We’re very proud and delighted to announce that we scooped two awards last night at the CN Group Business Awards which took place at Carlisle Racecourse. We were shortlisted, along with other fantastic Cumbrian businesses, for the Exporter of the Year award and our Export Account Manager Stephanie Tootill was nominated for the Rising Star award.
Even to be shortlisted is a fantastic achievement, but to win both these awards is testament to the hard work and dedication that all of Playdale Playgrounds, and in particular Stephanie, has put into developing our business internationally over the past few years.
Playdale’s export business already spans twenty four distributors worldwide and our aim is to be in forty countries by 2018. Company restructuring has been necessary to allow resources to be fully committed to international trade. This has resulted in us hitting all our export targets and we continue to develop new overseas relationships as well as build on our existing ones.
Stephanie Tootill is key to this success with our international relations. Playdale’s MD Barry Leahey describes Stephanie as a ‘remarkable individual’ who often goes above and beyond the call of duty. She spends approximately every two weeks out of four away from home and works extremely long hours to ensure excellent service is provided to her international customers and distributors.
Barry is extremely proud of Stephanie and her achievements, which have now also been recognised by a wider audience through the presentation of the Rising Star award.
After receiving the award Stephanie said, “Thank you to all involved with tonight’s event. We’ve all had a great evening and I am truly surprised and thrilled to come away with my award. I feel very lucky to have been recognised in this way for doing a job that I absolutely love which fulfils me both professionally and personally.”
John Croasdale, Chairman of Playdale said of the event, “The guest speaker Ellis Watson was excellent and Julie Clayton hosted the event brilliantly. We were delighted to be named Exporter of the Year. We design the product, we manufacture it and we look after customers and distributors across the world, so the award really has been won by every single person in our fantastic Playdale team. To top it all, Stephanie Tootill our Export Account Manager was named ‘Rising Star.”
Take a look at some photographs from the event in our gallery below:
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