Company Telecom | Business Telephones | Telephone Voicemail Systems
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How Tony rang in the changes in the telephone business
By PETER RICHARDSON
HERE'S a story to raise the spirits of all those parents who despair of their children's performance in the classroom. Lancashire lad Tony Raynor got expelled from his first school and one paltry 0-level from his second. Soon he was earning £1,000 a week. Tonight we meet the man who helped bring the mobile phone revolution to the streets of Britain .
TONY Raynor juggles phone calls in his Lancashire office with the calm assurance of the businessman he undoubtedly is.
A middle-aged woman, thinking of investing in a mobile phone for the first time in her life, is concerned she will not be able to work the thing. Quick as a flash he tells her not to worry: Honestly - it's that simple it could have been made by Fisher Price. Time was when Tony's teachers must have felt like strangling him for clever remarks like that: I was a real pain, he admits. I just never stopped messing about.
Indeed, so successfully did he mess about that he achieved the dubious distinction that goes with being expelled from Arnold School in Blackpool. Things weren't much better at Kirkham Grammar, the distinguished seat of learning from which he emerged with 0 level maths and nothing more: At least it was Grade B, so I've always been able to work out how much commission I'm owed.
From such unpromising beginnings did Tony enter the world of work of a world in which, within a few short years, he would be numbering the Sultan of Brunei among those well off souls who, wishing to be In on the start of the mobile phone revolution, began to give Tony their custom.
Goldmine
His first job on leaving school was as a junior in the marketing department of a net curtains manufacturer at Kirkby, Liverpool, which, when it was summarily shut down by Its Canadian owners, should have led to him transferring to America. I sold my car and flew out to Boston, Massachusetts but there was a problem over work permits so I had to come back. Having sold his car, he needed another. So he took the first job he saw which included one in the package. It was with a company selling advertising space in those Information folders which are left In hotel rooms. Astonishingly, it turned into a goldmine. At the age of 21 I was earning a grand a week. I remember that In my best week I'd made £1,150 by Wednesday morning so I went off water ski-ing on Loch Lomond.
Having saved In the region of £20-£25,000 he decided to Invest in a pub and was given the tenancy of the Touchdown Tavern in Talbot Road. Blackpool. It was more of a night club than a pub, but it wasn't the wisest move he ever made:
It didn't do tremendously well. In fact I lost all the money I put Into it.
Wishing to put his troubles behind him Tony sped off to London. Proof that he was starting at the bottom again came when he took a job selling toilet rolls and tissues. But he still earned enough to get a mortgage within the year. As the money started rolling in again, so Tony's teenage passion for Citizen's Band radio manifested itself in an interest in mobile phones which were just coming onto the market.
That was In 1985, a year In which only the rich could afford the fledgling yuppie toy: There were just three types and there was nothing under £1,600, he recalls. Corporate high-fliers were among his clients. The publisher Lord MacMIllan was one; the managing director of
Polaroid UK another. Snooker promoter Barry Hearn bought one as did lan Anderson, the singer with rock group Jethro Tull. And there was the Sultan of Brunei who would, says Tony, buy five or six phones a month: Our profit then was £500 on each phone, but you needed it. In the early days there were only about 30,000 subscribers In the UK and they were largely millionaires and playboys. Award winner. Nowadays there are two and a half million and no one looks at you strangely any more when one goes off in a restaurant. By the end of 1989, its appeal having grown, Access Telecom was employing 28 staff, selling to individuals and fitting fleets of cars and lorries. It had already won an Industry Newcomer of the Year award and In that final year had turned over £2.8 million. Perhaps it was 0 level maths that enabled Tony to calculate there was a recession on the way. In any event he sold out - a transaction of which he now says: I'm not telling how much I made, but I did all right. The proceeds were, however, significant enough to be placed off-shore for Interest purposes while he decided to go backpacking around 24 countries In Africa for 10 months, during which he communed with pygmies, saw a lot of the Sahara, and generally had a relaxing, mobile phone-free time. These days he is back in Lancashire. Predictably he has spotted another opportunity in the field of telecommunications. He still sells mobile phones from Abbey Telecom, his business In Higher Church Street, Blackburn, but concentrates more on selling fixed wire telephone systems to the public sector.
His customers Include Wigan, Chorley and Blackburn Councils as well as Lancashire Enterprises and his second year of operation is on course to turn over £500,000. There is no sign of big-headedness as he tells his story. At the age of 32 he has money In the bank and rides a Harley Davidson motorbike around for pleasure. But he lives modestly In Withnell Fold, near Chorley, and says he still has much to do to emulate his father, a successful hotelier. He bought one for his car even though It was £1.650 second hand and was of hernia-inducing proportions. Soon he was ringing the bloke who sold him It. Sooner still they were setting up a dealership on their own account. And so It was that Tony found himself the partner in a shop and mall order business on the North Circular Road at Wembley where tens of thousands of passers-by could not fall to see that Access Telecom had arrived In town.
But It's nice to know that failure at school doesn't mean failure In life. Don't get me wrong, he says, I think academic qualifications are Important and I encourage my staff here to go out and get them. But I don't think being academic Is the be all and end all.
