Carlyle's very own Home Hardware store took home this year's "Proud of My Home" gold award on Monday April 15 at the company's semi-annual shareholders' meeting in St. Jacob's, Ont.
The award is presented to 23 out of the 1,100 stores from across the country that achieve the highest standards in merchandise presentation, staff performance, retailing and overall store quality within their area. With a staff of 17, seven being full-time, three part-time and six student employees the local Home Hardware beat all stores in Saskatchewan to grab the award. Each province has an area manager who is assigned different locations and grades each store. Nancy Matthewson, store manager of the Carlyle location said she knew of the standards required to win the award and as result kept the store consistent with those requirements.
"We're really proud of it, our staff work really hard so it's kind of a payoff for us," she said.
Matthewson and her husband Gilles Matthewson have owned and operated the store since January 2005 but moved to a new location in 2011 that allowed better accessibility for customers and a larger space to accommodate more merchandise. That development led them to win the silver "Proud of My Home: Outstanding Retailer Recognition" awardin 2012. It was the first award for them at the time but the store, with this year's award is seeing steady success and Matthewson admits that it's a testament to the quality staff.
Home Hardware stores are Canadian owned and operated and is the country's largest dealer-owned hardware and furniture cooperative. Home Hardware is recognized by the North American Retail Hardware Association as Canada's best-trained dealer group. And in February the company was recognized as Canada's best managed company by Deloitte, a Canadian professional services firm with over 150 years of experience. In 2014 the Home Hardware companies will be celebrating their 50 year anniversary.
