Richard Siddle: comment, your chance to win in Harpers Awards 2012

Wandering past the lines of discarded Christmas trees outside people's homes this week certainly helped draw a line under the Christmas, New Year festivities.

Whatever start to the new year you have had the past month will go someway to determining how well most drinks businesses do this financial year.

It seems there have been plenty of good tidings in all sectors of the trade with some even reporting their best Christmas trading period ever. Which does come as a bit of a surprise considering the pessimism many in the trade brushed off their office tinsel back at the start of December.

The trade's real winners and losers will become apparent in the coming months.

Which brings me to the launch of the Harpers Awards, our inaugural industry event that looks to reward, celebrate and highlight those businesses that are leading the competition in their sectors.

We have teamed up with Brintex to hold the event during another vitally crucial trading period of the year - the London International Wine Fair. Full details of which categories are up for grabs are presented on pages 10-11 and full criteria for each award will be available on our new harpersawards.com website from January 20.

The awards are split into three areas; the At Your Service awards for the on-trade; the Top Merchant awards, only open to merchants where a significant amount of sales comes through a retail store; and overall industry awards open to all.

All in all there should be an awards category suitable for you and you can enter as many categories as you like.

We also make no apologies for setting the bar high in terms of the awards criteria as we want to be able to reward the very best in their peer group.

But, as they say, you have to be in it to win it, so once you've disposed of your Christmas tree and made sense of your festive accounts please give us the chance to give you something back by putting your business on the line at the Harpers Awards 2012.

• People & Opinion