Sequoyah Marina
Sequoyah Marina is located on Norris Lake near Knoxville, Tennessee, perfectly situated for outdoor enthusiasts who enjoy 800 miles of shoreline on 34,000 acres of the most pristine lake waters in the area. The full-service marina offers covered and uncovered wet slips accommodating vessels up to 80 feet, a seasonal restaurant, boat rentals, ship’s store, and a fuel dock.
Sequoyah uses Sharper Marina Management as its secret operational weapon. “I like to call Sharper the ‘evolving monster’ because it’s a system that can do anything,” said Chris Folck, the marina’s general manager, whose father sold Sequoyah to the Southern Marinas group in 2021. “The Sharper team listens to user feedback and continues to add helpful new features.”
Favorite Features
Folck says his favorite features in Sharper are the easy pricing adjustments, visual marina mapping, and real-time sales data.
“If our boats are almost rented out, I can easily adjust pricing on the fly to ensure we’re maximizing our revenue,” he said. Users also can pre-set parameters so that the Sharper system automatically adjusts pricing under select conditions.
Folck says he also enjoys the visual marina map in Sharper that helps him easily organize and manage all the slips at a glance. “It’s nice to see the layout of the entire property and great to be able to show customers the mapping and photos of the slips when trying to make a sale.”
Additionally, Folck relies heavily on Sharper data each day to manage labor costs. He keeps an eagle eye on hour-by-hour sales through his Sharper system to inform decisions on how many dock hands and restaurant servers to schedule or to cut early. He also enjoys Sharper’s ample reporting features, especially when he needs to quickly run reports for the corporate office.
"I like to call Sharper the ‘evolving monster’ because it’s a system that can do anything. The Sharper team listens to user feedback and continues to add helpful new features."
A Problem Solved
Folck says that before Sharper, Sequoyah’s boat rentals were handled with a pen-and-paper reservation system. With this manual process, the marina only collected payment from the renter in person on the day of the rental. “Now that our bookings are done online, we can request payment upfront and enforce a cancellation policy. This has basically eliminated revenue loss from no shows. The online transactions have been a game changer for us,” he said.
One To Rule Them All
In addition to Sharper’s super responsive customer support, Folck says he most enjoys having a single platform on which to run the entire marina operation. “Similar to the Lord of the Rings adage, marinas really need one system to rule them all,” said Folck. “During the season, we’re too busy to worry about multiple systems in play. Having everything we need right in Sharper makes life a lot easier.”
