The Horsham St Vincent de Paul store is the proud winner of the Tier A category in the annual Victorian Vinnies Retail conference awards.

Held last week in Ballarat. The awards recognise team members, shops and shop Managers for their achievements in the past financial year.

The Winning stores are judged on areas such as growth in volunteer numbers with Horsham Manager Heather Gardener putting the call our 4 months ago for more staff and adding half a dozen to her team.

Sales are also judged in general as well as Vinnies own brand of products, the VIP loyalty card success, alignment with Vinnies mission and Vision values and leadership and management performance among other criteria.

Attached is a photograph of Heather Gardner (centre), who has been Horsham store manager for 9.5 years. She is with Jeff Antcliff (Victorian GM Retail) and Liz Randle (Victorian Merchandise Manager).

Heather Gardner has been a store manager of Horsham Vinnies store for close to ten years now and whilst very humble about winning the award said it was a team effort "We are just really really proud to win this award, we are judged on a number of things, sales for the year, the presentation of the shop, obviously how its run and the co-operation of the team and it really is a team effort".

Mrs Gardner says "Very very proud, to have won a statewide award is wonderful as that includes all the metro stores as well -so its a a huge achievement and Im just walking around thanking everyone".