Schrock Innovations Nominated for 2009 Nebraska Retailer of the Year Award

I received a note today that Schrock Innovations was nominated for the 2009 Nebraska Retailer of the Year Award presented by the Nebraska Retail Federation.

Being nominated alone is a significant honor considering that previous recipients have included Bob and Vicki Rokeby, Gary Michaels, Merle Honerman, Robert Allen, Dick Campbell, and Rose Blumkin.

We will be attending the awards banquet to honor whichever business wins the award this Friday.

As part of the nomination process, the Federation asked that each nominee send in some information about their respective business.  Here is what we sent them for consideration:

To Whom it May Concern:

When Schrock Innovations was founded ten years ago, the retail technology world was a different place.

Dell was just figuring out how to mass-manufacture PCs, Hewlett Packard was the only game in town for printers, and local OEM providers made their profits by selling hardware.

Schrock Innovations sought to differentiate itself by emphasizing service instead of specific products.

In fact, the first concept we introduce to new employees at Schrock is that we don’t sell computers. We don’t sell hardware. We sell the service that makes those computers and devices work for our customers.

The world has changed in the last 10 years – Now it is considered acceptable to outsource your technical support to India or to expect your customers to mail back defective products at their expense rather than exchanging them with a retailer.

At the same time we are all facing one of the most hostile economic environments in recent memory.

Schrock Innovations tightened its belt just like everyone else has been forced to do. Those cuts required our staff to work a little smarter and be a little more efficient.

But Schrock has never forgotten that its competitive advantage – its secret to business success – is our dedication to making our customer feel good about doing business with us.

The commitment to our customers’ experiences has been the consistent factor that has carried us through good times and bad over the last decade. It was the motivation behind opening a new $825,000 retail facility in Lincoln this year, and the key to a double-digit increase in sales and profitability YTD.

It is easy to get caught up in the numbers – the deposits, payments, taxes, and quarterly growth rates. It is more difficult to come into to the Service Center every day and look beyond the work in front of us to see the faces of the real people we are serving.

The satisfaction of these real people is what we live and die by at Schrock Innovations. As long as our customers are happy, everything else comes out in the wash.

Thank you for taking the time to consider Schrock Innovations for this award. We are humbled by our nomination and honored to be in the company of the great retailers of the state of Nebraska.

Sincerely,

Thor Schrock
CEO
Schrock Innovations, Inc.