Our Recent Achievements

2010

November - Britain’s Best Retailer Awards is an annual award scheme organised jointly by three leading business magazines: DIY Week, Housewares, and Hardware & Garden Review. Homebase won a silver award in the category for Best Retail Website. The judges commented "the Homebase website is unashamedly a product catalogue, listing thousands of diy tools and materials in a very clear, easy to navigate format. The judges particularly approved of the way product selections can be filtered by price bands, spec levels and so on. It’s a website that does what it says on the tin.”

November - The retail resourcing team, were runners up in the recent CIPD People Management Awards for ‘Talent Attraction and Management’. This is the fifteenth year that CIPD have run these awards, which recognise outstanding achievements in people management and development, and this year they had a record breaking number of entries so competition was particularly tough.

June - Home Retail Group has been commended for excellence in the health and safety management, of our stores, in the 2010 RoSPA commercial and business sector awards. Health and safety management in distribution centres was given a gold award, together with 15 gold and 4 silver awards for the individual distribution centres. We also received a bronze award for managing occupational risk for our transport team

June - Argos won the Supply Chain Excellence award at the 2010 Retail Week Technology awards. Argos won the Supply Chain Excellence Award for the voice put-away system in stores, at the Retail Week Technology Awards last night. The judges were highly impressed with the leading-edge thinking from distribution into stock room, using voice controlled technology. The system has been rolled out to c.400 stores

April - Home Retail Group has achieved gold status in the annual Business in the Community (BITC) index, which benchmarks our corporate responsibility performance against other companies in the FTSE100.

March - Home Retail Group has been independently assessed, according to the FTSE4Good criteria and have satisfied the requirements to become a constituent of the FTSE4Good Index series.

February - Home Retail Group has been awarded a British Heart Foundation "Heart Hero" award in Northern Ireland recognising us "a fantastic corporate partner, for smashing all fundraising targets and for providing the British Heart Foundation with support for the BIG donation and Red for Heart campaigns."

February - Home Retail Group Financial Services won the Best Technology Initiative of the Year at the Annual Credit Card Awards. This is valuable recognition from the UK payment card industry for the huge effort and involved in the Argos and Homebase storecard "Project Sapphire" programme in 2009.

Project Sapphire replaced the entire account management system of Argos and Homebase cards.

January - Home Retail Group has been awarded a gold class distinction for our work in corporate sustainability as a result of our inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

2009

November - Homebase have won one gold and two silver awards for Britain’s Best DIY Superstore Manager of the Year at the Britain's Best Retailer Awards.

These awards recognise the hard work and commitment shown by these individuals and their store teams in putting the customer first

November - Home Retail Group has been shortlised for several Retail Week Awards 2010.

• In the Customer Service Initiative of the Year award, Argos have been nominated for "delivering great customer service"
• Argos have been shortlisted for the Online Retailer of the Year Award
• In the Retail Technology Initiative of the Year Award, Argos have been shortlisted for "voice put away in stores"
• In the Store Manager of the Year Award, Pete Ware of Homebase (Swindon Orbital) has been nominated

The awards ceremony takes place in London in March 2010.

November - Home Retail Group were highly commended in the Retail Recycler of the Year award at the National Recycling Awards, held in London.

October - Home Delivery have recently been recognised for Logistics Best Practice at the Institute of Logistics annual awards evening, held in London on 22 October 2009.

Overcoming stiff competition, the award was made for demonstrating significant cost reduction and strong improvements in customer service levels, together with a 19% reduction in the carbon footprint.

October - Argos has been awarded the "Social Commerce Achievement Award", by solution provider Bazaarvoice.

Bazaarvoice supported the introduction of customer product reviews on the Argos website.

The award was presented as a reflection of the success of the on-line customer led initiatives "Customer product reviews" and "Ask & Answer".

June - Argos won two awards at the third annual Affiliate Marketing awards held on 2 June.

The first award, "Best use of affiliate marketing as part of an integrated campaign" and the second was "Best retail in affiliate marketing".

