Mud Australia has scooped a major award, after being named one of five global honourees at the gia Awards in Chicago.
During a gala event on Sunday night, Mud Australia won the award for retail excellence alongside CUK (Argentina), Album de Famille (France), Balmuda Inc. (Japan) and Balthazar Kookwinkel (Netherlands).
“It is such a fantastic honour to be recognised in such a large body of retailers,” says executive director, James Kirton.
“We’ve done our own thing for a very long time with a clear vision of what we wanted to do; we really love the opportunity to be able to engage directly with our customers. We started off as a wholesaler and then moving into retail allowed us to own that whole conversation and to have it rewarded in a global space like the gia awards is a fantastic honour.”
Thirty-one retailers from around the world competed to win one of five global honouree awards and were judged in categories such as overall mission statement, vision and strategy; store design and layout; visual merchandising, displays and window displays; marketing, advertising and promotions; customer service and staff training; and innovation.
In addition to the global honourees, the gia program also awarded the Martin M. Pegler award for excellence in visual merchandising to Morandin Regali from Italy and the digital commerce award for excellence in online retailing was presented to IN8 Home of Brasil and Schafer of Turkey.
The gia program, which was created by IHA and The Inspired Home Show, aims to recognise and promote innovation and excellence in home and housewares retailing worldwide. Since its inception in 2000, the gia program has awarded nearly 600 retail winners from 57 countries across six continents.
