Derrek Vaughn | The Valdosta Daily TimesWinnersville Awards offers a variety of awards and trophies to fit clients’ needs.

VALDOSTA —When giving recognition calls for a crystal gift, medal, plaque, or trophy, Winnersville Awards on Baytree Road has these items and many more on hand.

Everyone enjoys being recognized, right? Just ask Randy Steedley, owner, and Ray Scollin, manager. They have been giving the Valdosta community a way to recognize accomplishments since the storefront opened in April 2014.

“We’ve had really great success locally and it’s been an awesome ride,” Scollin said. “We even got two nationally, internationally known reality television shows buying items from us now because we met with them and they loved our products.”

The Winnersville Awards team had the opportunity to spend five days in Las Vegas last month for a trade show and received a lot of good reception, according to the business.

The Winnersville Connection

A good bit of merchandise was created for the Winnersville Classic, from custom cuts to the victory trophy.

The shop would like to see a replica of the Winnersville trophy for the store with a spotlight on it for when people walked in the front door.

“We will get it one day but we will let the schools pass the original one back and forth for a little bit,” Scollin said.

The trophy was built in-house and donated to the teams, he said.

“When dealing with as many athletic programs as we have in town, it’s nice to have somewhere to get awards that you can present to children for different accomplishments. It’s nice to be a part of that,” Steedley said

The 2017 victors of the Winnersville Classic were the Lowndes High School Vikings.

“It (the trophy) took a little while to catch on. I believe there was one years and years ago and I saw something that looked like the Winnersville trophy in the Wildcats museum based on what was on it,” Steedley said.

The first couple years it appeared like most people were oblivious to fact there was a thing known as the Winnersville trophy, now the trophy is showing up in photographs and on ads, he said.

“This year, Lowndes High won and they grabbed it from me immediately because they have not had it in their possession since we made it,” Steedley said.

It has only been four years since Winnersville Awards started the classic trophy and the kids that were freshmen then are now seniors,

“Its fun seeing the kids with it year after year,” he said. “I think they believe it has always been here. I think it has finally got to the point where … it’s become tradition by association.”

Business Expansion

“It is really cool that we are still growing and expanding. We are still brand new. We’ve only been in business a little over three years and it’s pretty successful I’d say,” Scollin said.

Consistency is necessary for this market because anyone can do it online but “we are really experienced with it,” he said. “We know what we are doing and a lot of those places online don’t have a high-watt laser like we do.”

The shop is now a Yeti dealer, and “with those orders now coming in,” it opens up the opportunity for more unique gift options.

“When we started we had our gifts and keepsakes and with the Yeti cups coming in people locally are like what other gifts do you have? We have definitely expanded and adding it to our inventory has been a plus,” Scollin said.

Winnersville Awards offers a unique inventory to have personalized from fishing logs, wallets, leather cozies and watch engravings, customer opportunities are not limited.

“I work with everybody. Ninety percent of the time when someone comes in, I ask them what they are looking for and then I find an option that fits their budget,” Scollin said.

Community Reach

As far as the community goes Winnersville Awards wants to have more reach to some of the smaller communities such as Homerville, Ray City, and places that may have a small trophy operations. The shop has the option to ship to them or they can drive and pick it up whenever it’s ready. The business has had several orders so far without a hitch.

Winnersville Awards is launching its new website by mid-September in order to help with expanding the business’ reach, and Scollins said he has been working on it since February to make sure it is just right.

“We would like the website to allow everybody to access us without having to come into the store; if you don’t see what you need, call us and we will get you set up,” Scollin said.

The shop offers discounts for teachers, military, the university and two colleges, which keeps them active in the community.

“My dad served 22 years in the Air Force and because of that I bend over backwards; the military and the schools are our main reach,” Scollin said

Valdosta is recession proof, Scollin said, because of places such as “our military base, our schools and Wild Adventures; we have so much going on here and this city can be a little bit unforgiving at times but I mean it’s actually really not a terrible place.”

Scollin said the business is still growing and does a lot of work with Valdosta-Lowndes Parks & Recreation Authority, as well as, the Boys & Girls Club, but it’s not as big of a reach as he would like to see.

“There are so many things that we have done and you just never know what you can actually do for people. It’s nice to be able to personalize things for people,” Steedley said. “Our new laser is way more efficient and it gives us more flexibility as to what we can do on different materials. It’s been good having it, if we didn’t have that we wouldn’t be here right now.”

Winnersville Awards is located at 1412-B Baytree Road; has operating hours 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. For more information, call (229) 247-7182.

LaShaunda Jordan is a reporter with The Valdosta Daily Times. She can be contacted at (229)244-3400 ext. 1257.