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Discover Mid-America — January 2005

About the 'Best of' Competition
by Bruce Rodgers, Editor/Publisher

Ben Hawley, owner, with his wife Helen, of the Cheep Guy antique and collectible store in Kansas City, KS, had some things to get off his chest about our Best Of competition. In a recent letter, Ken outlined why he thought the contest was slanted against small shops.

No distinction in our categories is made for shops WITHOUT dealers, Ken noted. The point being that shops and malls with dealers can generate a lot more votes in the Best Shop for General Antiques, General Collectibles, Crafts, etc. categories than smaller shops without dealers. Ken thought a separate category for shops “with no dealers” was necessary. All about a more level “voting” field was Ken’s point.

He is right. Though it’s too late to add a category in this year’s competition, next year there will be categories added that better distinguish small shop owners — those without dealers and huge square footage layouts.

But it must be noted that small shops, like Ken and Helen’s, can still compete in our “Best Mall or Shop for Customer Service” category. Indeed, many times small shops like Cheep Guy do a much better job in interacting and servicing customers than big malls.

I’ve also gotten a few comments concerning the purpose of the Best Of competition. We decided to begin the annual Best Of competition so: 1) readers of Discover Mid-America would have a chance to formally recognize their favorite shops, stores, shows, museums (go to page 18 for a full list) and 2) shop, mall and operators and promoters would gain more bragging rights and additional marketing ammunition through the recognition from patrons of their businesses and operations.

The benefit of Best Of from our standpoint is that we engage our readers more with our advertisers, and businesses and nonprofit organizations gain an additional marketing tool to use to get more business. And we’re convinced it works.

We try and make the contest as fair as possible — but as Ken Hawley pointed out, we’re not perfect. Still, we watch for “ballot stuffing.” We don’t count ballots from readers who only fill out one category (a sure sign of ballot stuffing) and throw out ballots without at least a reader’s name and/or multiple ballots under the same handwriting.

So far the balloting is running ahead of last year. And there’s still time. We’ll print the ballot again in the February issue but the deadline for a ballot being counted is Feb. 5, 2005. Keep voting!
And, of course, if you have suggestions to improve our annual Best Of contest, just let me know.

Contact Bruce Rodgers at
publisher@discoverypub.com

> Editor’s Notebook Archive — past columns