Advanced Environmental Services

Grand Rapids based regional haz-mat consultancy and removal company needed a fresh brand and localized SEO. A bright, clean website levels the playing field for a traditional hand shake industry in a new digital age.

Brickman

Brickman is commercial real estate, investing over $3B in 70 transactions throughout the United States. Brickman needed a website that speaks to investors while modestly showing off!

Camp Chief Ouray

One of the first and largest YMCA locations to undergo the national rebranding, YMCA of the Rockies invested some of their annual $65M in revenue to contracted Pine Lake to redesign and host all three of its websites, including our favorite, Camp Chief Ouray.

The Cog Group

Consistent recruiting for Fortune 500's is a mammoth task that can only be completed with a perfectly honed process. Using our Brochure Builder app, Cog is able to train employees and explain their patent-pending process to new leads.

University of Denver

Built on our Brochure Builder app, the Daniels College of Business saves $10K annually without designing, printing and shipping their brochures to prospective graduate school students.

Boyne Mountain & Highlands

Boyne — the third largest resort network in North America with locations Montana, Utah, Maine and Michigan. Boyne approached Pine Lake to design a banner ad campaign and landing page for its winter activities.

Fulton Grace Realty

Fulton Grace asked Pine Lake to integrate our CMS with the RentJuice rental property platform. What a combination! Sales are screaming and watch for this Chicago-area property management company to add the future of MLS before 2012!

Bella Design & Planning

Bella, consistently featured by The Knot and Style Me Pretty is one of Pine Lake's first clients. In its third design, Bella has an amazing photography focused site and an SEO microsite for targeting the Vail, CO market.

Hartwell Digital Media

Hartwell is an excellent video production business in Petoskey who needed a website that provides access to a boat load of YouTube video demos! The site reflects the style and quality of owner's passion and video skill.

YMCA of Northern Michigan

The Y redesigned its website to meet the new YMCA brand guidelines. Pine Lake trains and consults with Y staff on technology, avoiding the need to hire a full-time IT person.

Latest News

Dylan's Project, We are Up North, in the Press

We are Up North has launched to great success over the past month and a half. Both the Petoskey News and Michigan Live have already featured the website.
New Sungem Features!
1. Install Sungem in your Chrome browser to speed up login! Get free Sungem App from Chrome Store
2. Automatically submit your website to Google, Yahoo and Bing search engines
3. Slideshow integration with Picasa
4. Pay your hosting bill with monthly secure online credit card payments.
We are the one and only web designers featured on 37 Signals for Traverse City Web Design
Recently Launched

www.redi-rock.com
February 2012: Redi-Rock International asked us to create a Global Website and Dealer Portal to help manage their thousands of contacts (CRM) and add online printing capabilities.

www.playwinterpark.com
Leap Day 2012! - Winter Park Colorado Chamber of Commerce and Visitor's Bureau liked our work on YMCA of the Rockies and requested a full redesign of their website and integration with Chamber Master. The new site launched including the Sungem Brochure Builder app!

www.rentvcp.com
January 2012 - Villa Capital Partners is taking their Chicago-based property management and investment company to the next level with Rent Juice. We are excited to launch the new VCP site.

Portfolio

YMCA of the Rockies Estes Park, CO

Rosetta Hardscapes Charlevoix, MI

Bella Design & Planning Breckenridge, CO

Summit Vacation Concierge Breckenridge, CO

Fifth Avenue Bar & Grill Detroit, MI

Boyne Mountain & Highlands Boyne Falls, MI

The Cog Group Grand Rapids, MI

Hartwell Digital Media Petoskey, MI

University of Denver Denver, CO

The BSC Group Chicago, IL

Signature Kitchens Kitchen Design Book Petoskey, MI

Fulton Grace Realty Chicago, IL

Maine Community Youth Assistance Foundation Des Plaines, IL

Prudential Colorado Properties Vail, CO

Shore Capital Partners Chicago, IL

BeauVita Cincinnati, OH

J&E Development Breckenridge, CO

John Twelve Hawks New York, NY

Sungem CMS

Native Apps

Manage everything, including multiple websites at the same time

Manage Websites

Sungem 3 is packed with features! We designed Sungem to be flexible for use in any project while avoiding complexity when business owners and staff want to get their hands dirty.

