Every business has a first client. Ours was Sassy Marina — and years later, they're still with us. That says more about them than it does about us.
Sassy Marina is a full-service marina in Algonac, Michigan, located along the St. Clair River. They offer summer dockage, heated winter boat storage, in/out rack storage, and a sheltered fuel dock with deep-water access, backed by four travelifts ranging from 15 to 100 tons. Whether it's storing a boat through a Michigan winter or getting out on the water for a weekend cruise, Sassy Marina handles it.
Their challenge had nothing to do with branding. It was their contracts.
A marina runs on seasonal agreements — summer dockage and winter storage — and those documents go out to every customer, every year. The documents they were sending could be edited by whoever received them. Terms could be changed, numbers adjusted, language altered, and there was no reliable way to send a contract out and know it came back the way it left. For agreements covering boats worth serious money, that's a real exposure.
We rebuilt their seasonal agreements as interactive PDF documents rather than word processing files. Customers can complete the fields they're supposed to complete — and nothing else. The documents are permission-locked so the terms themselves can't be altered, and they're built to be sent, filled out, and returned entirely over email.
Because the agreements are seasonal, we revise them each year for both summer dockage and winter storage. It's a small, recurring engagement, and it's been running since the beginning of this business.
Contracts stopped coming back altered. Turnaround on signed agreements got faster, because customers could complete everything without printing, scanning, or driving anything anywhere. And the marina got consistency — the same document, correct every time, year after year.
Looking for dockage or storage on the St. Clair River?
Not every creative problem looks like a creative problem. Sometimes it's a document that keeps coming back wrong.
Ready to strengthen your brand? Schedule a free consultation at jpetrous.com | contact@jpetrous.com | 586-563-6634.
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