BHETA wins prestigious 'Commercial Initiative' award

BHETA has won the Commercial Initiative of the Year accolade in the TAF Best Practice Awards in recognition of its pioneering Innovation Zone at the Totally DIY Exhibition, supporting new product development. BHETA was also praised by the judges for its Exclusively Housewares / Exclusively Electrical Exhibition success and its “Meet the Buyer” retail engagement programme.

The 12th Trade Association Forum (TAF) Best Practice Awards and Dinner 2015 was held on July 9 2015 at the Shakespear UnderGlobe in London to coincide with the Forum’s first Annual General Meeting and Annual Conference. 

The Awards recognise, reward and promote best practice amongst Trade Associations in the UK and are a chance for TAF members to showcase their achievements during the last twelve months. The TAF Awards are endorsed by leading National Awarding Organisation NCFE and formally supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Detailing the winning entry, BHETA’s home enhancement sector director, Peter Stone explained: “Buoyed by the enhanced reputation BHETA is now enjoying for retail engagement across the industry and being mindful of the severe cuts in R&D budgets over the last few years, we decided to take a first step to address this and help present new products via a ‘BHETA Innovation Zone’. This was a standalone island site of 12 shell scheme stands within Totally DIY. Working with the exhibition organisers, the stands were made available at a heavily discounted rate for participants on the understanding that we would only make these available to entirely new businesses and entrepreneurs with brand new product ideas. We worked with the Inventors Society to publicise this and then invited key retail buyers to visit each of the participating companies. BHETA provided a lounge area for business meetings to take place and held advisory meetings with each company to assist with future development. We also provided market data and a number of detailed retailer profiles. During the show, participants met buyers from B&Q, Homebase, Wickes and several others as well as key distributors and potential partners.”

BHETA’s homewares sector director, Will Jones commented, “It’s a great honour to be acknowledged as a winner amongst our peers and it’s great to be recognised for the level of added value we give to our membership. Compliance, advice and practical help are all very important parts of our offer but the access we enable for our members to added sales at home and abroad really sets us apart. It’s also fantastic for the whole team to have its success recognised in this way.”

Source: BHETA

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