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Local company setting the pace
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Times photo: Brenda Steurer Kalisha Welty handles a telemarketing call Thursday while working at iPacesetters, a telemarketing firm in Monroe. The company purchased Charlton in June. iPacesetters plans to hire up to 125 full-time positions within 60 days.
By Andrew Hellpap

newseditor@ themonroetimes.com

MONROE - Just three months into its purchase of telemarketing firm Charlton, iPacesetters hopes to hire 100 to 125 full-time employees at its Monroe location, according to Mike Ferrari, site director.

"We are looking for them right away," he said Wednesday.

Since the purchase, iPacesetters has cultivated more businesses from its existing accounts, such as Charter Communications. But, a few new projects have also increased demand for more workers, Ferrari said.

iPacesetters teamed with Comcast on a research and development project for a new marketing program. In addition, the company began a new relationship with Reston, Va.,-based Simplexity, on a project for Dish Network. Simplexity is an online seller of wireless services and devices, according to the company's website.

iPacesetters will also be adding a second management position to supervise the increased call center staff, and may look to hire a third depending on the rate new call center workers are hired, Ferrari said.

iPacesetters is advertising the positions in Monroe, and the Freeport, Janesville and Beloit areas, he said.

All of the full-time positions will include some benefits, such as health insurance and paid breaks. The company is also implementing a new pay-for-performance model.

The company is looking to add the staff to its day and evening shifts, Ferrari said.

iPacestters has the room to expand its Monroe location in the future, but the new staff will not require that step, he said.

The company planned to expand all of its Wisconsin locations at some point, said Frank Royal, iPacesetters president, in June.

Charlton's four Wisconsin locations employed about 820 people including 274 in Monroe, 302 in Whitewater, 211 in Eau Claire and 33 in Madison.

iPacesetters - a smaller company than Charlton, according to Royal - began as a call center handling telemarketing for the publishing industry, but after being purchased by the venture capital firm Kid & Company, based in Greenwich, Conn., in 2009, the company began to spread out into four key areas of growth in the telemarketing industry, he said. iPacesetters chose to focus on the telecommunications, publishing, health care and financial industries because those sectors showed growth potential in addition to providing diversity to protect the business against a downturn in the economy, Royal said.

The cable industry fell into the company's corporate vision, which meant Charlton was a natural fit, he said. Charlton was one of the industry's largest telemarketing firms.

Charlton began in 1987 in Madison. After the company opened to its current location in Monroe, it expanded in about 2003, and takes up a large portion of the strip mall at 109 W. 8th St.

The company would like to see the Monroe location expand to between 400 to 500 employees, Royal said.