A stroll down the average UK high street, with its profusion of charity shops, Cash Converters, and Poundland stores not only illustrates the parlous state of UK retail, it also confirms that in hard times the austerity industry cashes in. In among these anomalies is another business which has shown itself to be surprisingly resilient to the worst effects of the economic downturn: self storage.
After two decades of boom, those ubiquitous out-of-town space-saving centres have continued to show consistent growth through the worst of the downturn and are now even helping the economy in an unforeseen way. As businesses downscale and cut back, self storage facilities are becoming the base of choice for a new generation of lean, low-level pop-up entrepreneurs, attracted by flexibility, cheap rents and the convenience of a no-ties agreement. From mini-gyms to music academies and recycling centres, self storage units, with their adaptable functionality, are increasingly the blank canvasses on to which new businesses are painted.
Last month, the industry body, the Self Storage Association, reported a 5 per cent annual shift away from domestic customers towards business customers. Although small, it is a significant indicator.
Rodney Walker, the association’s CEO, explains: “We’re seeing a change in the proportion of business customers to private customers. This is part of the recessionary effect. If you are starting a business in today’s landscape it makes sense to use a facility that is flexible and cheap. For start-ups, self storage has always been a potentially more cost-effective way of getting established.”
In the UK, the self storage business has enjoyed investment for two decades and the garage-style lock-ups of old, epitomised by Arthur Daley in Minder, have now been replaced by clean, lit, secure units on staffed sites. The UK now has as many self storage facilities as it does McDonald’s restaurants – around 1,200, and the total self storage floor space in the UK adds up to 40 million sq ft.
In America, where the industry first started (offering servicemen storage space after the Second World War) self storage is integral to the way Americans organise their lives. The nation has over 2.3 billion sq ft of it. In the UK, domestic customers account for 65 per cent of all self storage use and the rise has been fuelled by a number of social phenomena.
Firstly, British houses are shrinking. According to statistics, new-builds have been steadily getting smaller over the past 30 years and many are unable to provide the storage space needed to accommodate owners’ needs. The property crash and recession have meant that fewer people are moving and instead are converting spaces in their homes formerly used for storage. Spare rooms have become offices and attics have become bedrooms. And because we are ostensibly a nation of hoarders, the junk accumulated in them increasingly ends up in a unit on a nearby site.
Other factors, such as the rise in divorce rates, an increase in the number of people living alone and lower incomes during the recession, have driven more people to downsize or live in flats – which in turn means that increasingly we are looking for places to store our stuff.
Like the US, self storage is now becoming less of a temporary solution and more of a permanent satellite for many households. The average customer uses a unit for five years and friendships are built between people with neighbouring units.
One storage facility owner in Bristol reports that a customer uses her unit as a living room, complete with sofa, and invites her friends in for coffee. Others have reported clients using their units for illicit sexual liaisons. In an industry built on the proposition of flexibility and adaptation, it’s perhaps no wonder then that self storage is undergoing an unanticipated evolution.
