Announcing Our 2024 ECI Customer Award Winners

Earlier this month, more than 850 ECI customers gathered at our Connect Customer Conference in Dallas, Texas. This event happens every two years and is an amazing time to joint together as a community to learn from each other, share insights, strengthen skillsets, and celebrate each other’s successes.

One of our favorite parts of this event is the opportunity to honor our 2024 Everyday Hero finalists and winner, as well as our Customer Excellence winner.

Our Everyday Hero Awards program is celebrated every year and acknowledges the incredible difference that our customers are making in their communities and the world around us. Winners receive up to $15,000 to their charity of choice and free trip to Connect so that we can celebrate in person. The stories we receive are absolutely incredible and inspire us all.

This year, we received a record number of customer nominations from around the world and narrowing it down to just three was incredibly difficult.

Rachael Schoolfield of Samco Business Products, a third-generation provider of office furniture and business supplies in Jefferson City, Missouri, is the grand prize winner of the 2024 Everyday Hero Award for her charity work with the Human Trafficking Coalition of Central Missouri. Her efforts to prevent and end forced labor and sexual exploitation of individuals, especially children and women, have earned her a $15,000 donation from ECI for a charity of her choice.

Through advocacy, active engagement in community collaboration and education, the Coalition seeks to identify victims, expose traffickers and users, promote slave-free practices and support survivors of human trafficking. Facilitating trainings, seminars and various events, the Coalition brings attention to the cause and raises funds to provide local survivors with counseling sessions, shelter and food, transportation and more on their journeys toward wholeness.

Thank you for being a powerful advocate for justice, Rachel, and for showing us all the difference one person can make!

Finalist: Richard and Amanda VanDeWalle

Richard and Amanda VanDeWalle of Hometown Hardware Theodosia, a hardware store in Theodosia, Mo., received a $7,500 donation from ECI for their support of the Theodosia Volunteer Fire Department. In a small town with limited resources, the volunteer-led department not only drives fundraising efforts to remain effective and operational, but also serves the community by providing space for the local farmer’s market and supporting local women’s shelters.

Finalist: The Stier Family

The Stier Family of Stier Supply Company, a provider of high-quality, durable construction materials in Irmo, S.C., received a $7,500 donation from ECI for their dedication to supporting those affected by Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a progressive neurodegenerative disease, through the Fanny Pack Foundation. Since 2021, the Stiers have helped the Fanny Pack Foundation raise $1.1M for the ALS Association. In honor of the late Christie Stier, matriarch of the Stier family, the Stiers created the Christie Memorial Golf Tournament, which helps fund once-in-a-lifetime, all-expenses-paid trips for families battling ALS.

Every year that we host our Connect Customer Conference, we celebrate customers around the world who have experienced incredible, measurable success by leveraging the solutions we provide at ECI. The winner of this award receives a fully paid trip to that year’s Connect conference.

Winner: Fitch Lumber Company

This year’s winner is Fitch Lumber Company, a 4th-generation family business that demonstrated remarkable growth and adaptability in the building supply industry through their implementation of our Spruce ERP in 2019.

The results that the Fitch Lumber Company has experienced has been impressive. They have enabled customers to see their orders and pay online, which makes customers happier, while also reducing the average time between sale and payment from 55 to 35 days. They have also since gained strong visibility into their inventory which is spread across four warehouses, totaling 40,000 square feet. This has helped maintain optimal stock levels, speed up the time to locate materials, and made training new hires much easier.

All the improvements that this company has made with the help of Spruce have led to doubling their revenue and quadrupling their profits over the last 4 years, all while increasing their staff by only 10%.