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Vancouver Sun Article

THE VANCOUVER SUN

Self-Counsel Press founder ready for some road work
Vancouver Sun
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Page: C2
Section: Businessbc
Byline: Malcolm Parry
Column: Trade Talk
Source: Vancouver Sun

DIANA DOUGLAS said she’d be as pleased to sell her 36-year-old Self-Counsel Press as dad Jim Douglas was to unload his remaining shares in the Douglas & McIntyre publishing company he and Scott McIntyre also founded in 1971.

The latter firm was acquired recently by former Scotia Capital investment and corporate-banking managingdirector Mark Scott and one-time clients David Rowntree and Rod Senft.

“People who buy publishing companies are normally attracted by the intellectual component,” said Diana Douglas. “I’ve never seen a Canadian interested in information-driven companies.”

That’s odd since North Vancouver-based Self-Counsel—http://www.self-counsel.com—is consistently profitable and has released three titles in May, including Heather Bayer’s Renting Your Recreational Property for Profit, $19.95.

Douglas turned one of her own recreations into a business acquisition this month, too. She paid “in the low six figures” for Whistler-based Mike Cieben’s Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Holidays. Son and long-term employee Brandon Douglas, 39, is the new president. Second son Tyler, 29, handles marketing.

The firm—http://www.rockymtnmoto.com—may need plenty of that if it is to expand its May-October Canadian season into a year-round operation. That would entail U.S.-based tours to Las Vegas, the American Rocky Mountains and Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.

Activities in the U.S. may see Harley-Davidson motorcycles (Diana rode one for years) added to the firm’s 20- bike fleet of British Triumphs, German BMWs and an Italian Moto Guzzi. Currently, a largely European clientele prefers the nimbler machines to Milwaukee-built cruisers, Diana said. “But we’ll rent a Harley if someone wants one. By the second day, though, they’re into the sport bikes and crotch rockets, and, at the end of the trip, all the Harleys are in the truck.”

Rocky Mountain owns its own motorcycles, and sells them after 18 to 24 months, Douglas said.

Two-year husband and Camelot Construction principal Laurence Allington rides his own BMW. That’s good for former front-seater Douglas, who said in 2003: “I’m useful extra eyes, I don’t cling and I’m good for eight hours a day.”

Make that 12 hours daily when you own a busy publishing firm that, unlike a Triumph Speed Triple or BMW R1200 RT, you’d be happy to lay down and move on.

— August 15, 2007

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