outgrown location, the Natural History Museum, as well as the convenience of on site overnight rooms for out-of-town guests.
How the ECMOD Awards are operated
The ECMOD Awards categories are designed to reflect multi-channel, catalogue producing and online retailing organisations serving business or consumer customers and are now based on merchandise categories. This enables, for example, a fashion business to compete against other fashion business entries; an industrial supplies business entry to compete with others in its product category, and so on. The entries take into account each business' complete calendar year of activity and achievement, 1st January - 31st December.
Each year the ECMOD team recruits a panel of independent expert adjudicators who undertake the judging process. Selected Judges agree to treat all submitted entries in complete confidence and not to decline to judge any entries from companies with which they have an ongoing, impending or recent past relationship. ECMOD judges are drawn from the USA and the UK and undertake the judging process remotely. Their results are filed in a score based format and fed into a master database which then computes the runners-up for each category.
