Discover Your Perfect Self Storage Site Using AI and Data

We're in a generation where data gives us that we don't need to guess. It's already there. So let's use it. AI will definitely change our industry. It's about to take every rule we had and tear it up like, and throw it down the road. I'm not saying all my tricks and tips to you, Gavin, because that's what keeps me ahead of the game.

Of course, wouldn't expect that from you, Tim. Hello and welcome to the latest edition of our podcast. Today we are joined by Tim Brandt, the owner of Brandt Self Storage and the creator of an innovative AI powered site finder for the self storage industry in the uk. So Tim, thanks very much for joining us. Can you introduce yourself please to our listeners?

My name is Timothy from a company called Brant Self Storage. I know I don't look old enough but I've been going for almost, almost 16 years and yeah, I'm, I'm working away hard and doing our, doing our thing.

You must have started in nappies if it was 16 years ago. So you know, it was, it was.

A long time ago and when I look back now I think I made some really good choices when I was very, very young. And yeah, it feels, feels like I've been in the industry for a long time already.

Yeah. Cool. Well, we're going to talk a little bit about your storage business maybe towards the end, but we're going to start by just, I'd love to hear a bit more about your software tool that you've built. So can you tell us what it is, what this AI powered site finder is and what inspired you to create the tool?

Yeah, sure. So we're actually called intellistorage. That's the name of, of the business. I built the tool because I was really frustrated with trying to find new sites as I think, you know, a hell of a lot of people are in the industry, Gavin. So I think I thought to myself there has to be a better way and sometimes there isn't something out there you can just, you know, go and buy and plug in. I think sometimes you just got to go out there and do something for yourself and build something.

So what a, it's a great way to start a business, isn't it? You've got the problem and you want a solution and the problem you're talking about is it's probably the biggest challenge, isn't it for anybody like you who's trying to grow your self storage business? Yeah, biggest challenge is generally finding the right site. So this tool. So my Right. This tool design then. So let's say you find somewhere in some town nearby, you look at it, you find a location you like the look of. You can go into this tool, search that area, that town and it's going to show you all the self storage sites in that town. Is that right?

Yes, yeah, that's exactly right. So going back to your first point, I think 90% of the problem in this industry is actually trying to find a site. You get so far it falls out bad. You get so far there's a problem plan. So you could really spend a long time, and I think this is the biggest problem for our growth is trying to find the site. So yeah, once you have found a site you can jump on the tool, you can have a look and go, great. It's underserved by 42% or oh actually it's oversupplied by 220%. And at the moment we're just doing that by hunches. We're kind of going okay, I kind of think it's this, I kind of think it's that we're in a generation where data gives us that we don't need to guess, it's already there, so let's use it. And for what this tool costs, it's, it, it's, it's crazy. It's pennies for operators who, you know, could turn, you know, pennies into millions of quid. So I think it's, I just think it's a no brainer really for people.

This day and age and especially as we, you know, as the UK market is maturing as well, more and more sites are opening in towns and cities all around the place. And so, you know, it is over time going to become harder and harder to find a town with nothing at all. So this sort of a tool becomes more important over time, not less probably as the industry matures.

Yeah, most definitely. In the, in the 15 years that I've been here, when I first started, I can think of, you know, a town you could just go to the next town and open and the next town and those gaps don't exist anymore. And, and you can't just guess, you know, and the cost of land has gone up, rates have come in so you need to, you need to really make sure the numbers add up. And this gives you a great start to, you know, gives you a great starting point to go to and work off.

Yeah, yeah, so, so I'd love to then understand because one of the things that I talked about a bit before and how when I looked at my own sites years ago, I always kind of. I looked at towns and I did a bit of analysis. I suppose I was doing manually what your tool is sort of automatically doing, giving you. But I was looking at kind of, there's a town, how much self storage is already there, roughly how much square footage is that supplying and is there a gap versus what the demand would be? So I think is the UK average now 0.8 square foot per capita, something like that. It's grown from 0.7 a few years ago. If there's only 0.2 square foot of supply in a certain area, there could still be a self storage business in the town you're looking at, but there could still be a massive gap move into. So it's not necessarily. You don't need to be put. If you're listening, you don't need to be put off by. You talk about 15 years ago and yes, it would be great to have. Better to have had that, but now it's about finding gaps in the market, not necessarily a completely empty market until the tool can help.

