Penticton Rona manager Rick Mielke deflects the success the home improvement retailer has seen in the past four years onto the employees.

In October the Penticton store was honoured at the Outstanding Retailer Awards which was presented in Toronto by the industry trade magazine Hardware Merchandising during the awards gala at the annual Hardlines Conference. Rona received one of the home improvement industry’s highest marks of recognition for overall excellence.

“Basically it’s for our staff. They have worked pretty hard and we are proud of what they have done,” said Miekle, whose son Chad Miekle owns the store jointly with Rona. “This allows us bragging rights that the staff has done things right. For the City of Penticton and all customers it lets them know they are buying at a store that is known as one of the leaders in the industry, so that is kind of exciting.”

The store houses a wide inventory of some 20,000 products which are sub-divided into boutiques for paint, lighting, kitchen and bathroom cabinetry, mouldings, doors and windows and more. The Penticton store employs about 100 staff including seasonal workers, that Rick is proud to have wear the Rona uniform. He said their dedication to learning about the new product innovations and training is passed onto the customers.

“We like to make sure our staff’s knowledge isn’t limited to just one area. We have a lot of good people here, people that have been working for a long-time in the service industry which is great for us and our customers. We like to have a lot of fun here and one of the highlights of our store is the staff,” said Rick.

Rona is a pioneer of the store-within-a-store home improvement retail format in Canada and the Penticton store was one of the first of its type in Western Canada when it opened in October of 2005.

“We at Rona are very proud of these award-winning dealers who, along with their dedicated and passionate staff, have worked so hard to give their customers such a great home improvement shopping experience,” said Jean-Luc Meunier, senior vice-president, affiliate dealer-owner network development. “The vision and determination of dealers like Rick have been a major part of Rona’s growth since our foundation 70 years ago. Encouraging the continued success of our local dealer-owners will be a major part of our future success.”

With the award, the Penticton Rona will be featured on the front page of the January/February edition of Hardware Merchandising.

“We are honoured by the fact that Rona has now won 21 Outstanding Retailer Awards since these awards were established in 1992,” said Pierre Dandoy, executive vice-president of retail operations. “This is very gratifying because we have set out to reach the highest level of excellence in all of our store types, listening to our customers and providing them with the different formats and concepts that cater to their needs and wants. We are specialists of the consumer, not of one particular format.”