Digital entertainment and retail association ERA has been honoured for its work organising Record Store Day.
CEO Kim Bayley was presented with the top award for Best Longstanding Event at the Association Excellence Awards, recognising the work of UK trade associations. She also collected a bronze award for ERA’s Entertainment Champion Awards in the category Best New Event.
ERA has masterminded the organisation and logistics of Record Store Day UK for the past 15 years. RSD has become one of the biggest revenue-generating days for indie record shops (worth around £10 million), and it helped to bring about the vinyl revival and increase in independent record stores in the UK.
The judges said: “This is a great entry for a great event which stands out because it is unique in that it is not based in one place – it is based in hundreds of places around the UK with superb results.”
ERA’s Entertainment Champion Awards, which launched for the first time in 2023, aims to highlight notable figures who work behind the scenes of the entertainment industry.
The judges said it is “a personable, enjoyable and human-centred event, at odds with the brashness of the industry. A clever and successful counter-intuitive approach with a positive result. What a great initiative and alternative way of thinking. Lots of transferable learning here.”
ERA CEO Kim Bayley said: “We are delighted to receive this important validation from the Association Excellence Awards. We know the work of the Record Store Day team is appreciated by indie record stores themselves, but it is wonderful to see it recognised outside the industry too. I would like to give a big shout out to the RSD team of Megan Page and Emily Quillin. They truly deserve it.”
Earlier this year, ERA CEO Kim Bayley was named to the Women In Trade Associations 2024 Powerlist, created by the Trade Associations Federation (TAF), and nominated for Outstanding Leadership in the TAF Awards.
ERA chair Linda Walker said: “Congratulations are due to Kim Bayley and the entire ERA team. Such recognition shows that their work on behalf of digital entertainment and retail compares with the best, not just in the entertainment industry, but in the wider world of business.”
PHOTO: Banquet
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