A Connected Community
Grand Lake Host is both a company and a platform made specifically for the entrepreneurs of our Grand Lake area, family-owned and operated by area natives since 2002. We have developed and managed websites for leading local brands you know, including the City of Celina’s official website and several shops, boutiques, and businesses across many industries and our many nearby Main Streets. Our platform members are ever growing by the month, building a network of local business to strengthen our community.
Ultra-lean, highly efficient, with high customer satisfaction and retention spanning decades, we are cash positive and have one of the best balance sheets in history. We’ve always been here, we’re here to stay, and we’re now fully focused on preparing our local business community for the 2020s and beyond.
We have invested in the latest top-shelf MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and iPhone XS Max models so that the totality of our offices, platform access, and creative tools are wherever we are, at all times, without compromise. We enjoy the freedom and luxury of working with our families and in dozens of swanky Meet-Up Spaces across the entire Grand Lake area— out in our community— like your favorite coffee shop right down the street or even your own shop you’re already standing in. Want to schedule a free consultation? Call, text, email, message, shout, or wave. We’ll be there in five, and that latte is on us!
Our Values
Inspired
We do what we love and are connected to something greater than ourselves.
Entrepreneurial
We are creators, leaders, and self-starters. We try new things, we challenge convention, and, above all, we love to win.
Authentic
We are genuine to our brand, mission, and values. We strive for perfection, even though we’re human. We are always honest & as transparent as we can be.
Invested
We get it done, we get it done fast, and we get it done well. We approach everything as engineers, designers, artists, professionals, and your friendly neighbors. Because we want you to win too.
Grateful
We are grateful for each other, our members, and to be part of this movement. We don’t take success or our community for granted. We’re happy to be alive. We’re happy to be here.
Together
We’re happy to be building this together. This is a team effort. We always look out for one another. We have empathy, we know we’re all human, and know we can’t do any of this alone.
Leadership
Specialists
Elizabeth Davis
Member Support and Content Specialist
Kristi Schweiterman
Graphic Designer & Photographer
Michelle Clune
Digital Productivity Specialist
The Story of Grand Lake Host
Grand Lake Host is driven by deep experience, professional grade talent, and insanely affordable rates that remain the best value service provider in the Grand Lake area. After almost 20 years of operation and growth with new team members and clientele added, this has never been more true than it is today.
2002
Can't Wait to Get Started
Xander Davis founds his first company, a web-design and web-hosting business in what has evolved today into 'Grand Lake Host LLC', at age 17 before even graduating high school. It is the first of its kind in this area. He is voted 'Most Likely to Succeed' by his graduating class. Honored, Xander works hard to not disappoint them. Go Bulldogs!
2003
The De Facto Local Provider
GLH begins serving several local businesses and even the City of Celina's official website, and many of these customers maintain continuous uninterrupted web-hosting service with us ever since through to today. Xander completes his senior year of high school while attending his first year of college fulltime simultaneously through a scholarship. While at Wright State Lake Campus, it is clear GLH is already roaring.
2004
Unleashed!
Xander graduates with an Associate's in Technical Studies in Graphic Design & Business Administration, on the path towards completing his Bachelor's in Organizational Leadership. Because GLH already has many clients locally and worldwide then, Xander leaves WSLC to pursue GLH fully. Xander expands his business by moving to Muncie, Indiana and joins with another media agency there, SpinWeb Internet Media Inc., seeing an attractive collaborative opportunity. Within three months, he re-brands the company, shoots a documentary about the rebranding process, and invites all of SpinWeb's clients to a ballroom relaunch party. According to the CEO, after 10 years of flat revenues at SpinWeb prior to Xander's joining, his reboot of SpinWeb makes the company's revenues skyrocket. After this, while still continuing to service his existing GLH customers in parallel, Xander is made Creative Director of SpinWeb before even turning 21.
2005
Industry Award Winning Work
Xander's work with his own GLH clients is paired with SpinWeb to go after and win industry-leading AdFed awards. Those clients are still with us today! SpinWeb and Xander expand to Indianapolis while he still maintains his Grand Lake area customers.
