Celebrating 10 years of the awards, the audience of over 400 industry executives from across the retail, nursery, preschool, toy, marketing and licensing arenas were treated to a host of entertainment – including a pre-lunch speech from Dragons’ Den investor, Touker Suleyman.

Welcoming everyone, Rob Willis, director of Max Publishing – which owns and organises the awards – commented: “Wow – ten years. The PPS Awards was launched shortly after Progressive Preschool was first published. As a business, we wanted to work in the kids product space, as several of us had long history there.

“But we also wanted to be different, and thanks to you guys out there, I feel we can certainly say we’ve achieved that. To everyone who has ever taken a ticket across these ten great years, and that’s a total of 4,366 bums on seats in that decade, we thank you.

“To our star performers – Richard Pink, Lisa Bryant, every retailer who has judged products, every supplier who has judged retailers, and today’s – and historic – sponsors, we thank you.”

The uplifting grand finale of the afternoon saw Stephen and Karen Hewitt awarded with the Outstanding Achievement accolade – having started Character.com from their garage, the online retailer is now a £50+ million business.