The Sordid History of
Splash Custom Pools and Spas
(as used by SplashWorks, LLC)*

1995 - Beginning

Over the winter of 1994-1995 I had come up with the idea for a piece of software that I called PoolWizard for Windows. This software was designed to assist a homeowner with the regular maintenance of their backyard swimming pool water and equipment. John and I held an initial meeting at the office we shared on Broadway in Mesa with Mike, Scott Holly and R. T. (he never participated again) to discuss the layout, scope and potential of this project. Over the course of getting this project going I got to know Mike better (Or so I thought, John had known him on and off since high school and recently apologized to me for ever having introduced him to me.). The team was now in place to produce this project: John and Mike were to contribute the swimming pool technical expertise while Scott Holly did the hard part of programming. I designed the interface, supplied the financing and kept the project on track. It was during this project that we (John, Mike and myself) decided to get a swimming pool construction company up and going.

Mike had started in the pool industry around the same time that John had working for John's brother-in-law, Dave Larsen, but Mike was fired from there and as he obsesses with saying, Dave Larsen told him "someday you'll know why". After that Mike bounced around in and out of the swimming pool industry working for a variety of local pool maintenance, repair and construction companies like: Checker Pools, Davis Pools, Paddock Pools, Pinnacle Pools and finally Coral Pools. In between one of these gigs he even worked as an insurance salesman.

Coral Pools had been strictly a pool maintenance and repair company and when the owner decided to add swimming pool construction to his list of services he hired Mike as an employee and gave him the lofty title of Vice President. Mike is big on titles and appearances. While Mike had taken the contractors test to get his own B5 General Swimming Pool Contractors license he had not paid the fees required to actually obtain a license. I saw in Mike a golden opportunity to help John.

I pointed out to John and Mike that if John sold his pool service accounts (he was already in danger of losing them and had been talking about this option for sometime) he could live off the sale proceeds until we got a new company up, running and generating revenue. I pointed out to Mike that he could either spend his time getting a new construction division going for Coral or he could come in with us and build something that could benefit him too.

Two Splash Pools??

The three of us agreed that John would sell his cleaning (both residential and commercial) accounts to Kyle Morgan who owned Mid-County Pools and whom had recently bought Desert Land Pools and that he would sell his gas accounts to Chip at Splish Splash. Chip's company does excellent work by the way - I recommend him highly. Kyle had also struck a deal with Marc Maples to buy Splash Pool Care over time from him and thus Kyle wanted to consolidate the service aspect of the Splash name.

John had been operating Splash Pool Service for years and in fact ran his first Yellow Page add in 1983 but he had unfortunately (as demonstrated later) never gotten the trade name registered. Years later Marc came on the scene and apparently liked the name of John's company "Splash" and registered it with the Corporation Commission as Splash Pools, Inc. Thereby causing confusion for customers. It is also pretty apparent from this copy of his home page (circa 3/30/97) that he is unable to come up with either a name or logo for his company without stealing existing ideas since he appears to have outright copied the logo from the hit 1984 movie "Splash" that starred Tom Hanks, Darryl Hannah and John Candy.

John, Mike and I formed SplashWorks to do business as Splash Custom Pools and Spas in February 1995 as a Limited Liability Company with the ownership breakdown of John and Mike at 45% each while I held the remaining 10%. The company was formed as an LLC and since I was the partner bringing the money into the project the company was formed with "one man - one vote" so that my voice would not be able to be drowned out since I had elected to take a minority stake. The reason behind my doing this was that I had no intention of remaining an active day to day participant in the company after the first few years, I was looking at getting the company up and running so that it could become another source of investment income for me later when I make a run at public office. John brought in the established identity of name and logo while Mike brought in the ability to obtain a contractors license.

The company was first housed in my offices at 545 West Broadway in Mesa and was charged 1/3 of the rent, utilities and phone expenses for it's use of the office space, however I continued to pay the entire expense for receptionist/secretarial services. We bought two new Dodge Ram P/U's from Earnhardt Dodge (using John's credit) for Mike and John to drive. Mike was unable to buy a truck on his own since he had filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy protection three times!

A review of the bankruptcy court records seems to indicate that Mike was using the system to prolong the resolution of his bankruptcy filing. He filed for Bankruptcy Court protection from his creditors the first time on December 31, 1991 (Docket # 91-15161-PHX-GBN) but the court dismissed this filing on April 3, 1992 due to his failure to pay his filing fee installments as he had petitioned the court. The court ordered his petition closed and dismissed the trustee on October 27, 1992. Before the first petition was closed however he filed for Chapter 7 protection a second time on August 19, 1992 (Docket # 91-10051-PHX-RTB), this second petition was also dismissed on September 30, 1992 due to Mike's failure to appear in Bankruptcy Court to be examined. Yet again before the second petition was closed on March 9, 1993 he filed for a third and final time on October 8, 1992 (Docket # 92-12067-PHX-RGM). This final petition was finally seen through and Mike's creditors were officially hosed on January 28, 1993 with the discharge of his debts under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code and his estate was closed on May 20, 1993. Therefore he was able to drag out his creditors with Chapter 7 proceedings that started on December 31, 1991 and finally ended on January 28, 1993 - a period of almost 400 days!

We divided up the company's duties in the following manner: Mike - Sales and Design, John - Construction Supervision and Marketing and I would oversee the business operations.

We built our first pool at the end of spring 1995 for a fraternity brother of mine (we built him another pool the very next year when he moved to a new home) and over the course of 1995 we built a grand total of 10 pools. In Maricopa County there is a service called the Hot Sheet that tracks the total number of permits pulled by the various contractors in the county. In Maricopa County there were about 100 licensed pool contractors and by the end of 1995 we were ranked about 54 out of 100.