TWO couples who started off as business rivals and later became friends have merged their businesses to form a new company.

Chris and Julie Newton, of Lostock, and Chris and Esther Harding, of Farnworth, have launched Newton Fox Telemarketing and Recruitment.

The new business has been formed from Red Fox Telemarketing and Newton Employment.

The two husband-and-wife teams are both experienced in business and have come together to provide a range of business services including telemarketing, recruitment, book keeping and Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks.

The Hardings set up Red Fox after moving from Cambridge to Manchester and then to Bolton, while the Newtons’ experience was in recruitment and book keeping.

Both couples’ businesses were affected by the recession and after bumping into each other at various networking events they decided to pool their skills. Chris Newton said: “We used to work around the corner from each other and though we should have been deadly rivals we found that when we met at various events we had the same business ethos and ideas.

“It has been tough during the recession and we were both finding it difficult. As a result, we got our heads together to form a telemarketing company but we still offer recruitment services as well.

“Unlike many larger telesales businesses, we are happy to tailor our service to smaller firms who may be working to a tight budget. We usually manage to generate good leads which can help with generating new business.

“We ask companies to take a leap of faith and allow us to bring our combined experience of more than 50 years to provide them with good appointments or leads to help them develop their business.”

Newton Fox, based in Churchbank, Bolton, now offers telemarketing services that can be hired by the hour, the day or week and they claim to be much cheaper than rivals.

Esther Harding said: “Our flexibility is attractive to small companies with restricted budgets.

“They may only want a few hours or a day and we offer a flexible solution.

“We offer a very professional service coupled with good customer service.

“We always follow up to see if our clients and the people we employ are happy with us and our service.”