“Business can never just be about balance sheets”, says Christian Bleakley CEO of Firstcom Europe. “It’s also about achieving success by building teams and creating an environment where your colleagues want to learn, work hard and move forward in their careers.
"This ultimately affects everything a business does, including its growth trajectory.”
As a self-proclaimed “sports fanatic”, Christian knows a thing or two about building teams. As a younger man he played semi-professional rugby league, was unbeaten as an amateur boxer and enthusiastically supports Manchester City.
If he wasn’t in the telecoms industry, he says he would be coaching sport or running a network of gyms.
Having started his telecoms career in Bolton in 1993, he moved up the ranks and eventually started his own telecoms company in 2009. However, by 2019 he realised the telecoms industry was moving to internet based cloud services and merged this company with Firstcom Europe.
He now leads the group from its new international headquarters in Lostock, Bolton. Firstcom Europe operates in four European countries, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and the UK and is an expert in unified communications where customers can use messaging, voice calls, video or fax on the device they choose; mobile, fixed phone, tablet or computer.
“We remain committed to Bolton,” Christian says, “mainly because of the great people we have been able to recruit here. It gives me a huge amount of satisfaction to see young people join the company, sometimes straight out of school, and progress from being inexperienced adolescents to serious professionals.”
He lists a number of apprentices who joined Firstcom as teenagers and have gone on to become experts in the telecom and engineering industries.
Whilst the business is busy making inroads into Europe and other parts of the UK, the company’s headquarters remain in Bolton where it provides local employment and career progression opportunities in a high-tech industry.
Not only have they recruited in the area for almost 30 years, but many of their customers are in the north-west as are their suppliers, too.
Firstcom is seeking opportunities to expand its business customer base beyond its current footprint. Earlier this month it completed a purchase of a telecoms company located in Hertfordshire and Suffolk.
This deal added an extra £6.2m of turnover to the group and Firstcom has also recently completed a number of local customer base purchases.
“There are other exciting acquisition opportunities in the pipeline,” proclaimed Bleakley. “We see great opportunities in Manchester, this is an area of interest to us.”
With new headquarters and a couple of acquisitions under its belt, Firstcom has had a busy month.
“In this game it’s not possible to stand still, otherwise you will get run over” said Christian, “but to win you’ve got to get the right team.”
Firstcom Europe can be contacted on 0333 023 0380, or visit their website: www.firstcomeurope.co.uk
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