Sandy Bay Networks

When TMX Interactive needed help on a big website project for LG Mobile Phones, the digital marketing agency could have gone with a company in their Philadelphia community. Instead, they took a chance on a small, emerging company called Sandy Bay Networks, based hundreds of kilometres away in Antigonish, N.S. The gamble paid off in spades for both sides.

Sandy Bay, led by president and chief technology officer Duane Boudreau, led the content management for the site on that project and since then, TMX has sought them out again and again.

“I feel we’re very lucky that we were introduced to Duane,” says TMX Interactive Vice President, Director of Technology Mitesh Patel. “I would love to be able to do more work with him in the future.”

Duane and his wife, Elizabeth, Sandy Bay’s director of accounting & administration, started the company in 2005. Headquartered in Antigonish, the business also has a presence in New Hampshire, where the Boudreaus worked for nearly 10 years before returning home to Nova Scotia.

“We work with our clients as partners to develop and meet their online goals, whether it’s increasing productivity, online sales or visibility,” says Duane.

At the heart of their website development work is implementing content management systems which allow clients to independently manage, edit and add new material to their websites.

“That’s extremely key in today’s market, because if your content gets old and stale your customers are going to notice that. If your competition has a fresh new website, they’re more likely to switch and become customers of that organization,” Duane says.

Sandy Bay serves clients from Antigonish to California. Duane says the key focus for the next year or so will be to raise awareness of the company in the Maritimes. Director of sales Rose-Marie Mathyk says she gets positive responses when talking to current or potential clients about the company.

“Larger organizations are surprised to find out that they have a quality resource like Sandy Bay in their backyard,” she says. “Certainly with the smaller companies I’ve been talking to, particularly in the hospitality industries, they really feel that we understand what they require, so we’re very well received.”

Sandy Bay is responding to the needs of smaller businesses with the launch of a content management system initially targeted to the tourism industry in the Maritimes. Scheduled to be ready by mid-November, Boudreau says the system will be easy-to-use, intuitive and affordable.

“In this industry without innovation we’d be left behind, so innovation is absolutely key to our very existence,” Duane says.

It’s a time of excitement and growth for Sandy Bay. The company, which currently has seven full-time employees, plans to expand to 10 by the end of the year, with an ultimate goal of 25-30 employees. Duane says in the next six to nine months the business will build a team focused solely on creative work, such as design and branding.

Duane says Sandy Bay’s employees share a strong work ethic and a willingness to “do whatever it takes to make the project successful.” The Antigonish company has also benefited from being in the same town as St. Francis Xavier University. “There’s a large group of students from the computer science program that graduate here each year so there’s no lack of a highly trained workforce.”

In addition to growing in the Maritimes, Duane says that in time Sandy Bay would like to expand across the rest of Canada and eventually increase its presence in the United States.

And they will do it from Nova Scotia. “Especially for us, it comes down to doing what we love in a place we love,” Duane says.

While the work is demanding, Elizabeth says balance is also encouraged. “It’s great to step back and refresh, and I think it helps productivity.”

The Boudreaus’ return to Nova Scotia has also restored an important balance that they were missing. Now, they are able to spend more family time with their daughter and relatives. They also appreciate the natural environment..

“My father is a lobster fisherman from the area. A lot of our outdoor activities tend to centre around the water,” Duane says. “Our house sits essentially on the edge of St. Georges Bay. We can see the entire bay from our front yard. Those are the things that we couldn’t do in New Hampshire. We couldn’t get up at 10 o’clock in the morning on a Saturday and smell the sea breeze.”