Sara Hunt, general manager at Trevor Mottram, Tunbridge Wells is among the six super-star finalists for the Retail Employee of the Year in The Excellence in Housewares Awards 2022.
Joint managing directors Sarah and Alan Wood made this statement to support Sarah’s nomination: “Sara joined Trevor Mottram’s on 29 October 2007 as general manager having worked for 13 years in Glass and Collectibles retail. She will have been with us 15 years this October.
She has risen well to the challenges of cookshop with its wide variety of differing materials and technologies and with a keen desire to learn, the transition to the practical and more utilitarian end of housewares has been seamless.
Sara is amazing, possessing a work ethic rarely found these days. She leads by example and will not ask anyone to do anything she is not willing to do herself. Her team work very hard for her because they want to and have huge respect for her with her commitment, hours worked, total fairness and amazing sense of humour which helps get us all through the tough days.
She has taken on a significant amount of everyday buying, so much so that some rep’s and agents when receiving calls from the shop now answer ‘Sara’s hot-line’. This has taken a huge burden from us and we can now spend more time looking for the point of difference and keeping the shop interesting and exciting to visit. We once again enjoy going to work knowing that she’s beaten us in and she will not leave until the shelves are topped up and the till spot on.
Like many independent owner-run retailers, we have had many anxious holidays with such a big operation being left under someone else’s control. That is no longer the case knowing that we now leave everything was in good and safe hands.
The shop has seen many changes in its near 47 year existence, but even old staff and old customers have commented on her welcome and her knowledge and when people phone – unflattering to us as it may be – Sara is frequently the first person they ask for.
She is intuitive and has a strong feel for the business and knows exactly what we want from and in the shop.
Please bestow this honour on Sara who, pandemic and lockdowns allowing, continues to work amazingly hard and conscientiously, in a way rarely encountered in our working lives, providing us with immense support to drive the business forward.”
Top: Trevor Mottram’s Sara Hunt.
