Newark Business Awards 2024: Skins Sexual Health wins Judges’ Prestige Award

The final award of the night was the Judges’ Prestige Award, given to Skins Sexual Health, who minutes earlier received the Business of the Year Award.

The Judges’ Prestige Award is chosen from all the Newark Business Awards finalists — regardless of whether they have won anything — and is decided in a meeting of all judges ahead of the awards ceremony.

Skins Sexual Health was chosen, but special mention was given to Radio Newark — a finalist in the Team of the Year category — who was a close second.

However, judges plumped for Skins Sexual Health thanks to their success on the global stage.

The brand, founded in 2006, is now stocked by retailers and pharmacies worldwide and has a turn-over of more than £2.25m per year.

In the past 12 months they have been making significant advances in the global sexual wellness market after signing new contracts in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe.

Closer to home they have also been looking to expand their reach with more stockists across the country, have partnered with the NHS, and made donations of condoms and products to students and educational programmes.

Richie Bowles, of Skins Sexual Health, said: “We are absolutely delighted. As a sexual wellness company we have had such different situations over the years, from banks not wanting to lend us money because of the word sex in our name, to now running head to head with so many companies.

“We are not a strange company, we are a company which offers sexual wellness.”

Skins received a special wooden trophy engraved with the previous winners, which they will be able to keep for a year.