Big fans of Dubbo businesses of any size are being encouraged to act quickly to help push them into the limelight.
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Nominations for the Dubbo Chamber of Commerce's Rhino Awards are open until July 26.
Chamber president Matt Wright encouraged customers, clients and other members of the community to "get behind the awards" and start nominating "their favourite business, or even their favourite individual".
"At this point, letting businesses be recognised by the public for what they do and their contribution and to have a nomination from a random member of the public for or your business is something to be proud of," he said.
The chamber officially launched the awards at a race meeting at the Dubbo Turf Club on June 14.
About 100 people attended the event, and guests had racing personality Jaimee Rogers in their midst.
The annual awards night has expanded in 2019 to include 14 categories.
Mr Wright said the decision to add an excellence in microbusiness category was in response to Dubbo's business landscape.
In previous years the Rhino Awards had featured an excellence in business category and an excellence in small business category.
The small business category only captured businesses with five to 20 employees and the issue was there were a lot of businesses that had less than five employees, Mr Wright said.
"They were small microbusinesses and a lot of them punching well above their weight and we have a lot of them in the Dubbo business community," Mr Wright said.
"So there is a new category now and it's called excellence in microbusiness and it is for those businesses with one to four employees.
"So we're really excited that's been captured because I think, hopefully it will bring a lot of businesses into the awards that might not have considered entering into that category previously."
Mr Wright highlighted that businesses did not need to be chamber members to either be nominated, or to enter the awards.
Previous years had seen a "constant stream" of entrants winning categories who were not members.
"We're really about encompassing the whole of the Dubbo business community," he said.