Judging Panel Expands for International Convenience Retailer of the Year

LONDON -- Two new judges are joining the voting panel for the prestigious 2012 International Convenience Retailer of the Year Award, sponsored by Imperial Tobacco for the fourth year running.

Frank Gleeson, retail director at Topaz, the 2011 award winner, and Jeff Rogut, executive director for the Australian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS), will sit on the established panel with expertise in worldwide convenience and forecourt markets.

They will join these international c-store experts on the 2012 judging panel:

• Joe Bona, president, retail division, CBX;

• Ramon Kuijpers, international key accounts manager, Reemtsma Cigarettenfabriken GmbH, an Imperial Tobacco Group company;

• Don Longo, editor-in-chief, Convenience Store News and Convenience Store News for the Single Store Owner, Stagnito Media;

• Dan Munford, managing director, Insight Research; and

• Stephanie Rice, founder of Rice Retail Marketing.

Fiona Briggs, editor of Global Convenience Store Focus, and Erin Pressley, editor of NACS Magazine, will co-chair the judging panel.

The 2012 International Convenience Retailer of the Year Award program launched in December and is now accepting entries from leading convenience and forecourt retailers around the world. Retailers that wish to enter are required to submit documentation based on a number of key criteria and supply photographic and/or video evidence. For further information, access the entry form here.

In the first stage of the judging process, the judges will review the entries and produce a short list of retailers. That short list will be featured on Global Convenience Store Focus and readers will be invited to vote for their favorite format online.

In announcing the 2012 judging panel, Insight Managing Director Dan Munford said, "We are delighted to have established such an experienced and international panel of convenience expertise."

Previous winners of the international convenience award, sponsored by Insight and NACS, have included the Tesco Express Environment Store and Spar Ireland's Eurospar format. In 2009, readers of Global Convenience Store Focus voted Spar China as the winner. The Spar Hongtu store in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, is independently owned by the Hu Family. In 2010, Applegreen, Ireland's leading independent forecourt retailer, won the readers' vote from an impressive short list. Rival Ireland forecourt retailer Topaz scooped the crown in 2011 for its new, state-of-the-art forecourt opened in partnership with McDonald's.