SLR’s Above & Beyond Awards continue to grow and thrive as we once again prepare to highlight some of the amazing untold stories from across our sector in Scotland.
By Antony Begley
Celebratory lunch: 18 March 2026, The Corinthian Club, Glasgow
The SLR Above & Beyond Awards have become a hugely special part of the wider SLR portfolio and that’s for a very simple reason: they do something that no other awards programme does. In short, they provide a platform for shining a light on the often-incredible stories that happen every day in local retailing stores in Scotland but invariably go entirely unnoticed.
This is important, not just for the individuals whose actions are publicly celebrated on stage at the awards as well as in the pages of SLR, on digital media and in the pages of The Scottish Sun, our official media partner. It’s also important for our entire sector.
Local retailing is absolutely unique. There is no other sector like it and that’s down to the relationships we enjoy with our customers. The stories you hear at the Above & Beyond Awards about store staff saving people’s lives, transforming local communities, undertaking unbelievable charity commitments and more are the sort of thing that only local retailing does.
The more people that hear these stories the better, quite frankly. The last four or five years have demonstrated quite clearly that respect for shopworkers has nosedived. Stealing from a local store or abusing a staff member has been normalised, often because people these days seem to think it’s ‘ok’ to steal from ‘a business’.
The Above & Beyond Awards play their own small part in demonstrating to the wider world that independent retailers are real people with real lives and families and worries and hopes and dreams and fears, just like everyone else. Stealing from us, assaulting our staff or generally just being terribly behaved has a severe and often lasting impact on the victims.
So we need to communicate the unique nature of the pivotal role that local retailing outlets play in every community across Scotland. We deserve a little respect, and we deserve to be treated with the same courtesy that our staff routinely extend to all customers.
And in March at the Corinthian Club in Glasgow we’ll hear more astonishing tales of store workers who perform acts of minor and sometimes not so minor heroics that certainly didn’t sit within their job description. That’s because we care. And the world could do with a little more of that these days.
So here’s to every superstar who will be at the Awards and here’s to every store worker in Scotland. You’re doing the country proud – and the SLR Above & Beyond Awards are here to recognise and celebrate that fact.
