HOUSING UNITS ADDS ANOTHER TROPHY TO ITS RANGE OF CABINETS

When the going gets tough, the tough win awards - and north Manchester-based Home Furnishings store Housing Units has added another trophy to its wide range of cabinets. Housing Units has won the "Best department store" title in the Progressive Housewares magazine "Excellence in housewares" category after beating off competition almost entirely from affluent south-east England department stores. "It costs nothing to go that extra inch in driving customer service standards, listening hard to what our customers want, moving heaven and earth to deliver the right sorts of promotions and events, and simply looking and feeling like a place where shoppers feel at home. But it costs a lot if you don't," said Nick Fox, director of Housing Units.

"The competition was tough - and the other nominees were very, very good - but we give our all day-in, day-out, and it pays off not just for us, but for our customers too. "But it's a spiral: put in the effort, get the custom; get the custom, win the award, feel good, make the customer feel good - get the custom. And this is all massively down to the Housing Units staff -We're certainly a family business, and when things get tough, we all feel the pain but we all then pull together; and the result is that we all win together". The criteria for the award was: "should be an individual department store or a specific branch of a department store chain. With excellence in areas across the retail spectrum including product range, staff training, customer care, marketing and promotion, window and product display and also have improvement achievement in improving sales, profitability and/or footfall over the last year." "And with somebody else influential and expert saying something about us - it's a great accolade to hear," said Nick Fox.