On a regular basis, for many years now, A&E has run a different article about one of the shops that constitutes its readership. Sometimes those articles are the story of a business, and sometimes they are the story of a man. In the case of Clarkes Recognition Products, a Canadian shop in the Vancouver area, those two stories are inseparable. This is the story of how Peter Clarke became the man he wanted to be by becoming the businessman he needed to be.

The Missing Apostrophe
In 1977, Peter Clarke’s father, John Clarke, decided to get into the awards industry, and he did so by buying a well-established shop, Western Trophies, that had already been in business for 30 years. Soon thereafter, it became a place where Peter and his four siblings could work after school and weekends.

Peter enjoyed the work enough to stick with it and decided to make the family business his career. Eleven years later, Peter was 32, married with a one-year-old and still working at the shop. It was 1988, an eventful year for Peter. That was the year Peter’s father died, the year he became a businessman.

“Through my father, I got started in this business as a young kid. He passed away suddenly in 1988. When he got sick, we decided to name the business after him, and that’s how the Clarkes Recognition Products name came about, which is kind of a funny story.”

That is the story of the missing apostrophe, says Peter. “We registered the name with an apostrophe. My father, as sick as he was, went back and registered it without the apostrophe. He wanted it to be Clarkes without the apostrophe because he wanted it to be collective and not possessive. I have to explain that to people just about every week. So that is how that happened.” He laughs, “We are in the spelling business, so I don’t know if the name is doing a great job for our marketing efforts.”

Peter has been running Clarkes Recognition Products ever since his father passed away. And though he grew up in the business, running it was an altogether different, and difficult, experience.

“When he passed away, I took over the trophy business. I was totally unprepared for not only the challenges of running a small business but especially one as complex as the trophy industry can be. However, I survived,” says Peter.

Now 54 years old, he is able to look back at that time and reminisce. “It was pretty overwhelming at the time, but I haven’t regretted it. Having a small business, particularly this business, has made me a better person by overcoming the challenges that you personally and corporately have to deal with as you mature.”

As Peter has matured, so has his family. The third generation of Clarkes has already joined the family business. Braxton, Peter’s oldest son, worked for the family business for four years before heading back to college for a degree in business.

“It is the third generation, my father, me currently, my oldest son and my second son, Jeremy, is working here as well,” says Peter. “In addition in September I just married one of my customer service people, Colette. Colette had worked with me for 12 years and now she is family. But I treat my whole team like family, because they are just like family.”

Diversity Achieved Through Focus
It would be easy to take a look at Clarkes Recognition Products and describe them as focused on diversity. After all, they offer a variety of personalization methods to a menagerie of customers and clients. Yet Peter says that diversity is the result of a dedicated focus on awards, recognition and appreciation. Diversity is simply the best way to facilitate that focus.

“We are diverse, and I believe in diversity. But, at the same time, we are incredibly focused on awards, recognition and appreciation. That is what we do. With that, we sell some promotional products, but that’s not the focus of what we do. The reason we sell promotional products is that their salespeople are in touch with my clients, so I need to be able to offer promotional products. Really,” affirms Peter, “our focus is on the awards and recognition industry. Whatever diversity I have is focused on that area. Our goal is to appreciate the world one person at a time, and I think we do that as best we can.”

That goal is kept in mind when Peter shops to stock his product line for a wide variety of customers. Peter adds, “We are really fortunate in the awards world today to have at our fingertips quality products from around the world in every shape and material that we could possibly want. It makes diversification very simple. That doesn’t come without its challenges, but there are product lines within the awards industry that we could only have dreamed about 30 years ago.”

Thinking back 30 years ago reminds Peter of his father and the unique way in which he set the company on a course towards diversification, a destination that later became a part of the company’s culture.
“My father was not very artistic,” recalls Peter. “He was not a systems guy, and he didn’t understand machinery. But he was one heck of a salesman. He was 6’5”, and when he walked into a room, he filled the room. He had a g

reat presence and a wonderful personality, very personable. He could sell anything to anybody.”
And sell he did, anything to anybody, which sounds like a great idea to a salesperson. The problem was, according to Peter, that his father would sell things that nobody knew how to make. “He’d go out and sell something, come back to the shop and enthusiastically say, ‘Now, let’s figure out how to make it!’ I would be back in the shop going nuts, saying, ‘I can’t do this!’ He would customize things when they really shouldn’t have been customized and things like that.”

Peter tells the story with warmth and nostalgia in his voice, but it’s also clear he has no desire to return to those days. One is left with the impression that today’s salespeople for Clarkes Recognition Products work within guidelines the production staff has set.

Get Involved!
Clarkes Recognition Products is involved in a number of different organizations, local, national and international. They are members of ARA, ASI, PPAI, the Better Business Bureau, the Rotary Club of Vancouver, the Recognition Roundtable, and the Vancouver Executives Association.

