By Andy Young
The Australian Liquor Stores Association has extended the closing date for nominations to its Young Retailer of the Year award.
The Award program has been designed to encourage up and coming young liquor retailers to further their professional development in the industry. The award is aimed at staff members aged up to 30 years old and with 18 months’ experience in the sector.
ALSA said that it discovered late last week that it had suffered some technical issues with some of the nominations that had been sent for the 2016 Young Liquor Retailer of the Year award.
A spokesperson told TheShout: “In order to ensure that all nominations are received, and we don’t disadvantage any applicants, we have decided to extend the closing date for nominations to Friday, 3 June.”
As well as the honour of being named ALSA’s Young Liquor Retailer of the Year, the winner will take part in the 2017 ALSA Study Tour, which will be heading to Europe.
Last year’s winner, Krystal Hall, store manager at BWS Dianella Plaza in Perth, said she was honoured to have won the inaugural award.
Hall told TheShout: "It’s a tremendous honour and I’m grateful to have been chosen among so many other deserving candidates. I’m thankful to ALSA and all involved for extending this opportunity my way. I’m also grateful for the support of my team in-store, everyone at BWS and our suppliers without whom I could have never achieved this."
This year, ALSA has brought the awards process forward so the winner can be announced at the ALSA 2016 Conference in July.
ALSA CEO Terry Mott said: "ALSA is committed to encouraging and supporting professional and responsible development of our future retailers and this is a massive opportunity for a young liquor retailer to experience an international retailing environment and learn along with a group of senior professional industry executives.”
Details on how to enter the Award are available on the ALSA website.
The key dates for this year’s award are now:
Nominations Open – Monday April 4, 2016
Nominations Close – Friday June 3, 2016
Finalists announced – Wednesday June 15, 2016
Finalists telephone interviews – Monday June 20, 2016
Finalists telephone interviews – Tuesday June 21, 2016
Finalist Panel Interviews – Monday June 27 2016
Winner announced – Wednesday July 27, 2016
ALSA Study Tour departs for Europe – March 2017