Call-center entrepreneur finalist for national award

FORT COLLINS — Richard Keith started Center Partners Inc. in Fort Collins in 1997 with 10 employees supporting one of Hewlett Packard Co.’s data storage products.

The customer relations management firm ended last year with nearly 2,500 employees and $85 million in revenues.

“It was a juggernaut,” Keith said. “We had an 8,000 percent growth over five years.”

Keith received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Ernst & Young’s Rocky Mountain Region in the services category and is now in the running for the National Entrepreneur of the Year awards to be presented in late November at a ceremony in Palm Springs, Calif.

His entrepreneurial career began in Northern Colorado in 1990 when he founded the staffing firm Apple One Employment Services. After phenomenal growth and earning a spot on the Inc. 500 Fast Growing Companies list in 1996, Apple One was acquired by Houston-based CoreStaff, leaving Keith free to start Center Partners.

In April 1999 the company was acquired by multibillion-dollar communications conglomerate, WPP Group. Since then the company has grown to have six call centers across three states.

“The financial strength of WPP very much contributed to the advancement of the company,” Keith said.

But WPP operates more like a holding company than an operating company. “They acquire successful companies and let them continue to be successful with financial support and growth through collaboration,” he said.

As much as Keith has enjoyed the rapid growth of his company, he would not want to go through it again at the same pace. “Quite candidly, that was far too fast to grow,” he said.

And of the recent recognition from Ernst & Young, Keith said, “Winning the regional services award for the EY program has almost nothing to do with the individual. We had 2,500 people behind this. It’s a testimony for all 2,500 of us, that what we’ve done is unique.”

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