“We like to be involved,” says Peter, in an obvious understatement. “Currently, I’m mostly involved with Rotary. I have this innate need to give back to the community right now. I’m in my 50s, and I feel blessed with what I have, and Rotary is a great way for someone who is very busy to give back to the world. I recommend it to every business owner. It’s a great networking opportunity for one, as well as a great way to contribute positive things to the world.”

There are several benefits to community involvement for a business, the foremost of which is the feeling given by doing a good deed. However, there are other benefits as well. Why is Clarkes Recognition Products so involved?

“Dealing with the different business associations—ARA, ASI, PPAI—those are particularly good for information and education. They connect businesses with magazines, such as A&E, and they provide other information that helps me run my business, and that’s why I belong to those. They are an excellent resource,” says Peter.

He continues, “The Recognition Roundtable provides those things as well as some great friendships and wonderful collaboration. The Recognition Roundtable is fairly new to me, but I’m very proud to be a part of that organization. The people there have had a very positive impact on my business. I definitely take advantage of as many resources as I can.”

With the other organizations, says Peter, “Vancouver Executives is a networking-specific organization with one classification per member, so I have the awards and recognition classification. It’s a safe place to network with other businesses, and they’re all business owners. It’s been around for about 90 years.”
Peter says he does get leads for his business from the work he does with these organizations. However, the biggest benefit for him is the opportunity for public speaking. “I have to get up every week and introduce myself. Standing in front of a crowd of people used to frighten me to death, and now I have no fear of it whatsoever.”

As for the Better Business Bureau, Peter says it is the right thing to do. “I think ethics in business is an important thing, and the Better Business Bureau is one of the organizations that promote ethical businesses, and that’s the reason I’m a part of that. There’s really no benefit to me as a member, but there are definite benefits to the consumer, and I think that’s very important.”

All of the community involvement, on top of his duties as a business owner and family man, makes for a long day.

“Life is busy. I start my day at about 6:30am in the morning. I come and spend a quiet hour at work. I do my thinking and planning or whatever needs to be done. Sometimes I just sit there and stare out of the window, enjoying the quiet and absorbing everything around me,” says Peter.

He adds, “I have a very good staff, and they’re the key to everything. When I’m networking—which is part of my job, I need to get customers in the store—my staff looks after things. Laura Tillyer, my Assistant Manager, has been with me for 16 years. I know I can count on Laura and the rest of my team to do a great job looking after our clients. I know I can count on them. They are all characters in their own way—I tend to hire people with character—and they’re reliable and loyal. They give me the flexibility to promote my business, network and hopefully grow the company. It is these people which differentiate us from the competition.”

Character
Clarkes Recognition Products has been in business for approximately 60 years, and it has been under the guidance of the Clarkes more than 30. They are one of the larger awards businesses in Canada. To be successful for so long suggests adherence to a guiding set of principles. And, in fact, looking around on the company website, a set of principles can be found, written out for anyone to read.

• To create successes for all contributors including customers, suppliers, individuals and our organization.
• To deliver outstanding awards with uncompromised service, on time.
• To be fair in our prices and progressive in our thinking, so we may provide the best available products and services.
• To provide a clean, efficient, friendly and fair environment for all.
• To be a positive part of our community

Peter explains, “My father had a lot of character, and I like to think that I picked some of that up. My mother had a lot of character. For example, there are five brothers and sisters in my family, and we were all adopted, and I can’t imagine having any other parents. That’s sort of the start of it all.”

Peter alluded earlier to the fact that running Clarkes Recognition Products forced him to grow and mature. That development took place over time.

“I needed to learn how to be a better boss, a better employer, a better businessman and a better leader. So I started on a journey, a long time ago, trying to be the type of person that I think you need to be if you’re going to run a business, lead people and have people want to work for you. Over time, I have applied that to the statement of who we want to be as a business,” says Peter.

He adds that every business follows whoever the leader is, and it takes on their ethics. If the business leader is focused only on money, then that is the culture of the organization. Peter’s focus is on being a positive part of the local community, adding to rather than taking from.

“We want to be a really good place for people to come and work, and I want them to enjoy their time here and benefit from it. We really try to look after our customers and treat them the way that we would want to be treated. That comes from the leadership journey that I have taken over the last 30 years,” says Peter.
“We review that statement (from the website) on a regular basis. We want to make sure that we know it is one thing to write it down and say it and another to behave in that way,” says Peter.

Positive Business
On their website, on the same page as their mission statement and just a little further down, there is a quote from John Clarke, “The awards business is the most positive business in the world.”

Says Peter, “I have to remind myself of that every once in a while. It is a guiding light for us. You’re always reacting to the customers’ needs, and those needs aren’t always reasonable. In our industry, we meet difficult deadlines; we work with difficult materials to make difficult products. There are tough days, but at the end of those days, we need to remember that the trophy we’re working on might be the only trophy that child ever gets. Or it may be an award a person worked their whole life to earn. We just need to remind ourselves what a positive effect we’re having on the recipient.”