Barrhead, Alberta
Standing out
Small-town shop wins Outstanding Snowmobile Dealership award
Name: Irene Strawson
Position/company: Co-owner of Barrhead Motor Sports in Barrhead, Alberta.
Products and services: We are a Polaris Snowmobile dealership. We also sell the Polaris ATVs and we sell Honda motorcycles, ATVs and power equipment. We also sell the Polaris Rangers, the side-by-side units, and we sell Argo. And then our service and parts department back those products up.
A Shared Passion: Owners Irene and Darren Stawson are avid snowmobilers and supporters of organized snowmobiling.—photo courtesy Irene Strawson
Past lives: Before we bought this dealership we had a construction company and a trucking and backhoe company.
What led you to open Barrhead Motor Sports? Well, we enjoyed the sport ourselves and so decided to get into it.
What is the shop like? It has a very full showroom. We’ve got a brick building on a two-acre parcel of land in the town of Barrhead. We are on the edge of the industrial park. We are right on the snowmobile trail to leave town and the staging area is right across the road from us.
Describe an average day: We come in in the morning and open shop about a half an hour before we open up to the public and just get everything all up and running and get prepared. Then we are dealing with customers. We have 13 staff and are always looking for ways to improve.
What do you like most about your job? Seeing something—a project—pull together and seeing good results. Dealing with the staff and seeing how they develop and get things done. Dealing with the public can be very rewarding too.
Describe your relationship with your customers: I would say it's pretty good. WIth it (Barrhead) being a small town, a lot of customers come in and we can call them by their first name. When you are in a bigger urban setting you don’t get that kind of service or local recognition. They come in and know that I know them, which is really nice. You’ve already got a relationship.
What do you ride? Any of the trips that I go on, the sled of choice for myself is the Polaris 700 RMK—that’s been my favourite for years. We don’t get out and ride as much as we’d like to. We did more riding, I think, before, a few years ago when we weren’t quite as big as we are now.
What does it mean to you to have won the 2008 Canadian Council of Snowmobile Organizations (CCSO) award for Outstanding Snowmobile Dealership? Naturally, we were pretty excited about it—all the staff. It’s rewarding for them to be recognized on that level. Our customers and our local sled club are the ones who nominated us. Can I just put a little thank you in there to all of our staff for doing an outstanding job?
