Bowater Toyota jointly wins the Supreme Award in 2020 Toyota and Lexus Business Excellence Awards
Bowater Toyota jointly wins the Supreme Award in 2020 Toyota and Lexus
Business Excellence Awards
Bowater Toyota CEO Tony Bowater with the 2020 Awards
In a remarkable joint win, Bowater Toyota and South Canterbury Toyota have both taken home the Toyota Supreme Award at the hotly contested Toyota and Lexus Business Excellence Awards, held in Auckland on March 12.
The Toyota Supreme Award is awarded for overall excellence in all aspects of Toyota store operations, market leadership and facilities. There is fierce competition each year for the Toyota Supreme Award among the 64 Toyota and Lexus stores spread across the nation, from Whangarei to Invercargill.
Due to an exceptionally high standard of candidates this year, judges chose to dually award both Bowater and South Canterbury businesses with the Toyota Supreme Award, considering both stores worthy of taking away the title.
Steve Prangnell, Toyota New Zealand’s General Manager, says the awards celebrate the vital contribution of the stores to the ongoing trust in the Toyota brand in New Zealand – something that was needed more than ever during the past year.
“To say that the business environment over the past 12 months has been challenging would be an understatement – with lockdowns, economic downturn and struggling communities abound, 2020 has presented stores with a kind of operating conditions they’ve never seen before,” Mr Prangnell says.
2020’s Toyota Supreme Award winners, Bowater Toyota and South Canterbury Toyota, are no strangers to the Toyota
Business Excellence Awards, both having taken out various titles in previous years. Bowater Toyota has been awarded Store of the Year an impressive three times (2014, 2015, and 2016) while South Canterbury Toyota took the same award away in 2019. Both stores employ a dedicated team of people who strive to satisfy customers’ needs with a view to building long term relationships.
Craig McDermid ( CEO South Canterbury Toyota), Neeraj Lala (CEO Toyota NZ), Tony Bowater (CEO Bowater Toyota
The Chief Executives of each winning branch have long histories of service and loyalty to the Toyota brand – Tony Bowater, Chief Executive of Bowater Toyota, is a third-generation branch owner that has worked in the family business his entire working life, while South Canterbury Toyota’s Chief Executive Craig McDermid has been in the motoring industry for over 32 years.
Bowater Toyota has Toyota stores in Nelson, Richmond and Motueka. South Canterbury Toyota operates four South Island Toyota stores – Blenheim Toyota, Rangiora Toyota, Kaiapoi Toyota, and Ashburton Toyota.
Bowater Toyota were also victorious in the New Car Segment, winning the New Car Excellence Cup, as well as being presented with a Platinum Award as a business that has achieved a level of excellence that significantly exceeds that of similar sized dealerships in all areas of operation, an award that they have won on several occasions previously.
The significance of the ceremony continued for Bowater Toyota, named as finalists in the Presidents Trophy (the Supreme Award for consistent excellence in customer satisfaction), the Excellence in Leadership Award (the award for outstanding leadership of a team), and the Parts & Accessories Excellence Cup (the award for overall excellence in Parts operations). The evening was topped off with the presentation to Bowater Toyota of the Triple Crown Award, a reflection of territorial market leadership of all 3 market segments, passenger, commercial and overall market leader of the territory.
Tony Bowater, CEO of Bowater Toyota was extremely proud and humbled by the evening saying “it was an absolute honour to represent not only the hard working team at Bowater Toyota, but also the Nelson Tasman region. It has been such a challenging year and all of these awards recognise not only a lot of hard work, but also the resilience and tenacity we have as a region. The awards are fiercely competitive and to come out on top yet again is an honour, and very humbling to be recognised for excellence as a part of one of New Zealand’s most trusted brands.”
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