2007 - 2008
Fortune 500 Principal Designer
Xander transitions from the agency world to being the principal digital designer and photographer of a Fortune 500 company's marketing department at Sweetwater Sound, designing for their website, major monthly promotions and events, and corporate photography and video. He must have unpackaged, photographed, repackaged, and uploaded to the website daily a total of over 10,000+ electric and acoustic guitars. Xander also has his original music mastered at their world-class recording studio and plays his music live alongside co-workers and their own music at local bars in the exclusive and fan-favorite troupe of musicians, the Fort Wayne Players Club.
2008
Totally Promotions & BIG
While again still maintaining his GLH customers, Xander is hired by Totally Promotions back in Celina, Ohio to design their brand, which they are still using today, and develop their initial suite of e-commerce websites. He then returns to Fort Wayne to work at Brand Innovation Group (BIG), the largest and most prestigious media agency there. He creates several web projects and even an interactive racing video game online for one of their clients to promote their brand.
2009 - 2013
The Triple-A Video Games Industry
Xander parlays his web-design skills and breaks into the triple-A multi-billion dollar video games industry at multi-million dollar studios and projects, moving across the country in two days and working first in San Diego, California at High Moon Studios (Activision Blizzard) as the User Interface Designer and Art Director on Transformers: War for Cybertron, rated 9.0 by IGN. As the games industry works a lot like Hollywood, coming together to work on projects and then changing studios to work on the next project, within five years, Xander lives in five different states and major cities across San Diego, Atlanta, Austin, and Vegas, working at various game studios on various projects. In Austin, Xander creates a UI Department and leads his team to help ship Darksiders 2 with creative director and famed comic book artist Joe Madureira (Battlechasers). By 2012, he begins at Petroglyph Games (creators of the Command & Conquer series) as a User Interface Artist and is promoted four times in five months into UI Manager, reporting directly to the CEO, creating a UI Department, and overseeing 20 staff under him on three triple-A titles and a Kickstarter project simultaneously. This is, however, before unfortunate mass layoffs affect much of the personnel there. Xander still maintains his GLH customers all this time and contemplates what to do next.
2013 - 2018
Returning to Celina, Working Locally & Worldwide, and Putting Down Roots
Xander believes in Celina. He believes in the Small Town. He believes in a united Grand Lake area. In 2013, Xander returns to his hometown in Celina and founds GLH sibling company Xander Davis & Associates LLC (XD&A), serving games industry, VR industry, and general entertainment industry clients worldwide, once on four continents simultaneously, by working 100% remotely, while also maintaining local GLH customers and gaining new ones once more. Xander has since bought his home, gotten married, started his own indie game studio Astrogun, shipped his first game VAST (on macOS, iOS, tvOS), and is now the father to two amazing boys!
2019
Reinvented & Relaunched for the 2020s & Beyond
From 2002 to the 2020s, after almost 20 years, Xander relaunches his local business as Grand Lake Host LLC and brings aboard Kristi Schwieterman as Graphic Designer / Photographer, building a deliberately lean, extremely skilled, and hyper-effective tight-knit team of the best creatives the local area and beyond has to offer. While also having worked with Tom Lammers as Business Attorney for years, Marlene Gagel continues to serve as GLH's Business Accountant since the very beginning. Grand Lake Host is now laser-focused on reinventing the local media services market for this new era. Grand Lake Host is and always has been the most cutting-edge, ahead-of-the-curve, and best-value media agency in the entire area and we are now making this doubly-true in new ways unlike ever before.
2020+
Join with Our Expert Media Service Creatives
GLH is currently seeking Web Developers to join our team (email us at office@grandlake.host), and we are already serving new customers as local businesses and individuals with hosting, design, branding, and media services at unbeatable affordable rates! We have hundreds of customers, hundreds more projects, several industry-leading awards, and triple-A top-tier skills under our belts, ready to be at your service, quickly and easily! We make meeting your media needs as both 'push-button' as possible with direct, local, customized care. Contact us today at office@grandlake.host for a free consultation!
