Brooklyn brand studio. Twice the output. Same fourteen people.
Meridian replaced the tab graveyard with one Docsiv workspace per client, cut proposal turnaround from three days to ninety minutes, and closed a $1.2M annual retainer in week twelve they would have skipped a quarter earlier.
Meridian StudioRetainer proposal
Prepared for the boardRetainer proposal
Proposal turnaround3d → 90m
Annual retainer$1.2M
Client stack5 → 2
Proposal turnaround3d → 90mfirst draft, per pitch
Annual retainer$1.2Mclosed in week 12
Client stack5 → 2Figma + Docsiv
The challenge
The Tuesday that ate the week.
Meridian carries fourteen to nineteen active brands at any given time, from a Greenpoint coffee roaster to a publicly listed fintech. Every account lived on its own little continent: a Figma file, a Notion workspace, a Dropbox folder, a DocuSign envelope, and a Google Doc proposal template that one of the founders last touched in 2023. Nothing talked to anything else.
A new proposal swallowed most of a Tuesday. The producer would rebuild headers because the Google Doc kept dropping kerning on export, dig fonts out of brand kit number fourteen by Finder search because the brand-kit UI was slower, and hand the file off for two rounds of visual cleanup before it ever reached the client. The partners were spending more than forty hours a month on document mechanics that had nothing to do with strategy or creative.
“Honestly, week one I kept waiting for the catch. By month two I'd stopped opening Keynote on Mondays, which used to be my whole morning. Clients keep asking who we hired. We didn't hire anyone.”
Sarah LinPartner, client services, Meridian Studio
The approach
One workspace per client. Brand kit wired in once.
Meridian rebuilt every active client as a Docsiv workspace, with the brand kit (colours, typography, voice rules, three or four reference pieces) wired in a single time and reused everywhere downstream. Studio, the AI layer, reads that brand kit before drafting a single line, so the first cut of a retainer proposal already sounds like the client and not like the studio's voice in a wig.
The producer role shifted. Instead of assembling PDFs, the team reviews drafts inside the portal, leaves margin notes on the sections that need work, and approves a final. Clients see one hub at portal.meridianstudio.com and sign in for proposals, contracts, monthly campaign reports, and creative briefs. One link replaced a six-message thread that always opened with "find attached".
The outcome
Ninety days in.
Proposal turnaround dropped from three working days to ninety minutes for the first draft. The partners redirected those hours into pitch meetings and closed a $1.2M annual retainer with a consumer health brand they'd have passed on a quarter earlier, because the proposal prep alone would have eaten the week running into the pitch.
The stack shrank. Figma stays for design work. Docsiv covers everything the client actually opens. Five subscriptions became two. The Notion workspace is still there, mostly out of habit, mostly empty.
AI Document CreationPer-client brand kitsBranded client portalDocument analytics
More teams running on Docsiv.
Run your agency from one calm workspace.
Replace the stack with one thoughtful workspace your clients will actually love
