Your Self Store in Cannock

Daniel Weatherhead has been investing in Your Self Store for almost three years and the facility very much concentrates on customer service! An illustration of this is that the company says publicly that if you don’t get a reply to an enquiry within 24 hours they will give you a free home mover’s pack (free packing boxes). Their site is about 18,000 square feet, part of a small industrial estate, and their customers have the luxury of accessing their goods between 6am and 8pm every day of the week.

Convenient location

Based in Cannock in Staffordshire, they also cover Wolverhampton, Walsall, Stafford, Birmingham, Burntwood, Rugeley and Brownhills. Daniel spent quite a while looking for a suitable self storage location and decided on this site in Cannock because it has a good catchment area. As he says, “the transitory property mover doesn’t want to travel 30 miles for their storage.” Many of the customers are long-term, but the strong majority (90%) are domestic rather than business users. One business user who stands out is a sales rep who stores his spices for taking to shops around the country.

Appealing to new customers…

In terms of getting customers, referrals are very important and work well, but Your Self Store also has a very effective website with a simple-to-use space estimator, a Google map to help people find them, an online shop for supplies, and lots of useful guidance on how best to use self storage.

Although their company colours are blue and orange, their facility itself is not one of these bright warehouses but is green and fits in with the other industrial units around it. This has been done to ensure that their fully serviced office complex is kept attractive to its current and prospective office clientele.

In building the centre, Daniel used many industry-leading suppliers to do the fit out. The manager, Todd Cornehls, was able to complete some of the building work himself. Todd and Daniel work well as a team ‒ which they had to do to get planning permission and to do the fitting out and building of the various areas such as the reception area. Daniel’s background in property has helped them, but compared with other property lettings, customers leave more frequently. As Daniel says, “there is a proportion of customers each month that we lose and we were surprised how many new self storage customers we need to find.”

… and keeping them

Even though Your Self Store is quite new, it is more than two-thirds occupied and that may well be because of their policy which they describe as “honesty and giving customers what they need”. They recognise that the self storage market is quite “internet-centric”, so they have website testimonials and an offer of first-month-for-a-penny.

As Daniel explains, “we supply what the customers need: if they need a van we lend it to them as part of the package. We get a lot of referrals.”

2 Responses to “Your Self Store in Cannock”

1. Suquamish Self Storage says:

   March 2, 2011 at 7:38 pm

   Great marketing strategy, reply within 24 hours. Sounds excellent.

2. Storage Letchworth says:

   July 8, 2011 at 7:10 pm

   Pleased to see another independent operator taking on the big boys and offering a decent competitive service.