SUCCESS STORY
FROM TURNING POINTS TO TURN-AROUNDS From fisherman to telecoms technology – Jason Denmark tells unLTD how he revitalised a 21-year-old Sheffield firm (and the lessons learned from notorious retailer Philip Green) Jason Denmark has worked in highly pressured retail roles. He put “everything” on the line for a business he saw had potential and wanted to turnaround. But a six-week stint on a fishing boat 37 years ago remains etched in his memory. Jason is chief executive of The Templand Group of companies including ITI Network Services, ITI Electrical Services and Newline Communications. The telecommunicationsfocused businesses are on course for a record year. Jason has increased group turnover to £6 million, from
unLTDBUSINESS.COM
£1.6m when he and business partner Steve Clarke bought what was a struggling firm with a talented workforce out of CVA (creditors’ voluntary arrangement). Jason, aged 52, joined ITI, formerly IT Installations, in 2015. After years in retail he wanted new challenges closer to home. An introduction to its founder led to Denmark turning the business around. But his varied career all began on a fishing boat, the Mhari-L. “As punishment for my dismal O-level performance my parents sent me to Scotland aged 16. My cousins
fished for scallops and I worked on their boat for six weeks. It was the hardest job I've known. I knew life at sea was not for me even before I was bitten by a dogfish. “The sad story is six months later the boat went down and was never found. My family believed it was hit by an American submarine, although it was never proven. My cousins Stuart and Keith and all seven crew were lost at sea. “If I had taken to working on the seas we probably wouldn’t be here discussing this.” When Jason returned to Yorkshire, he pursued a
musical career, playing bass guitar in band Count Dante for five years alongside working as a registered mental nurse until “I just lost faith with the system”. So aged 21 he needed to make a decision. “My father said, ‘you're a failed musician, you're at a crossroads in your life, what do you want to do?’ “I didn’t have any idea, until my father saw an advert in the Daily Mirror for a company called What Everyone Wants.” The firm told Jason they would mould him into a retail manager for the family business, “with massive expansion ambitions.
61