Local company grows with support of USBCI program and Davis County Loan Fund

A Sapphire Fountains’ creation at the California State Fair this past summer. The company constructs permanent fountains and also rents them for special events locally and in other states. (Photo courtesy James Harris)

Sapphire Fountains constructs custom-design water features for both residential and commercial installations along the Wasatch Front. What started as a side business for owner James Harris in 2007 has grown into a full-time company. 

“It’s been good, but we’ve definitely had growing pains and trying to figure out, ‘Hey, what does this all mean and what do we do next?’” said Harris. “I’m really, really grateful. I feel like things are moving forward for us and I’m really grateful for that.”

However, in order to sustain that growth, a small business like Sapphire Fountains needed more operating capital.

“Often when a young business starts to get a foothold, there’s this space there where you really could use some money to help you grow,” Harris said. “But you don’t have a very established credit history so with loans like this, traditional banks are more hesitant to step in. But you still need that.”

The Utah Small Business Credit Initiative (USBCI) program, part of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (GOEO), has an ongoing relationship with the Davis County Council of Governments (COG), which helped connect Harris to USBCI for a source of capital.

Harris said he has mostly been working with the Davis County Loan Fund. “This loan fund is something where they analyze your business and what they think the trend is. They’ll lend you the money and then they’ll try to help you have a proven track record of paying money back, and then they’ll transition you over to a traditional lender to finish out the loan.”

It’s kind of this leg-up situation, he said. “It’s where they think, ‘Yeah, we believe in you. We think you can do this. You just don’t have a history yet so we’re going to give you a loan and help give you a shot.’”

As part of the loan application, Harris said, he had to fill out a questionnaire about what his growth plans were for the company. “They want to have a sense of if what you’re doing is going to benefit Davis County, the cities within Davis County and the people who are employees. Also, what your plans are to hire people and create jobs.”

Once he completed all of that, it was submitted to the state, he said. “When that got approved for the state side of it, I had to go in front of the Davis County Loan Fund committee. They interviewed me and a few days after that, they came back with a decision as to whether or not they’d give me the loan and they said ‘yes,’ which was great.”

Harris moved into a new facility at 85 W. 300 S. in Bountiful and hired a sales team. “That’s our home base,” he said. “We take care of our business activities there. We’ve got our new salesman there with us. Then we have one large area set apart where we build and test fountains.”

The company also rents fountains. “We have our rental side of our business,” said Harris. “Last week, we were testing some rental fountains that are now at the Davis Conference Center for the week. A couple of weeks before that, we were getting a fountain ready that went down to the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for their big exclusive New Year’s Eve party.”

Sapphire Fountains offers rentals in other states as well, he said. “So we’ll prep the fountains for those there but we build permanent fountains here locally. So parts and things that need to be put together, we’ll do that in our shop and then take it to the job site.”

Harris said the company recently won the bid for a $870,000 job. “I can’t say who it is, but I can tell you that it’s going to be a really amazing project. It’s something they (client) really care a lot about and they want it to be great and special and there are some really talented partners that are involved. It’s been a really fun thing for us to be a part of.”

Once it’s up and running, people are going to enjoy it for years, he said. “So it’s a really great opportunity.”

Without the loan, this would have been impossible, said Harris. “The thing I’m learning is most of Sapphire’s growth has just been bootstrapped. We spend a little money and we make a little more than we put it all back into the business. You can grow like that but it’s slow. Big projects like this, you have to invest a lot.”

Harris said they’re used to a job where they put out $5,000. “That’s the only amount we have to leverage of our own money. Now all of a sudden you’ve got to spend $150,000 to buy all the parts, resources that you need to do the job. You just can’t do anything like that if you don’t have the resources like what this loan fund money has provided for us. Without it, I don’t see any way we could’ve done this.”