April - Home Retail Group achieved great success in the 2009 ROSPA Awards.

March - Home Retail Group received a gold award from the Institute of Fundraising for our payroll giving scheme.

The gold award is a symbol of excellence and is awarded to employers that have succeeded in generating sustainable income sources for UK charities through payroll giving. The gold award is given to organisations with 10% or more donors within their workforce. This year, Home Retail Group has grown its percentage from 12% to 13% and is one of the leaders for payroll giving within the retail sector.

March - Argos won two awards at the Retail Week awards held on 19 March.

Argos had two big successes at the Grosvenor Hotel at the Retail Week Awards on 19 March 2009. The successes were ‘Online Retailer of the Year’ (for the second time) and ‘Retail Technology Initiative of the Year’. Congratulations to the winning teams! This was what convinced the judges …

Argos – Online Retailer of the Year Argos being a true multi-channel retailer really impressed the judges yet again. The sophistication of the business model which makes finding and buying products as easy as possible for the customer is what clinched success. Over the last year the addition of customer reviews, richer content and postcode specific stock availability checks have raised the customer experience to a whole new level.

Argos – Retail Technology Initiative of the Year As one of the UK’s largest importers, Argos won the award for the technology at the heart of its operation. Hugely outdated bureaucratic systems and expensive and complex procedures were successfully overcome last year to streamline the importing process. The project involved gaining cooperation from internal departments and external organisations to succeed in delivering big cost savings, faster clearance, shorter lead times and improved product tracking. The judges’ verdict on the initiative was “a great step forward to reduce cost and complexity” and that it “broke new ground”.

2008

November:
Home Retail Group won the Investors Relations Award for Best overall IR for a UK company and was shortlisted for two other awards - Best Annual Report for Investors, and Best Practice Corporate website. The awards were in the FTSE 250 section.

October:
Argos, in partnership with Kuehne and Nagel, won the Logistics Best Practice Award at the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport awards.

September:
Will Jary, from Argos, won the Store Support Manager of the Year award at the Retail Week "Rising Stars" awards.

August:
Home Retail Group was highly commended in the “Best Large Employer Campaign” category at the 2008 Payroll Giving Awards.

June:
At the Institute of Sales Promotion Awards, Argos won the Gold Award for Digital Promotions.

May:
Argos won the Precision Marketing Grand Prix Award for its on-line Giant Jar viral marketing campaign.

April:
Argos won multiple RoSPA Occupational Health and Safety Awards for 2007.

March:
Home Retail Group was awarded a silver class award in the Sustainability Yearbook 2008, published by SAM Sustainability Management.
Argos won the Retail Week Technology Initiative of the Year Award for its supply chain transformation project.

January:
Argos’ Faverdale Distribution Centre was awarded ISO14001 for environmental management.

2007

October:
Argos was a finalist in the High Street Recycling Champion category at the Letsrecycle.com Awards for Excellence.

Home Retail Group won Most Innovative Promotion category at the National Payroll Giving Awards.

September:
Bridgwater Distribution Centre was awarded ISO14001 for environmental management.

July:
At the Association of Graduate Recruiters Awards, Argos was highly commended in the Integrated Marketing Campaign award.

June:
Argos received Skype Retailer of the Year at the Retailer of the Year Awards.
Both the Basildon and Corby Argos distribution centres were awarded RoSPA gold awards.

Argos was awarded gold for their payroll giving scheme by the Institute of Fundraising.

At the Retail Solutions Awards, Home Retail Group & DHL won the European Project Implementation of the Year category for their PkMS warehouse management system into Marsh Leys distribution centre.

April:
The Argos distribution centre at Basildon was awarded one of the highest national accreditations, ISO14001, for its environmental management systems.

March:
Argos Homebase Business Solutions won the most effective voucher/card in reward and motivation programme at the Motivation Awards

Home Retail Group was a finalist in the Corporate Social Responsibility category of the Retail Week Awards.

Argos was voted the Top 10 website (most visited retailer online) by Hitwise.