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FINALISTS
This award recognises outstanding young professionals aged 32 years or under. Entrants will be department managers, store managers or even shareholders of a hardware retailer or builders’ merchant.
Karl Hallowes
PLACEMAKERS COOK STREET PlaceMakers’ Central North HUB Trade
Support Manager, Karl Hallowes is charged with planning, directing and leading a 20+-strong HUB Trade Support team across multiple locations. His biggest achievement
is a complete rethinking of the backorder and allocation process, a “massive change” which has armed his Account Managers with “accurate and honest” information at a time when
supply often simply cannot meet demand and reducing pressure on them to boot. Karl having proved himself in a number of roles, Dale King, PlaceMakers’ North Central HUB Manager, says Karl has the respect of both his own HUB Support team and of the sales team: “Karl is a natural leader of people and displays a level of maturity vastly beyond his years.”
YOUNG RETAILER OF THE YEAR
Nadia Ducrot
PLACEMAKERS NEW LYNN
After 13+ years wearing a blue shirt but just 10 months as Branch Manager at New Lynn, Nadia Ducrot has a new role devoted to growing and developing future leaders. “You cannot get places without a strong team behind you,” she says. Clearly demonstrating a “growth mindset”, Nadia’s time at New Lynn was spent re-shaping the ops business, leading to massive FY2021 gains through simplifying daily tasks and streamlining despatch for a faster, better, and more transparent and accurate service. Morgan Caine, PlaceMakers’ West Auckland HUB Ops Manager, calls Nadia a “passionate leader”, with a “constant, diligent and compassionate” leadership style which helped keep her team “focused and on track throughout the Covid pandemic and large changes.”
Collin McCool
MITRE 10 WHANGAPARAOA
On becoming Store Manager in June last
year, Collin McCool took on a full stocktake,
a complete relay and the recruitment of
an entirely new team. That’s a tall order for someone entering their first store management role in a new industry during a global pandemic. But Collin has “a passion for retail”, understands the business’s KPIs and has “trained, coached, and empowered his own team to create a store of excellence for service, stock availability and overall operational standards.” As a result, Whangaparaoa’s financial metrics show strong growth, its NPS
is well up and team engagement is now an unprecedented 100%! “Collin stands out as the future of retail management,” says Riviera MD Cam Caithness.
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