THE boss of a telecommunications company is aiming to take his company to new heights after celebrating its fifth anniversary.

Christian Bleakley launched Telesis in Bolton at the height of the recession in 2009 and after a difficult two years the firm broke the £1 million turnover barrier.

The 40-year-old managing director said turnover is now at the £3.5 million level and now has an ambitious master plan to hit £5 million within the next two years.

Former professional rugby league player Mr Bleakley is not hanging about in his bid to grow Telesis, based in Thomas Holden Street, off Chorley Old Road, on the northern edge of Bolton town centre.

He has recently recruited seven new staff — all from the Bolton area — as part of his expansion programme.

“The first two years were as difficult as they could have been,” said Salford-born Mr Bleakley, a former pupil of Moorside High School, Worsley.

“I don’t think we could have picked a worse time to start a new business.”

Telesis supplies the sort of hardware and phone systems in use in all businesses, together with broadband, calls and lines packages.

“As a business, we’re very much focused on customer and staff retention,” said Mr Bleakley.

“We look after our customers and our staff. We’ve got just shy of 40 people based in the office and we have a lot of people — salesman and engineers — out on the road.”

But Mr Bleakley admits he has been disappointed by the attitude of prospective employees during his recent recruitment process.

“We got 150 CVs for one job, and we narrowed them to 100, but we were able to make contact with less than 20,” he said. “There were a lot of unreturned calls, which is surprising when you consider there are supposed to be a lot of people out there looking for a job.

“We’re now looking at different ways of recruiting — like open days.”

Mr Bleakley himself stumbled into the telecoms industry 23 years ago, quite by accident.

“When I was 17 I was playing loose forward/full back for Swinton,” he said. “I was also at college and I thought I was going to be a world beater. I knew I would need a career because there isn’t that much money in the sport.

“So I delayed going to university and took a job at a major communications firm and ended up being made operations director.

“That company was bought out in 2006 and I lasted another three years before I decided to set up my own company.”

Now, Mr Bleakley is looking to acquire an IT company within the next 12 months, and has just invested £100,000 in a customer record management system (CRM).

This allows staff to access important information about clients instantly to increase efficiency.

“We’re proud of the fact that once we have a customer, we keep hold of them,” said Mr Bleakley. “It’s not always about finding new customers — it’s about keeping the ones we’ve got, and it’s the same with our staff.”

The firm is a patron of Bolton Lads and Girls Club and Mr Bleakley is a keen sponsor of Castle Hill Boxing Club, an organisation which he says does much good work in the community.