Page 9 - 2019 HW Awards Book

FINALISTS
This award recognises a young retailer or builders’ merchant (aged 35 years or under) who has achieved a high standard in their career. Entrants will be Department Managers, Store Managers or even shareholders of a hardware retailer or builders’ supply merchant.
Hayden Autridge
MITRE 10 MEGA DUNEDIN AND MITRE 10 MOSGIEL
Just beaten to the top award as a Finalist last year, Hayden is Inventory Manager across Jacks’ two stores, and manages some 67,500 SKUs (and growing) between the two sites. Given this is probably one of the largest stock files in the industry, the fact Dunedin MEGA
has just achieved its best ever inventory performance goes more than little way to explaining why Hayden is back as a Finalist. Key to Hayden’s role are close supplier relationships and strategic promotional buying when he’s not leading the merch team and acting as Duty Manager!
Keven Chen
PLACEMAKERS MT WELLINGTON
Asian Business Manager of one of PlaceMakers’ highest achieving branches, Keven runs a team of 10 high performing Account Managers and support staff and also leads the brand’s Chinese Building Strategy for the Auckland region. In terms of importance to the branch, Keven’s team contributed more than a third of Mt Wellington’s trade top line for the last year. Qualitatively, members of his happy team have this year been recognised among PlaceMakers’ top people, while Keven himself is driven
to deliver “outstanding levels of customer service in a highly demanding and competitive marketplace”.
Shannon Read
MITRE 10 MEGA DUNEDIN
The Dunedin store’s other repeat Finalist, from 2017, Shannon is Assistant Retail Manager across a range of seasonal categories, with
all the variables that brings, not to mention a combined annual turnover of some $10m+. Shannon also acts as Duty Manager at weekends supervising up to 100 staff. A career retailer, having started at Mitre 10 Mosgiel as a checkout operator 10+ years ago, Group CEO, Neil Finn-House, says Shannon is the sort of talent that our industry “needs to nurture, grow and retain to remain relevant to an entirely new generation of customers and team members”.
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