European Business Awards: The Advanex Journey
If you have not already seen, Advanex Europe attended the European business awards on May 4th 2017 in Dubrovnik Croatia. It was here we were presented with the Ruban D’honneur award within the innovation category. This placed Advanex in the top 8 companies in Europe for Innovation. This award recognises all of the hard work that has gone into making Advanex and our KATO CoilThread inserts what they are today but how did Advanex win this award?
Our journey began in July 2016 when we completed the initial application process. This was an in detail 7-page document including key business information and financial performance. It also detailed our key achievements and plans for the future where we impressed with our European expansion and the growth of our CoilThread inserts, where our production is now 18 times faster than the original processes. 34,000 other businesses across Europe entered the competition at this stage and Advanex did well in standing out.
Then in September 2016 we were shortlisted as National Champions. The 34,000 entrants had been narrowed down to just over 600 within 10 categories in the first stage of the competition. This meant that Advanex now had to produce a 3-minute video to showcase our capabilities to the public. The purpose of this was to gain votes in the Public Champion award section of the competition.
Advanex were then announced as Ruban D’honneur winners in October 2016. Judges had reviewed our application within our category and had decided that we had performed so well in the category for innovation that we deserved to be in the top 8 across Europe.
This meant that we were now required to present our innovation in detail to a panel of expert judges. Our Chairman Paul Clifford and Commercial Director John Jenkinson were tasked with travelling to Amsterdam to present our case for winning the award. Our presentation covered the huge steps we have made with developing CoilThread processes as well as our ambitious plans to develop other products within our portfolio.
The final leg in this 9 month long journey was the awards ceremony in May. Our Director of Sales for Europe Steve Antcliff and Operations Manager Rob Newham attended the Gala Ceremony in Dubrovnik. Rob was called onto the stage to collect the Ruban D’honneur award along with the 7 other winners. Tangle Teezer were eventually named as overall winners in our category.
We were disappointed to have made it all this way and fall at the last hurdle but looking back we are immensely proud of what we achieved in this competition. To be recognised as one of the most innovative companies in Europe is something special and is a testament to all of the hard work that has gone into putting the company into this position. We would like to take this time to thank everyone involved for their efforts that contributed to our success in the European Business Awards. We would also like to congratulate Tangle Teezer on their victory!
