Remembering Peter Giddings (1940-2019)

Peter Giddings was one of those people you could meet just once casually and would be very unlikely to forget - a tall, dapper, self-assured English gentleman who in some ways seemed incongruous in a company with roots in the San Francisco music scene, he was involved with Clear-Com® for over 4 decades, having originally come into contact with founder Bob Cohen while representing Beyerdynamic who provided headsets to go with the intercom systems. Peter and his wife Judy worked as a team with Judy primarily handing the sales administration work and Peter doing the travelling and in that configuration worked tirelessly to launch and advance the Clear-Com brand in international markets.

Peter was renowned for his passion for vintage sports cars – both collecting them and racing them – in fact he still holds track records at a number of sites. Peter’s enthusiasm for motorsports intersected with the Clear-Com business as he worked to develop communications solutions for professional race teams and advanced relationships in that very demanding market segment which are still delivering results to this day. Peter’s sense for live events based communications carried into Clear-Com’s presence in global events like the Olympics and World Cup and he was a strong champion of the special requirements for these high profile opportunities.

Peter had unique insights having pioneered the business in a number of places that were not easy for Westerners to travel to during the 80’s and 90’s like China, India, and around Latin America and developed so much of the business which was often foundational in the nascent broadcasting business in some of these regions. Focusing on a powerful vision of the importance of a capable and well-placed local reseller to support the business in each geography, Peter effectively created our model for how to work with these important Partners and in some cases personally helped those businesses get started.

While researching the history of Clear-Com as part of our 50th Anniversary celebration last year it was revealed how important Peter and Judy were in the development of certain products within the Partyline portfolio, some of which have carried forward in subsequent developments to serve critical customer needs even to this day. These developments were driven by a unique combination of Peter’s audio applications insight and Judy’s market research expertise. Similarly, a key secondary market was ‘created’ through Peter’s identification of a communications challenge that Clear-Com was uniquely prepared to address and he did so undaunted by concerns of whether the products in question had been targeted for that market initially. 30 years later this is one of our key business components and has turned into a global activity for us.

Peter was always passionate about promoting Clear-Com and supportive of his fellow sales people but clearly expressed his views, especially as they regarded the needs of his customers. No one was happier than Peter when the acquisition of Clear-Com by HME dramatically improved such important factors like time to market, product availability, and manufacturing quality. In recent years Peter and Judy remained committed and passionate about advancing the Clear-Com cause and were infused with a strong sense of optimism as the company and their customer’s needs became more and more closely aligned.

The Clear-Com community mourns the passing of one of our founding visionaries who did so much to bring us to where we are today. Please join us in a moment of tribute to Peter’s memory as well as his and Judy’s contributions to the Clear-Com story.