Christmas and self storage

By Antony on December 2nd, 2010 | 1 Comment

Baked beans, tinned fish, socks, tools, cooking utensils, first aid kits, art materials ‒ these are just some of the items on the wishlist posted by the homeless charity Crisis for this Christmas.

More can be found on their webpage

www.crisis.org.uk/pages/our-christmas-wishlist.html

along with these instructions: “Deadline for donations: 10 December 2010. Please ensure that all donations are delivered by Friday 10 December to the Crisis Warehouse, Unit 7, 46 Willow Walk, London SE1 5SF, or a Safestore drop-off point within the M25.”

Self storage gets the Christmas spirit

The self storage industry has an admirable record for providing space to charities throughout the year. At Christmas, this initiative is clearly especially welcome.

Safestore has 42 storage centres within London and the M25 area, and all are open to receive donations for Crisis. As quoted by a number of London news websites, such as the Ealing Times, Leslie Morphy, Chief Executive for Crisis, has said: “With over 2,500 people coming through our doors every Christmas, it is a huge challenge to source the essential equipment needed to help our guests. Safestore’s support will help us to offer a full range of services for many homeless and vulnerably housed people this Christmas and in turn help our guests to leave homelessness behind for good.”

Other storage companies have been similarly generous with both space and time at Christmas, hosting or taking part in a wide variety of charity events. In 2009 Access Self Storage helped to build links with the community at large by running Santa’s grottoes at a number of their premises.

Christmas ‒ a slack time for self storage?

Does this mean that self storage facilities can afford to offer space because of a seasonal drop-off in custom?

The answer is: not necessarily.

The run-up to Christmas can be quite a busy period as domestic customers declutter their spare rooms for Christmas guests, or clear space for parties; some customers will even use self storage to hide bulky presents. Commercial clients in retail may also need extra storage space for seasonal stock in the run-up to Christmas.

But Christmas can indeed be a slack period. There may be a number of reasons for this. First, there is the annual slowdown in the housing market over the Christmas period (particularly pronounced this year) ‒ so there are fewer people storing possessions between moves. Second, various projects are completed to a Christmas deadline, such as building works, so customers using self storage while a new kitchen is being fitted, or a bedroom redecorated, may well move out of storage in December.

Catering for the customer over Christmas

But a fall in activity over the Christmas period may also just indicate that customers are staying put, neither moving in nor out over the holiday period ‒ which means at least that, for the self storage companies, income will remain steady.

While there may be fewer sign-ups and move-ins, existing customers may well want access to their units throughout the Christmas period. It can be hard for self storage facilities to deal with this disparity of custom.

Self storage facilities that know their business will assess what hours they need to keep over the Christmas and New Year holiday period, and announce them well in advance; Red Rose Self Storage and Parrett Storage, for example, have already done published their holiday opening hours online.

Self storage facilities need some rest and festive time, like everyone else ‒ especially since January can be a busy time, as the New Year’s resolutions kick in with fresh projects and a rekindled desire to make room, and to clear out the debris of the year gone by.

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