Six of Singapore's retailers were honoured at the Singapore Retailers Association (SRA) Ball 2013 on Thursday night.

Winners of this year's SRA Retail Awards, which saw over 60 contenders, included Parisian patisserie Laduree which won Best New Entrant of the Year, and Tangs Beauty at Tangs Orchard which won Best Retail Concept of the Year.

The awards were presented by Minister of State for Trade and Industry Teo Ser Luck and SRA President Dato' Dr Jannie Chan.

At the ceremony at Raffles City Convention Centre, Mr Teo also gave an update on the progress of Spring Singapore's Part-Time Pool Programme. It allows retailers to tap on part-timers to complement their full-time staff, enabling them to have a small staff strength while coping with daily and seasonal peaks of customer traffic.

Mr Teo said about 1,700 trained part-timers have been deployed to close to 50 retail companies to help meet manpower needs since the programme was piloted in 2011.