Sof-Tek Integrators
SCED’s Business Development Loan Program is an essential tool for helping businesses grow and for fulfilling our commitment to the businesses that create long-term employment opportunities in our region. The program often acts a springboard to additional financing down the road by providing the capital to solve a problem or support rapid growth and diversification.
OP-TEST, an ideal example of a small company with an enormous amount of talent and ambition, used a combination of SCED loan products over time to help position the company to facilitate its business model. Company president and innovation leader Dan Morrow is a Shasta County native, having left the area to attend Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and eventually returning to found his own company. OP-TEST’s tag line “Quantifying Color” is a broad description of what they do. In a nutshell, Morrow has patented technology that reduces the manufacturing costs of HBLED – high brightness light emitting diodes. Using this technology, OP-TEST’s color analysis system is able to quantify color beyond what the human eye can see and reduce color uniformity issues.
“A business development loan provided the financial boost for internally redesigning the machine and eliminating the flaw in the process.”
Morrow first came to SCED when a machine that was integral to the production process actually created a bottleneck. A business development loan provided the financial boost for internally redesigning the machine and eliminating the flaw in the process. Since then, OP-TEST has twice outgrown their physical space. SCED has remained a part of this ongoing success story by working in tandem with Cornerstone Bank to underwrite an SBA 504 loan to purchase a building that will meet their needs for many years to come.
“It’s so good here”, Morrow says of his relationship with Redding. He emphasizes understanding the challenges of locating in a rural environment and being willing to adapt to meet those challenges. As important as innovating, he generates his own business development networks to seek out new business and is, “intentional about how we treat people”, preferring to grow his team in-house and acknowledging their individual contributions.