ZebraHosts Toast A Giant Leap Forward For Orion Teamwear

A former international rugby star has landed his biggest ever contract after inviting Newcastle data centre ZebraHosts to provide his sports teamwear company with IT hosting and technical support.

Following the premature end of his rugby union career through injury 7ft 1inch Richard Metcalfe a former Newcastle Falcon and Scotland International star, set up his company Orion Teamwear in Cramlington four years ago.

Since then the business, which supplies bespoke branded sporting teamwear for schools, sports clubs and corporates, has grown steadily now employing 13 staff at its Nelson Park Industrial Estate site.
However in recent weeks the company has signed a substantial seven figure three year contract with Trutex the UK’s biggest independent supplier of school and teamwear with a 1,200 school customer base.

“We are very reliant on the technology we use in terms of our website presence and the hosting and support of our IT systems,” explained Richard.

“Before I enlisted the help of ZebraHosts I had been very disappointed with the level of service from the technology industry in general.

“Finding a business like ZebraHosts and experiencing their excellent service levels and informed advice has allowed Orion to focus on what we do best – producing high quality bespoke branded sports wear for teams.
We invested heavily in state-of-the-art equipment that produce bespoke motifs for our sports items which gives us a real edge over our competitors.”

“By removing any headaches relating to IT I have been freed up to win new business, so you could say ZebraHosts has indirectly had a hand in Orion Teamwear securing its biggest ever contract win.

“I now expect to treble the size of the company year on year over the next three years as a direct result of Trutex.”

Richard continued: “We are now looking to ZebraHosts to put in a business continuity plan to ensure that as a business we have safeguards in place in the event of any unfortunate circumstances that could impact on trading such as fire or theft.”

As one of the most established data centres and hosting businesses in Newcastle and having recently launched an IT consultancy division ZebraConnects, ZebraHosts was well positioned to provide Orion Teamwear with the help it needed.

“On first speaking to Richard it was apparent that he was extremely unhappy with the levels of service he had received at that point from our industry,” said Nick Collins managing director of ZebraHosts.

“We transferred his domain names together with all of his hosting needs onto one of our our Virtual Dedicated Servers – a server that is set up to act as several servers in one which as a result is highly energy efficient - and we continue to advise him on best practise for trading online and on business continuity matters going forward,” Nick concluded.

ZebraHosts works with top ten highstreet bookmaker Pagebet, where it provides datahosting internet connectivity and technical support and Imass on of the UK’s leading software providers to the emergency services where it provides fully operational hot desk provision – 26 work stations which Imass can use in the event its offices are rendered inoperable, co-location and technical support.