PhotoSails was an invention born of necessity. In the late 1990s, Aaron Kiss ran a sailboat chartering company in Ft. Lauderdale, and one of his promotional strategies was handing out pamphlets on the beach. These ended up littering the beaches, so the city passed an ordinance banning the handing out of print pamphlets. “I needed a way to get to the people without littering or causing problems with the city,” says Kiss. “So we decided to paint up a sail with my logo, my slogan, and my phone number and started sailing up and down the beaches.” Effective? “I increased my income by 400% in six months and put five other boats out of business.”

The effectiveness of sailboat advertising thus proven, Kiss started working with other local businesses. “I had some friends who owned their own businesses and asked me if I could make a sail for them,” he says. “They couldn’t really afford what I wanted to do, so I made a giant 600-square-foot Velcro sail with stick-on letters and numbers and I would write messages and put logos on it. When people wanted to hire me for a day of sailing, I’d charge him my charter rate.” Things were moving along swimmingly until there came a turning point. “One day my phone rang and it was Anheuser-Busch and they asked me if I could put photographs on sailboat sails,” he says. “I said yes, and they took out a contract for four months, which turned into two years.” And thus was born PhotoSails.

PhotoSails founder Aaron Kiss.