Staff Introductions: Richard Eyles

Hi everyone! I'm Richard, the Managing Director of One IT Support.

My story isn’t as straight forward as you’d think, I actually didn’t find my calling until 1999 after a serious car crash! But I can tell you more about that later.

Not really wanting to continue with school, at 16 I left home and joined the Royal Navy. After seven and a half years though, my time in the Navy was done. So, my girlfriend (now wife!) and I worked in Plymouth for a few months before moving up to Newcastle.

I then worked as a regional relief manager at General Electric. A great job, an amazing title, but unfortunately, I was involved in a head on collision on the 9/9/1999. I spent around six months in hospital and decided that I didn’t want to be out on the roads any more. I left GE and signed up to do a Computer Science Degree at Northumbria University.

After graduating, me and a Uni friend set up North East Computer Systems. We did this for five years but unfortunately parted ways in 2011. And so, One IT Support was born! For the first 18 months it was just me, I worked nonstop, seven days a week.

I often get asked about One IT Support’s success stories and there is always one that sticks out for me. We pride ourselves in taking on any work and four years ago we really proved it. The opportunity came up to pitch a project for a big company in the North East. The company were so impressed with our work they decided to contact us to take over their IT support contract from the existing IT firm, this may not sound unusual, however they were still tied into an 18-month contract with their old firm, so were happy to pay us on top of the old firm. For the first year, their contract with us was worth £22,000 per year and now it’s worth about £30,000.

One IT have some really exciting prospects coming up in the future and I can’t wait to see where our path leads. I can say with certainty that I will be here until retirement, no more jumping careers for me!