Lucid Optical Services Ltd win Innovative Business of the Year 2006
6 October 2006 Pride of Cumbria Awards Ceremony:
Lucid Optical Services Ltd are extremely pleased to have been announced winners of the 2006 'Innovative Business of the Year' award at the Pride of Cumbria Awards ceremony. The award was sponsored by the Royal Mail and presented by Sahar Hashemi, following a key note speech telling her inpirational story as a new entrepreneur starting Coffee Republic. The awards ceremony was hosted by TV newsreader Fiona Armstrong at Carlisle Racecourse, and was an enjoyable event with a drinks reception, lunch, and an afternoon at the races.
As winners of this prestigious award for innnovation two of Lucid's directors, John and Annette Colton were presented with a unique, inscribed glass trophy, a winners certificate, cash prize cheque and a bottle of champagne!
This is the first time we have entered the Pride of Cumbria Awards, and it was very nice that the judges appreciated the innovations we have brought to our training courses, qualifications and software products. We have worked hard to deliver high quality and innovative products and services for our clients, and now this has been recognised by independent, business judges such that all of our team can take a moment to reflect and be proud of what we have achieved.
Businesses in Cumbria
Many will know that Cumbria is not the largest region of the UK, but even so there are over twenty-one thousand businesses within the region, and many of these are high-tech, successful businesses in niche markets. This means that these awards are not easy to win and there is no doubt that the awards are well thought of in the Cumbria region and beyond, with past winners suggesting the accolade has helped them win more national and international business with the prestige it bestows on them and the increased confidence of new clients to trust the quality of their products and services. Previously at Lucid we have relied heavily on word-of-mouth recommendations from our trainees to bring new contacts to us, but we hope this award will help others to appreciate our continuous efforts to improve quality and innovate so that they can discover for themselves how we can help them.
Lucid plan to celebrate their success at the awards
It is rare these days that the whole of the Lucid team are able to get together in the same place at the same time. We regularly have staff out on client sites or increasingly out of the country training, but to win as prestigious an award as the Innovative Business of the Year means we must find a way to get everybody together to celebrate. This in itself might require some innovation as a virtual presence at a celebration is not really satisfactory, but when the client comes first other plans are often disrupted!
Finalists for the Environmental Business of the Year 2006
In addition to winning the award for Innovative Business of the year 2006, Lucid were finalists for the Environmental Business of the Year. We were pipped for the trophy by extremely worthy winners, but to be ranked in the top three for our region was still very rewarding. Our achievement in this category recognised our efforts to minimise waste and employ environmentally friendly equipment and practises wherever possible. Perhaps if we had been allowed to install solar panels when we enquired at the time of converting our main offices....
The Future for Lucid
Having got a taste for these awards we are keen to enter again next year. The innovative business award was certainly the one we felt we would have the best chance to win this year as we had much evidence of innovation we could show, but we also feel we are a very strong business in other ways and we might well look to surprise a few people by entering one of the other categories - watch this space...