Starters

An unlimited number of pages, templates, and sections.
Multiple users may edit the site at once
Web-based, so additional users do not require costly software licenses or installation
No desktop software means the only technical requirement is a modern Web browser
Automatic SEO best practices
No long term contracts! If you choose to leave, you own your data and we can export your Web site as static HTML or CSV.
Using your existing domain name.

Advanced

Automatically generating menus based on the sections and pages in Sungem CMS
Unlimited number of pages, templates and disk space
Integration with Google Analytics.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube Feeds
QR Codes
Use Picasa from your desktop or mobile device to manage your website sildeshows

Techies and Designers

Use a theme. If you want to save money on a site design and build out, you can purchase a Wordpress, Drupal or Expression Engine theme and we'll install it in Sungem for you.
Flexible Template language {foreach slides as slide}
No FTP
GZIP Enabled
Custom Fonts
CSS Sprites
Navive Mobile Templates and device detection
Content Delivery Network
Server-side file caching and query optimization
Manage and share content between unlimited number of websites

About Pine Lake

Contact Us

Up North

P.O. Box C
Petoskey, MI 49770

t: (231) 753-8746
e: Dylan Valade

The City

2201 W Wabansia Ave, #1
Chicago, IL 60647

t: (312) 646-0747
e: Matt Borgman

Why the name "Pine Lake"?

Pine Lake specializes in small business website design, redesign and hosting. We have developed the Sungem content management system which allows our clients to keep their ongoing website maintenance costs very low and gives them control over their own websites. Sungem speeds website development timeline and reduces our clients' initial website investment by almost 50%.

Pine Lake Marketing has grown each year since its founding in 2004 by Dylan Valade and Dave Nemes. After years of working with Matt Borgman on projects, Pine Lake welcomed him to the team in 2007.

As a full-service web development company, our dedicated team has capabilities in:

Web design using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Adobe Flash.
Web development with PHP, ColdFusion, XML, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, RSS, and WSDL.
Rich Internet Application (RIA) development with Adobe Flex.
Search optimization and Google Analytics.
E-commerce enablement with BigCommerce, Yahoo! Store, Magento E-Commerce, and Miva Merchant.
Content Management using Interwoven TeamSite, WordPress, Moxiecode TinyMCE, and its proprietary Sungem CMS.
Integrating the RentJuice rental property management platform.

This is a priceless place Jim. Horton's Bay on Pike Lake about twelve miles from Charlevoix. About three hundred miles north of here. It is great northern air. Absolutely the best trout fishing in the country. No exaggeration. Fine country. Good color, good northern atmosphere, absolute freedom, no summer resort stuff and lots of paintable stuff. And if you want to do portraits. You shall do portraits... It's a great place to laze around and swim and fish when you want to. And the best place in the world to do nothing. It is beautiful country Jim.

— Ernest Hemingway, Letter to Jim Gamble, April 1919

What's Behind the "Pine Lake" Name

Pine Lake's founders have family history in Northern Michigan. Lake Charlevoix has always been a retreat for both men. Spending time on the water fishing, builiding sand castles, boating and sailing is great for the soul and something that everyone should be lucky enough to experience.

While reading some historical literature on Lake Charlevoix, it was suggested that some people once knew it as "Pine Lake". When naming the business in 2004 we were sitting on dock in Boyne City and decided that instead of having a trendy dot-com style name, we would choose something that inspires and reminds us of why we work hard and why we take so much pride in the quality of serivce.

