Dale Winter and the staff of Garrick’s Camera House Rockhampton have taken out the Stockland Rockhampton Overall Retailer of the Year and Leisure Retailer of the Year awards.
‘Dale Winter has been the manager of the store for a number of years and around June this year purchased the business from the previous owner, and has been rewarded with recognition of achievement,’ explained Camera House general manager, Paul Shearer.
‘It’s a good to see a specialty retailer being recognised within a major retail shopping centre for the range and service that they provide the community within this region.’
Since purchasing Garrick’s Rockhampton, Dale has made a conscious effort to increase customer satisfaction and engage more broadly with the local community, and partially attributed the win to these improvements.
‘I think we have won because we strive to a better shopping experience for our customers, whether it might be a single 6×4 print, action video camera, photography course or $15,000 camera lens,’ he told local newspaper, The Morning Bulletin.
He also said he had made a conscious effort to support local community organisations.
‘Since I have been managing the business there have been changes to the store including more support to local organisation such as the Rockhampton Show, Rotary, schools and charities.’
He thanked his customers for their loyalty: ‘It’s thanks to people like professional and amateur photographers in all of central and western Queensland that keep business going.
‘We want to thanks them for supporting another specialty, locally-owned and operated business by choosing to spend their hard-earned cash here.
Real product knowledge
He said that genuine specialty knowledge was another key to success.
‘We use and test the product we sell and we ask our customers for their feedback. I think there are a lot of retailers who take the word of suppliers and do not personally use the product they sell.
‘If you trust the word of online reviews or suppliers only, you are likely to recommend the incorrect product. For peace of mind, we also offer a 14-day exchange policy on all products we stock, and due to the nature of technical photographic items, there almost always is another solution.
‘We try to keep a broad range of product but as we are a regional store we of course cannot stock everything. If we believe there is a more suitable product that we do not currently stock, we will recommend it and order it for the customer,’ Dale told consumer electronics trade website Appliance Retailer.
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