MERA Awards honour retail vendors

Ten vendors won honours at the Middle East Retail Academy (MERA) Awards held in Fujairah last week.

The awards were presented as part of the Distree Digital Consumer Channel (DCC) Middle East & Africa conference, with 11 vendor award categories.

The award winners were voted on live by the audience of retail personnel, with vendors judged on a number of criteria including partner engagement, channel strategy, pricing, stock management, product evolution, margin potential, channel management and partner programme.

Two awards were also presented to distributors, with Redington taking the Volume distributor award and Eros getting the Specialist distributor award.

"The fact that there are so many different winners underlines the variety that still exists in the market," said Farouk Hemraj, CEO at Distree Events, the organisers of the MERA: 2011 Awards. "DCC MEA and MERA celebrate this diversity, bringing retailers, distributors and vendors together for a business-focused three-day event each year."

"We would like to congratulate all of the award winners and also recognise the achievement of all nominees," he added. "The nominations for each category were determined using data extracted from our Monthly Monitor Report (MMR) - a MERA service that provides a regular snapshot of views, opinions and the business climate in the region."

The awards winners were:

Software Vendor of the Year: Kaspersky

TVs Vendor of the Year: Samsung

Mobile Communications Vendor of the Year: Apple

Gaming Vendor of the Year: Microsoft

Home Networking Vendor of the Year: Linksys by Cisco

Storage Vendor of the Year: Seagate

Printing Vendor of the Year: HP

Imaging Vendor of the Year: Nikon

Accessories Vendor of the Year: Promate

Digital Lifestyle Vendor of the Year: Apple

Desktop/Notebook/Netbook Vendor of the Year: Dell