Hoping to recruit Matt Borgman to Northern Michigan, Dylan sent him a copy of a letter written by Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway's letter was originally mailed to a friend after both men had completed their service in the Armed Forces together. Hemingway spoke of Charlevoix, pike fishing and the supreme beauty and peacefulness our area has to offer. Hemingway, like Pine Lake, felt that spending time Up North would help gain better perspective on life. A selected quote from the letter is to the right.

Our values and everything we love about Up North — family, friends, outdoors, beauty, retreat — is summed up in the two words, Pine Lake. Our business name reminds of those values every morning.

If you feel the same way about Michigan or if you live in a different part of the world and believe that life exists beyond your office walls then you sound like the type of client we enjoy working with.

Dylan Valade

Partner, Creative & Strategy Director

A graduate of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science & Systems Analysis with an emphasis on programming and database development. Dylan also minored in Fine Art, specializing in drawing and painting. Dylan began developing Web sites professionally in 2000 for the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati. He then moved from Brighton, Michigan to Glenwood Springs, CO to work for Blizzard Internet Marketing. In 2004, Dylan left Blizzard to start Pine Lake Marketing in Breckenridge, CO. After four years in Breck, Dylan relocated to northern Michigan.

Dylan specializes in HTML, Flash, Flex and PHP development. He is also the visual director at Pine Lake.

When he is not designing Web sites, Dylan enjoys skiing, snowboarding, waterskiing, playing music, soccer, refereeing soccer, fishing (bait and fly), traveling, oil painting and fixing up his new home in Petoskey, MI.

Matt Borgman

Partner, Lead Architect & Developer

Matt graduated from Miami University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science & Systems Analysis with an emphasis on interactive media. Upon graduation, Matt moved to Cincinnati, OH where he continued Web design and development with his own firm, Twentyfourseven Studios. In 2004, Matt moved to New York City where he worked for Citigroup in its Private Bank and Global Wealth Management divisions. While at Citigroup, Matt was responsible for developing the business' strategy for some of its public-facing, client, and internal Web sites and applications, with a focus on integrating with an enterprise content management system. Matt left Citigroup in 2007 to join Pine Lake.

Matt's expertise is in Web strategy along with PHP, Adobe Flash and database development. Due in part to his experience at Citigroup, Matt is responsible for overseeing the development of database applications created by Pine Lake.

Matt enjoys skiing, running, the outdoors, reading, trying new restaurants and food, traveling and the rodeo.

Privacy Policy

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site, place an order, subscribe to our newsletter, respond to a survey or fill out a form.

When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address, mailing address, phone number, credit card information or shipping address. You may, however, visit our site anonymously.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways:

To improve customer service - Your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs.

To process transactions - Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested.

To send periodic emails - The email address you provide for order processing, may be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order, in addition to receiving occasional company news, updates, related product or service information, etc.

Note: If at any time you would like to unsubscribe from receiving future emails, we include detailed unsubscribe instructions at the bottom of each email.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order.

We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to keep the information confidential.

After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be kept on file for more than 60 days.

Do we use cookies?

Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfer to your computer's hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow). Cookies enable the site's or service provider's systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information

We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart.

If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies via your browser settings. Like most websites, if you turn your cookies off, some of our services may not function properly. However, you can still place orders over the telephone or by contacting customer service.

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

California Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

Because we value your privacy we have taken the necessary precautions to be in compliance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act. We therefore will not distribute your personal information to outside parties without your consent.

Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy and Contacting Us

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.

If there are any questions regarding this privacy policy, please contact us.

Last Updated: July 25, 2011

Refund Policy

If you are not completely satisfied with our Web hosting services or wish to cancel at any time for any reason, and you notify Pine Lake in writing that you wish to cancel, you will be given a full refund of the remaining contract amount for which you have prepaid to the nearest month end, excluding setup fees and overages.

If a return or refund is due, you will be notified by e-mail; it can take up to 30 days after cancellation of your contract to receive your refund. If you have not received your refund after 30 days, please contact us.