The language of self storage is English

“La langue du ciel est anglais” announced a Montreal newspaper some years ago. What? They speak English in heaven as well? How do they know? Given this, it may seem less of a surprise that English is also the international language of the self storage industry too, especially when it comes to brand names.

American storage: the origin of the species

The history of the self storage industry begins in the USA, and today the USA still has, by a long chalk, the world’s biggest self storage industry.

Although the self storage industry in the UK is fairly developed, it is still only about one-fourteenth the size of the US industry, in terms of square footage of storage space per head of population. No wonder, then, that America has dominated the nomenclature of self storage as the phenomenon has spread abroad.

On the Continent self storage is a relative newcomer, and still something of a foreign concept – with the cachet of innovation that this entails. For this reason, self storage companies have been happy to borrow English (or American) terminology for their company names.

City Self Storage is a Norwegian company that also has a presence in Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Poland and the Czech Republic. Clearly this is an English-sounding brand name that comfortably crosses borders.

“Self”, “space”, “home”, “place”, “easy”, “safe”, “secure” and “box” are also popular words to play with. Spain has a prominent company called Bluespace; the Netherlands has City Box; France has Homebox; Switzerland has Easystock and My Place.

A new self storage company in the Philippines has taken the name Safehouse Storage Facility.

Box and boxes

The UK has numerous companies with “box” in the title: Big Box, Safebox, Stowbox, Box Clever, Giantbox, BizBox, Orange Box, Greenbox, Bright Blue Box, to name but a few. A mixture of concepts come into play here: the company may be offering container storage, or may simply want to evoke the idea of putting something neatly away, or indeed in a security deposit box.

In any case, international self storage companies love it – and the very term “box” has often become virtually synonymous with self storage. So Denmark has BoxIt, Latvia has Box Noliktavas, and Switzerland has Zebrabox and selfbox.ch.

Further afield, China’s first professional storage facility has the name Love Box Self Storage.

Local colour

In order perhaps not to seem totally American, many European companies have used an English word in combination with a local one. So Switzerland has Box à Louer (“Box to Rent”) and Spain has Seguro Storage. Germany’s Lagerbox may have beer lovers excited until they discover that Lager  actually means store (the beer takes its name from the original process of keeping fermenting beer in a store room). Other self storage companies follow suit: Dein Lager means “Your Store”, and Dein Lagerraum means “Your Storage Space”.

These latter two are unusual examples of Continental self storage companies using names that have no English in them at all. There are others: in Denmark you can find Dit Pulterkammer, which means something like “The Junk Room”; in Switzerland there is Casaforte (“Strong House” in Italian), and the French, always sensitive to the invasion of their language by English and American words, have a self storage company called Une Pièce en Plus (“An Extra Room”) – although, paradoxically, it is now actually owned Safestore, a British company.

The language of heaven?

In fact the Montreal newspaper was talking about something rather more mundane. The headline was referring to the conclusion of a long-running dispute about what language the air-traffic controllers should use in bilingual Quebec: French or English. Ciel means “sky” as well as “heaven”.

But language can be the stuff of dreams, in the sky as well as in self storage.

One Response to “The language of self storage is English”

1. storage stevenage says:

   September 9, 2011 at 6:29 pm

   It perhaps also should be mentioned that the Australia, which is probably the 2nd most advance self storage market after the US, is also English speaking market.