The Crossfield Chamber of Commerce wants to make this year's Annual Small Business Awards are the best ever.

To do that, they're adding some new awards and renaming others, according to Chamber Executive Director Nicole Vandenberghe.  "Typically we've only had three or maybe four awards categories in the past so we really wanted to make it bigger."

This year six awards will be handed out at the Chamber's gala on October 13th during Small Business Month.  New for 2017 is the "Rising Star" Award.

"This award will go to a locally owned business that's less than three years old or has a new owner within the past three years and has shown innovation or significant growth and success within our local business community," says Vandenberghe.

Another new category this year is called the "Industrial Employer of the Year" Award which is given to the business that goes above and beyond for their employees, providing the best overall place to work.  

"We're just putting it into the industrial area," says Vandenberghe, "We find sometimes people don't know all of the businesses in the industrial area.  If they're a manufacturing business you typically might not shop there.  We really want them to make sure that they know we appreciate them within our community as well."

One of the new awards isn't even designed for business: the "Crossfield Citizen of the Year" Award will go to a citizen that strives to make the town a better place to live.  Vandenberghe explains the rationale behind that award.  "We wanted to also let our community know that, while we're here for the business, we do appreciate stuff that citizens in our community do to help better our community."

The other awards to be presented include the "People's Choice Award:" formerly known as the Customer Appreciation Award; the "Community Spirit" Award and the "Business Citizen of the Year" Award.

The new awards have just been introduced to the community and nominations will open for them in the middle of July.  Vandenberghe says only the "People's Choice Award" is to be voted on by the public.  Other awards just need one nomination and then the nominees must meet various criteria and a selection committee will go through the nominations to make sure they fit the criteria.

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