Nominations are pouring in from independent card retailers for The Henries 2020 Best Service to the Independent award category, the collective votes of which will provide a true picture of which publishers have really risen to the challenges of delivering a great service to indies over the last year, both pre, post and during lockdown.
Indies who have not yet had a chance to cast their votes for their top three card suppliers on the service front, have until 5pm on August 24 to do so by clicking here.
As ever, there will be three awards in the Best Service category of The Henries – a Bronze, Silver and ultimate Gold.
As Warren Lomax, joint managing director of Max Publishing (which owns and organises The Henries) commented: “With so many votes already in from indies, located the length and breadth of the UK, some patterns are starting to emerge. While some publishers known for their service have managed to maintain their high standards throughout others have found it more difficult. Conversely, we have seen some new service ‘stallions’ gallop into the field. With still over a week until the deadline, it will be very interesting to see how the voting goes for these much-coveted awards.”
Meanwhile, there is some hefty scrutinising underway on the product front, with the judging for The Henries product awards kicking off yesterday (August 12). Approaching 70 leading greeting card retailers and buyers have just over a week to consider (online) the thousands of greeting card designs that have been submitted from hundreds of different publishers, to arrive at the winners and finalists in all the product categories of The Henries 2020.
The Product Judging Panel for The Henries 2020 include buyers from Card Factory, Tesco, Paperchase, WHSmith, Blue Diamond, Waterstones, Sainsbury’s, Clintons, Cardzone, Fenwick, John Lewis, Fortnum & Mason, RHS, Moonpig, Longacres, Scribbler, House of Cards, Utility, 3Wishes, Zo&Co, Postmark and a host of wonderful independents.
“While doing the judging yesterday evening from the first award category alone, I discovered several publishers I had not seen before and will be contacting to get them into our shops,” commented Mark Janson-Smith, md of Postmark. “Judging online is not as much fun as doing it in the flesh, but it means we still get to see lots of new ranges and find publishers we have not heard of before,” he added.
The finalists of all Henries categories will be announced in September.
The Henries Awards 2020 have the strong backing of major names in the industry as official sponsors. These include Alpha Colour, EBB, Elliott Baxter, Fedrigoni, Foilco, GF Smith, Gould, Herbert Walker, The Imaging Centre, LB Warehousing, Loxleys, Paperchase, PG Live, Sherwood Group, UK Envelopes and Windles.
