Storage units offer some of the most affordable commercial space anywhere, and entrepreneurs run all manner of businesses – from bike shops to law firms – from these no-frills locales. Considering that storage units are designed to warehouse possessions, eBay businesses that sell items online find self-storage a particularly good match for their needs.
One such small businessperson, Robert O. Sachs of Memphis, Tennessee, ran an eBay consignment company out of a series of storage units from 2005 to 2008. Sachs operated RKS Solutions LLC and ran an eBay Store called “My Discount Shoe Store,” which consigned footwear for a shoe wholesale distributor.
“I worked from home, using commercial self-lock storage for warehousing (as inventory storage is not allowed in residential zoned areas of Memphis,” says Sachs. “It was a local family owned facility, newly constructed only a couple years before I signed up for my first unit.”
The facility included open-air parking spaces and enclosed spaces of 10’x10’, 10’x20’, and 10’x30’. It also housed a 12-unit “store-front” facility that offered a common lunchroom and restroom facilities aimed at businesses that needed office-style spaces more than traditional storage units.
Sachs could access his inventory 18+ hrs a day, between 6 a.m. and midnight. Sachs started with a single 10’x10’ unit, which he used to set up imaging, package, sorting, and other workspace. He regularly added units as he needed them, ultimately renting five at once for a total of 1200 square feet of space for his business.
“My goal when starting my consignment activities was simply to make additional income,” says Sachs. “As it grew, I continued to find new goals, mostly centered around supplying the services my clients contracted from me and to do that as efficiently as possible.”
His use of a storage unit for his business was one such efficiency. He could easily adjust the space to fit his needs, allowing for scale-up or -down by signing month-to-month contracts for each new unit he moved into. He could maintain low overhead by avoiding commercial storefronts and spaces in more central locations.
Using self-storage suited RKS Solutions perfectly. Would such an arrangement work for your small business?
