Nashville, Tennessee, 01/27/04 – Bob Duthie proudly hands over the reins of his successful, fifteen-year-old custom e-learning development firm to his son, Andrew Duthie. The younger Duthie became President and 51% owner of Duthie Associates, Inc. on January 1, 2004. The senior Duthie will begin gradually removing himself from day-to-day operations to pursue other life-long passions, such as the completion of a long-distance boating trip circumnavigating eastern North America on a route known as “The Great Loop.” The first leg was completed last November, and Bob is keeping a weblog at www.bob.duthiemm.com.

The Duthies are a family of adventurers. Andrew Duthie left a successful engineering career in Michigan to begin the succession plan and take over the entrepreneurial efforts of his father. “My father started this business at a time when people didn’t know what multimedia and computer-based learning were. I have it easy. They’re calling us now,” says Andrew. When he’s not working with computers, he’s riding through the hillsides of Tennessee. Like his father, he enjoys long distance adventures and completed the Iron Butt Rally in 2001, an unbelievable 10,000 miles on his Kawasaki motorcycle in eleven days.

Duthie Associates Inc. creates custom e-learning courses for a diverse client base. Andrew came onboard at Duthie Associates in January 2000 and began in the trenches with the other associates. “He’s made significant improvements to our underlying code and processes,” says Gail Cody, a ten-year veteran of the firm. “Of course, we didn’t know what to expect as ‘the son’ came on board, but Andrew has proven invaluable with his understanding of technology. Besides that, he’s a pretty likeable guy. We’re all excited about the direction of the company.”

Their clients are excited too. Major clients include the Department of Defense and local corporations HCA, CCA and HealthStream, with 80% of their business coming from repeat customers. Seven year client Joe Page, Manager of Employee Development at Caterpillar Financial says “Duthie’s very concerned about the quality of the program from the aspect of helping the learner to learn, retain the subject matter and take it back to apply it to the workplace. They obviously show a terrific amount of pride in their work.”

Duthie Associates reached its projected million dollar revenues again in 2003. They prefer to remain at this general size to preserve the quality of their work. “We investigated growing the firm and decided we liked things as they are. We consider ourselves a small band of artisans and craftspeople, and our clients can tell the difference. Our custom work is not cookie-cutter. Clients say they can’t find anything else like it in the marketplace,” says Bob Duthie.

So, as Duthie sails into the sunset and his son rides in to the office, the adventure continues for this small, creative firm in the heart of Nashville.

About Duthie Associates, Inc.

Duthie Associates designs and develops custom e-learning courses. Another part of the business develops interactive marketing presentations.