By IAN ROSS
Opening doors and drumming up new business opportunities for Sault Ste. Marie and Northern Ontario keeps Doug Clute plane-hopping these days.
The soft-spoken Sault Ste. Marie resident has been the man behind the scenes of many of the city’s incoming and outgoing trade missions, laying the groundwork and making the introductions to promote the city and the region abroad as a place to do business.
Last February, Clute’s work was recognized when he received the Queen’s Jubilee medal for
promoting Sault Ste. Marie internationally, an honour bestowed upon him by the Governor General’s office.
Exploring new economic development opportunities for the North is familiar turf for the 57-year-old head of Clute & Associates.
Five years ago, he left his Northern Development and Mines job with a Rolodex full of contacts accumulated over a 28-year civil service career to take his expertise into the private sector.
As an opportunity development specialist, his small consulting firm assists small- and medium-sized enterprises and municipalities with government aid applications and administrative issues. His firm has also been instrumental in arranging trade missions and identifying partnership opportunities for Northern Ontario companies.
“The ability to take an opportunity that’s presented and bring the idea from concept to fruition is exactly what the business is set up to do,” says Clute, who worked with five different provincial ministries, including a 12-year stretch with Northern Development and Mines.
“I see my role as a facilitator.”
Almost immediately after leaving government, he was approached by the City of Sault Ste. Marie to assist with some federal funding applications toward development of a marketing plan for international affairs - a blueprint to prepare the city to host inbound trade missions.
Soon after, he was involved with the city in hosting a series of trade delegations from Finland, Portugal and Italy.
That experience led to organizing a 13-person Sault trade mission to Ireland in June 2000 where Sault native Ron Irwin held the Canadian ambassador’s post.
“I’m told it was the first municipality-driven and led mission in Canada,” says Clute.
One Sault company, Jim Fitzpatrick Industries, that participated in the June 2000 mission, cultivated a relationship overseas that resulted in an agreement being finalized recently with an Irish firm for the assembly and distribution of their pre-fabricated portable toilet systems to the European market.
“Four years ago, Sault Ste. Marie was not well known, but my work has helped expand that sphere of understanding,” he says.
Clute’s work has now branched out to other Northern Ontario cities where he is making connections with business owners interested in potential investment opportunities.
But convincing some cash-strapped and overburdened company executives to view future growth in an export-ready frame of mind is not always an easy task.
“It’s hard work to demonstrate in Northern Ontario that the opportunities are real,” says Clute.
“I don’t want to make gross generalizations, but it is often the case in Northern Ontario that small business is undercapitalized.
“Most (entrepreneurs) are faced with just trying to maintain existing operations and it’s difficult to take your energy out of a small business and put it into an entirely new area.”
Some northern firms are “comfort businesses,” says Clute. These firms tend to be family-run outfits that are satisfied in what they are doing provided their situation or economic conditions remain stable.
That is why most of his work revolves around convincing firms to consider the possibilities of forging linkages and technology transfer partnerships with foreign firms looking to tap into the U.S. market.
The capital and technology might come from Ireland, Italy or Finland, says Clute, but the base of operations can be in Northern Ontario, and use local labour and all the benefits of NAFTA as a stepping stone to 60 million consumers within a day’s drive of Sault Ste. Marie.
Though he has many exploratory projects on the go in the United Kingdom, St. Lucia and Thailand, lately his sights are set in the industrial heartland of northern Italy, which has the largest concentration of small- and medium-sized enterprises in Europe.
Together with the City of Sault Ste. Marie’s Economic Development Corp., they are planning a multi-sector trade mission for late October-early November 2003 with anticipated representation from across Northern Ontario.
“We believe that Northern Ontario communities with Italian heritage make natural partners” for possible technology transfer partnerships with many of the export-ready businesses around Milan,Clute says.
