News

Who's Who: Doug Peter

While longevity has given St. Clair Interactive Communications' founder a sense of tenure in the kiosk industry, it has not diminished his sense of enthusiasm for the potential of the technology.

July 4, 2004

When you do anything -- work, play, love -- for two decades straight, you tend to take the big view of things. You tend to not sweat the small stuff, and instead focus on grand designs.

Doug Peter has been in the kiosk business long enough to take that big view. He has seen a lot of competitors -- and aspiring technologies and trends -- come and go. After two decades working in international consumer marketing, ad agencies, and marketing consultancy, he started St. Clair Interactive Communications Inc. 21 years ago. The company, located in Toronto with 24 employees, is a front-to-back kiosk development and deployment firm with a clientele that includes Pepsi Canada, Sears Canada, IBM, and Home Depot.

Twenty-one years can be a longer time to do anything. But Peter is not jaded. Indeed, he is still a fan of the business and a believer in its potential.

"My main business (when starting St. Clair) was mass media, designing communications programs to reach customers and prospects through mass media," Peter said. "When I first saw the idea of one-on-one electronic marketing, I just fell in love with it. I thought it was the most powerful thing I'd ever seen. And when it's well done, I still believe in it."

Marvin Elbaum, president of Elbaum & Partners, a Connecticut firm that serves as a representative for St. Clair, has known Peter for six years. He said that Peter has a clear feel for what he calls "the blending of logic and magic" in the kiosk industry.

Doug Peter

"He's a real pro," Elbaum said. "Doug understands the dynamics of this business, as well as anyone that I've met."

Peter's length of service in the business has given him an eagle's eye view of changes and trends. He is reluctant to fall quickly in love with the "latest thing," whatever that may be.

"I've been through four generations of online services, of which the Web is only the latest," Peter said, when asked how the Internet has changed his company. "I'm sure that there will be a replacement for that. I've been through many generations of kiosk entrepreneurs and kiosk ventures by large corporations, and as we always say, those of us who are somewhat veterans, when we go to trade shows, we wonder who we'll see this year."

One of the most striking things about Peter is his demeanor. Most high-level executives tend to be tightly wound, speaking and moving quickly to keep up with the speed of their ideas. Peter, for his part, seems relaxed and always in control.

"I would like to think I'm laid back," he said. "I have my moments, but I consider myself a people person."

Peter's hobbies -- camping, canoeing, and drinking good wine -- reflect that inner peace.

"I'm a psychologist by background, so I guess the camping and canoeing is a solitude time to reflect on things," Peter said. "Anybody who knows me knows that I'm a hands-on manager and I like to be face to face with our clients as much as I can, so I like to travel a lot."

Peter is able to combine several of his hobbies into the kinds of vacations most people only fantasize about.

"I do travel to France a couple of times a year just to sit in a vineyard somewhere," he said. He tried winemaking some time back, but found it was more fun to drink the stuff made by people who really knew what they were doing.

Peter's persona is one of his strengths, according to Elbaum.

"Underneath that laid back persona is a very focused and detailed person," he said. "But yeah, he's an easy going kind of guy.

"Doug has been around the block enough to know that you keep an even keel all the time," Elbaum added. "Which very much reflects my philosophy, and that's why I work so well with him."

While the kiosk business has certainly seen many changes over the past two decades, Peter feels that the core of the business has stayed the same.

"It's more robust, it's prettier, the connectivity is certainly easier, but the basic premise of the whole thing I'm doing -- one-on-one merchandising and marketing -- hasn't changed a whole lot," he said.

Peter said that St. Clair is successful at pleasing both clients and end users by working in reverse. "We put the end user first, and work backward from their needs to what our clients want to achieve, and then what the systems are capable of doing," he said. "And we try to bring those three things together into a successful project.

"The only things we go outside for are hosting services, and fabrication-integration and field support," Peter added.

Such strategies obviously appeal to his clients. While Peter declined to give any sales figures, he did say that the privately owned company has been profitable for each of the last six years.

"We've been through four boom and bust cycles," he said. "We're very conservative about the way we run our business as a result. We have tried to maintain a balance between creative people and user interface psychology, and the software side, which is now the biggest chunk of our organization. This year (sales have) taken over and gone to even higher levels."

He does say that the company operates in seven countries, and he plans to continue expanding the international operation. "We've done business in the U.S. since 1985, and the U.S. does account for the majority of our work," he said.