Congratulations to Karen and Dean Rae of Hammer Hardware Bethlehem for achieving finalist status in the Hardware Industry Awards, ITW Retail Store of the Year.

A precise judging process including a valuation from over 100 hardware suppliers and a mystery shop analysis resulted in the store being selected as one of the top hardware stores in the country in category A (up to 4,000m2 of retail showroom).

Retail group head offices were first asked to nominate their top stores to be considered for these prestigious awards.

Industry suppliers were then asked to vote (using judging criteria) on all nominated stores and place them in order of preference. A mystery shop specialist from Market Pulse, a specialist retail monitoring and market research company, visited each nominated store.

From these two processes three retail stores in each of the two categories have been selected as finalists. The full list of finalists have been announced in the September issue of the New Zealand Hardware Journal.

there is one final stage in the judging process to determine the winner. Each finalist store will again be exhaustively mystery shopped and this visit will include purchasing analysis.

The winners will be announced at the 2008 Hardware Industry Awards dinner on Thursday 2nd October in Auckland.

Best wishes and good luck to Karen, Dean and Team at Bethlehem Hammer Hardware.