Business Boomers- Real Storage Wars

Business Boomers- Real Storage Wars

This episode of business boomers explores the rapidly growing market of self-storage. Britten has the vastest self-storage market in Europe and this is due to the rapid growth in the amount of items people have. People have six times more items than their parent, which increases the demand for storage, this is due to the tripling in average house hold income and products being more affordable. In real storage wars they went on to say that this is due to the reduction in production and labour costs. I also believe this is one of the reason but, another reason is that the growth in technology has cause the need for more item in everyday life reducing the amount of storage space. This means there is a gap in the market for self-storage to grow.

Evolution of the self-storage market

Real storage wars then went on to descried the origins of the self-storage market and it start in American when Ross Williams and Bod Munn opens a storage room thinking oil farms from the local area will use it to store equipment. It turned out that they found more people were using it to hold furniture and other everyday items. The idea then migrated over to Britain, Roger Dudding has a portfolio worth of 100 million and his idea was to use old garages and convert them into self-storage units. I think this showed a lot of entrepreneurial thinking because the recycling of the old garages means the cost were kept to a minimum and as there was less demand for garages as car became fit to stay outside, he could get a cheap price for the land.

Marketing as competition increased 

Real storage wars researched into the competitive side of the market, as more and more entrepreneurs joined the market. They focused on a self-storage business called Big yellow storage and they created a advert that really captured the customers eye and helped them out preform competitors. The advert showed items crashing and flooding the walls of a home and I think this was effective because it connects to the customers, as this is how some people might feel when they have lack of storage. With this growth Big yellow storage decided to expand using a new marketing idea. As a lot of the competition used old warehouses as it’s a lot cheaper, to stand out they invested 75 million pounds into building new factories. The only difference was that they built them on main roads and made them stand out and eye catching with the yellow brand colour. I feel like this would have made their brand name stand out a lot better and help them gain a stronger customer base than competitors.

Why London self-storage market was thriving   

In the episode of Real storage wars they focus on London as an area for a section of the episode, as the self-storage market had rapid growth. London’s housing market had a major role in the growth as the high demand for housing in London lead to housing become smaller, reducing storage space. This was caused by the high chance of employment in London, therefore increasing the demand for housing to hold the people moving for the jobs. London also has a high amount of people renting in the area which meant that they would put item in self-storage so they could rent a smaller property for a short period of time to reduce costs. I felt that these factors are the main reason why London self-storage market was so successful. However, I feel that the advancement will reduce as the employment opportunities reduce, as there will be a lower housing demand.

New business created using self-storage

In another segment of the episode they talked about how new entrepreneurs used self-storage facilities to create a business. An TV show called storage wars was created and they used self-storage units that haven’t paid and auctioned them off to a group of people. There was also a massive amount shops closing in the 2012 due to the increase in online shopping. So, to use this gap in the market entrepreneurs set up online shops and used the self-storage units as stock rooms. This allow them to use the fact that the online market was growing. I think that these two ways are great example of how different market can interact to create successful businesses.

In conclusion, I believe that Real storage wars showed an insight into a new, but vast market. In my opinion, the self-storage market has so many ways to make profit. The service they offer is so easy to maintain and keep customer satisfactory high, as the business idea is so basic, but yet so effective.