Service counts: CapeTalk listeners hand ‘Garden Vision’ small business award

Cape Town radio station 567 CapeTalk, with Sage Pastel, has announced the winner of the CapeTalk Small Business Awards 2013, a three-week competition that was geared towards finding the small business in the Western Cape with the best service, according to CapeTalk listeners.

The winner of the competition’s fifth iteration is landscape design and maintenance company Garden Vision; with health eshop Earthshine and animated explainer-video production company Blink Tower taking the two runners up spots.

Garden Vision, and owner Jeremy McLaughlin, was praised for its commitment to excellence in service, and received the grand prize of airtime (advertising) on CapeTalk valued at R100 000 (about US$10 000), as well as a laptop kitted out with the latest accounting, payroll and HR software from Sage Pastel.

Listeners of the radio station were asked to nominate small businesses that they had had dealings with, and felt gave them excellent service. Of those nominations 30 finalists were chosen.

During the last three weeks two finalists a day, from the 30, were interviewed on the breakfast show, and the afternoon drive show. Furthermore, all 30 finalists took part in a thorough round robin interview session with industry experts from all fields to help the judges find the winner and the two runners up.

Settling on one business proved a difficult task, but eventually Garden Vision came out trumps:

“We had little doubt that each business will continue to add enormous value to the South African and Cape Town economies but, as always, we had to choose. Jeremy McLaughlin has shown that great service can take an everyday business segment and transform it into a viable long-term creator of value and employment. He has done so consistently over the last 12 years and in so doing has established a track record for excellence amongst his loyal client base”, says Karl Gostner; GM of Primedia Broadcasting in Cape Town.

Managing Director of SAGE Pastel, Steven Cohen, noted how the finalists imbued a sense of the “entrepreneurial spirit”, and how they were helping address the unemployment rate problems in the country.