Here comes another introduction. I am the business manager for swedish Servistore (see www.servistore.se). So far we've opened three facilities in Linköping. Any other members here from Sweden?

Hi, we are in the UK. I have just joined and its a real supprise to see how many different contries are in here. Hows the economy in Sweden??? Sunny England is heading for the dark times. Batten down the hatches! The housing market has really slowed off. Any ideas how we can add different services? We already do Storage, boxes etc, offices< which have been going really well, and document storage. Anyone out there doing anything else??

Yeah. We gotta have in mind that the european market for self storage still is at a early stage compared to America. There are several countries that doesnt even have these kind of facilities. UK is the biggest market in Europe, you got over 50% of the market and most of the facilities has been placed around London. Im really looking forward to see what happens in the next 5-10 years in Europe.

Are most of your customers private or companies? How does the boxes/offices work, can you explain that part? Here in Sweden this kind of business is doing extremely well, all over the country there are about 45 facilities today. So the potential is enormous!

Keep up the discussion! =)

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Business Manager
Servistore, Sweden
// Visit www.servistore.se

Greetings Servistore.se from Central Virginia;

Just a quick post to say hello. it is great that you and Keith and countless other international self storage managers and owners have join SSTalk. While I don't read or speak Swedish, I still want to compliment you on your website. It has a very clean and professional appearance don't forget to put links page to other community websites into your site. it shows you are involved int eh community and it also can result in your Intenet page coming up when someone searches on that topic heading. Look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Regards,
MisterJim444

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Learning Never Ends

With the Boxes I simply mean moving cartons, tape and bubble wrap etc... The offices however is one of the best ideas we have come up with in the last three years. We started out doing a re-ferb to 5 existing offices and making a seperate entrance to make them 24hr. They rented in a few months with no real advertising as such, so we used the remaining space to build another 6. They also went quite well and we are now thinking of building an extra 19 new ones. They rent for around 85 pounds a week each. 85 x 30... its quite a nice sum to add to the yearly takings. They cost more on the fit-out but return better profits and it also spreads our customers over a couple different markets. We are looking for other ideas to fill quite a large space. Are we covering all angles ...? With only 3 years in the business I am looking for any advice from some long term Pro's.

Ah. Ok. About the office-idea it sound interesting, I gotta dig into it. In the UK, esp. London, I can imagine the rent beeing much higher than here in Sweden. Have you though of any concept including eBay? Do you offer companies any other services other than the storage itself?

How many facilities do you operate and how big are they?

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Business Manager
Servistore, Sweden
// Visit www.servistore.se

We only have one store so far. It is in the south of England, 200 miles west of London. The building is 20,000 sq ft, we have added two extra floors and a goods lift. Our total area is 55,000 sq ft. We are 75% full so far. Its still filling but we have seen a hugh slow down of house movers.
In Sweden do you have multi level stores or are they more like the USA? Acres of drive up units?? How many stores do you have?

Ok. How did you add the extra floors? Do you own or rent the building? I think most facilities in Sweden are built at ground level, depending on where in Sweden they are beeing placed. There are plenty of rules and regulations to follow if you decide to build extra floors. Our three facilities are about the same size as yours, all together. All at ground level. We've spent much time/money on the security issues, the security is very high and we daily control everyone passing in/out through the storage. We're close to beeing filled as of today.

How is your security?

What the normal price for a storage / m2 (squaremeter) / year in the UK?

__________________
Business Manager
Servistore, Sweden
// Visit www.servistore.se

We do own the building and the extra floors have to comply to building regs and fire regs. Over here we are limited on space and buildings are so expensive . We spread this out by having extra levels. The building is on its own stand alone site with 7' fences and huge gates. All storage is inside the building and we have many cameras and a intruder and fire alarm. The building is locked down at night (not 24hr) with motion detectors at all doors. The average price per meter square in our area is about 180 pounds per year. Its more in london but we are only in a small town.

Whats the price where you are? Whats your occupancy?? Are you the manager or owner? Also what other revenue streams do you have. We are trying to add some at the moment.

Ok. How high are the rates in London? Our price is about $300/m2, our occupancy is not far from 100%... don't wanna be more precise than that I'm the manager for Servistore, not the owner. Whats you position at the company? Have you thought of adding garages, special security storage or different storages with different prices (cheap alt. and normal alt.). Do you offer any extra services to your customers, eg. spedition delivery in/out?

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Business Manager
Servistore, Sweden
// Visit www.servistore.se