ERT Awards 2026 recognise Potters Home Digital’s custom install

Potters Home Digital won the custom-install retail category at the ERT Awards 2026, where 24 awards were presented at London’s Grand Connaught Rooms during the week of 16 October. Martins Hi-Fi collected two retail awards, while Sony received the industry training honour, bringing specialist installation and technical support into a programme spanning the wider electrical trade.

What happened

Potters Home Digital received Best Independent Electrical Retailer – Custom Install, the category most directly relevant to professionally integrated homes. Its inclusion gives installation services a distinct place alongside conventional retail disciplines, rather than treating the sale of equipment and the delivery of a working system as interchangeable activities.

Martins Hi-Fi won Best Independent Electrical Retailer Shopfront and Best Independent Electrical Retailer Website. These recognise two different points of contact with a specialist retailer: the physical premises through which customers encounter the business and the online information they can assess before arranging a visit.

The consumer-electronics product award went to Majority’s Bowfell Halo Atmos Soundbar 5.1 Dolby Atmos Surround Sound System. That is a specific product-category result, not a comparative verdict on every route to home cinema; it should not be read as establishing equivalence with a separately designed, installed and calibrated theatre.

Sony was named Best Industry Training Provider. Elsewhere in the supply chain, The CDA Group Limited took Best Manufacturer/Supplier Customer Service, Bluestem Group won Best Industry Distributor, and Calculus Software Solutions received Best Industry Service and Support Provider. Together, these categories acknowledge the less visible businesses and capabilities behind equipment sales.

Hosted by comedian Scott Bennett, the ceremony also recognised independent consumer-electronics retailers Dacombes of Wimborne in the large-business category and 21st Century Service in the small-business category. Those distinctions concern retail businesses, whereas Potters’ award explicitly identifies custom installation as the relevant specialism.

The background

ERT’s programme covers electrical retail well beyond the specialist AV market. Wellingtons Electrical and Abbey Appliances won the large and small independent domestic-appliance retailer categories respectively, while Diane Berry Kitchens Ltd received the independent kitchen showroom award. The results therefore place home technology within a broader network of residential purchasing decisions.

That breadth matters on a high-end residential project because kitchen appliances, entertainment systems and building controls may arrive through different suppliers. An award-winning retailer can be a useful starting point for procurement, but the owner or project team still needs to establish who is responsible for installation interfaces, commissioning and subsequent service.

A custom-install brief is particularly different from a product purchase. Equipment selection must account for room layout, cable routes, ventilation, network provision and the intended control experience. Recognition in a dedicated installation category is relevant to that search, although it does not replace checking a proposed contractor’s experience against the actual scope of a house or apartment.

For hi-fi, the physical shop also has a practical role beyond its appearance: it can provide somewhere to assess a system before committing space and budget at home. The separate development of a full-line JBL Summit demonstration showroom in Indianapolis illustrates the value of access to specialist equipment. Martins Hi-Fi’s shopfront award, however, should not be confused with an assessment of its demonstration acoustics.

Training has a similarly specific place in the delivery chain. Manufacturer instruction can help installers understand configuration, operating limits and fault diagnosis, but a training-provider award is not an individual engineer’s qualification. Owners considering Sony equipment should still ask which members of the project team have relevant experience with the products being proposed.

What people are saying

Opening the event, ERT editor Will McGill identified pressure on margins, rising costs and competition from online retailers as challenges for the sector. He also emphasised the resilience of independent businesses and the importance of recognising both established operators and people entering the industry.

For residential clients, those commercial pressures make the service proposition worth examining closely. A quotation should distinguish equipment supply from design, installation and support, so that a lower hardware price does not obscure missing project responsibilities. That is a procurement implication of the pressures McGill described, rather than a claim about any winning business.

The results are also likely to interest integrators that use demonstrations to explain unfamiliar technology. Lutron and Homeplay’s daylight-led lighting presentation at Decorex offers a related example of making system behaviour tangible. The relevant question for a prospective client is whether a demonstration shows how the proposed installation will work, not simply how attractive its components look.

Environmental recognition was divided between different parts of the market: Forbes Rentals won Best Sustainable Independent Electrical Retailer, while Pacifica received Best Manufacturer/Supplier Sustainability Initiative. The results supplied no supporting measures for those wins. They should therefore prompt questions about the initiatives recognised, rather than assumptions about quantified emissions savings or whole-life product performance.

Individual recognition extended across sales, emerging talent and long service. Janice Englefield of Forbes Rentals received the Sales Excellence Award, Edward Harringman of Martins of Hawkhurst won the retailer breakthrough-talent category, and Electrolux’s Tracy Smith was named New Industry Personality of the Year. Lee Sawford of Cata received the distinguished-contributor honour for more than three decades in the electrical industry.

What happens next

The immediate value of these results is in supplier research rather than a new purchasing deadline. No product availability changes, installation packages or follow-on technical programmes were announced in the supplied awards account. Owners can use the relevant category winners to inform a shortlist without treating the ceremony as a launch timetable.

For a prospective Potters Home Digital commission, useful next questions concern comparable completed projects, responsibility for system design and the arrangements for support after handover. A homeowner should also establish whether documentation, configuration backups and user instruction are included in the proposed scope. Those deliverables are not specified by the award announcement.

For buyers considering the Majority soundbar, the outstanding task is to examine the product itself: connections, source compatibility, room suitability and installation requirements. The award result does not provide those specifications or a price. A retailer demonstration and a review of the manufacturer’s documentation remain separate steps from noting the category win.

Why this matters

For owners and developers of prime homes, the useful distinction is between recognition for a product, a retail experience and an installation service. The ERT results identify businesses worth investigating in each discipline, but a successful commission still depends on matching the award’s scope to the work required. A category-specific shortlist, supported by references and clearly allocated responsibilities, is more valuable than choosing on the strength of an awards badge alone.