Eldon James region's fastest-growing company
Business Report Correspondent
This year's fastest-growing private company, reporting a 90 percent increase in gross sales over last year, is owned and run by two sisters.
Marcia and Delia Sampson bought Eldon James Corp. of Loveland, then a division of Value Plastics, four years ago, when the owners gave it up for dead. The owners were the sisters' parents, who had been advised to shut down the ailing division, which makes plastic pipe fittings.
Since that time four years ago, Eldon James has grown, said company president Marcia Sampson, 2,000 percent.
The sisters have accomplished this, Marcia Sampson said, by working with "really good distributors," and by producing the highest quality fittings.
"We put a lot of money up front into our tools," she said, adding, "We don't send out faulty parts."
Delia Sampson is an engineer and deals with the production end of the business.
Marcia Sampson's background is in real estate, where, she said, everyone sold the same product.
"I had to out-service everybody," she said, and she seems determined to do it again. This year, an Eldon James fitting is going into every Ford F-series truck.
"Our CPA comes in after he does our books and says, 'Whatever you girls are doing, you girls just keep doing it,'" Sampson said.
Five breweries and several construction-related companies also occupy the ranks of the 10 fastest-growing private companies in the region.
If, as the Bible says, there is a time to every purpose, now must be the time for brewing beer. Highest-grossing and fastest-growing of the brew entities was New Belgium Brewing Co. of Fort Collins, which posted gross sales of $11.1 million in 1996, taking in from its new facility on Linden Street more than half again as much as its 1995 sales figure. This, while holding its work force steady at 58 employees.
Other microbreweries and brewpubs grossed in the $1 million to $3 million range, but showed sales growth that was, well, staggering. Medicine Bow Brewing Co. reported 55.5 percent growth, Estes Park Brewery 52.3 percent, and both Rocky Mountain Brewing and the Library at 33.3 percent (tying for 10th place).