Award decades in the making for Makita

Makita’s Fieldays services manager has been coming since 1979 and never came close to an award.

But this year is different, this year Makita has won the expo’s Jubilee Award.

Service manager Graham Norris has finally snagged one.

“Good things take time, like cheese,” he smiled.

The Jubilee Award winner is chosen based on the exhibitor’s attitude, and the set-up and activity around their site.

Norris said the win was a group effort, with a lot of hard work put in by Makita’s seven man team.

“We have a bloody good team, and that’s what’s done it,” he said.

“I think it was our laid back and relaxed atmosphere, the people in the tent know what they’re talking about, and [Fieldays visitors] are interested.”

Norris said the award was well deserved recognition for a team that comes back year after year, and keeps looking for improvements.

Makita’s site is the result of three months of planning and a week of set up.

Norris and his team arrived the previous Thursday, spending the time building shelving and setting up the tent and signage. The power tools arrived on Monday, and it took the next two days to lay them all out and price tag everything.

Norris said they hoped to break $250,000 in sales over the four day event.

Setting up a store on site at Fieldays is not cheap, but Norris feels it’s still worth doing to “throw themselves” at the event’s 140,000 visitors.

“If we weren’t here we’d lose so much credibility. From a financial point of view it’s a disaster, but from the PR side and marketing side it’s gold.”