Yeah. So, yeah, quickly going on to your point there. Yes, exactly. That you could go to a market and it's underserved by 40% and you know that it can facilitate you and your facility and your adwords are not going to be too high and you're not going to be competing for the same customer. So this tool, if you haven't got it now you need it because it's showing you where you can go and have a free run. Yeah. So just to give a quick overview, blue means it's under supplied, red means it's oversupplied. That's pretty much the joy of this tool, is that you don't have to be AI driven, you don't have to be a computer whiz kid. You just look at it and that's why I built it. Simple. I'm a simple person and I can look at this tool and I can go, blue, need storage. So I'm going to zoom in there. And the point of this tool is that you may not know of these areas. You know, in your local, you know, town or county, you understand where the supply and demand is. But 200 miles down the road, you don't know the town, you don't know the, the county. This gives you somewhere to go. Ah, that place needs storage. I'm now going to go and investigate. So a prime example, I've used it a few times, but I think it's a really Great example is Folkestone is, is, is a very large area, it's under supplied. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people go there now after my videos that I've done. But you could just, you just literally put your cursor on it and it shows you all the information. Now that's gathered from like 40 different data points. There's a couple of bits of AI driving in there that produce the map. So it shows you the annual income, the average age in that block, which you'd be surprised, does vary quite a lot. The average household size, because we want to know how many people in the house. The population in that Little Square is 1288. Then it shows you the total population within 5km because that's our sort of reach in a self storage facility counts expected demand. And the most key thing is right at the bottom it shows that this area here is 65% under supplied. Now to me as an operator, that is the holy grail. You know, I have seen some towns where they're 100% undersupplied. I've seen big cities where I think I knew it was oversupplied. But then the Birmingham shows the north westerly bottom part is actually under supplied by 33%. So it really does show you a great overview of what's happening in the UK in real time. And every time we load this map, it's scraping real data. So if anybody else, you know, pops up on the system, the map's going to change.

So if you're looking for a, if you're in self storage or wanting to grow, if you want to get into self storage from, from the start, I mean this tool is just a great place to begin.

Yeah. Now this is exactly, this is exactly where people should be starting from. I have a few people that started on the tools on the alpha version back at the start of the year. Won't name names, but they found a couple of sites.

You know, if somebody's listening here and thinking about looking for a location, what are the, what are the things you, what are like the three or four or five things that you think you gotta figure this out.

Yeah.

When looking at a new site.

Well, I think especially when it's your first site, you need to understand, you know, the basics. You know, we are moving away from the era where we need to be on the side of the motorway in the perfect spot next to some traffic lights where 50,000 people drive by you. Great. Those locations are fantastic. But we're moving to an era where you know, Google is king and how much you pay will demand, you know, will dictate, sorry how much you will get. But key things are, you know, course location is important, still is, you know, the economic growth in that town, you know, what's the income value? It says on the tour here, you know, they're making £50,000. If you go to a very deprived area, they may not have the money to actually pay for the storage. The average age is important which we have on here that tells you, okay, for instance Brighton's a very young city. It has people that are in the early, early mid-30s to 40s. Those are the people that are just about coming in. Storage is a wealthy city on the coast. That is a great place to go and open up a self storage and at the moment it's got a sort of a moderate supply and demand. So but those are key factors of sort of understanding where you lie with this map.

And do you think some people, when they're just getting started, they're also thinking about do I do container storage or do I build at the other end? Do I build an indoor storage facility? When you talk there about income, if the income in an area is £70,000 versus £18,000 or something, then you probably, you might even in the more deprived areas there might still be a market for self storage. But it might be if you know that information about the income then you might hear what you're actually going to launch. So you might go, okay, I'm going to go for like a much lower cost container site because you know this, I need to keep it cheaper versus in the middle of Brighton, you know, let's build a purpose built building. Do you think that's a way people might use it too?

Free market has a demand, whether it is, you know, a much lower cost per square foot versus a higher one. And yeah, I would say from a startup point of view a container yard is much more efficient and, and it's easier, easily scalable versus yeah, somewhere where it's much more affluent and there is more money. You would definitely be fitting an inside because you know, you could justify the square footage rate. So that's the joy of this tool. You know, it fits so many sort of situations and gives people a great point to work off.

If anyone wants to find out more about the tool or even use it, where should they go?

So they can give us a shout out at branch self storage or Our number is 420-83124. You can call us on that as I say or just type in IntelliStorage into Google. As far as I know we're pretty much the only visual site finding tool out there. But yeah, it's a great tool and it's only 25 quid a week and you know it really does unlock and has done for some people already, you know, finding their next site that is going to make them a million quid. So I think it's, I think it's a fantastic value and we're really looking forward to, you know, improving it and helping people find sites in the future.

So let's, I want to just also change gear a little bit and you know the reason you've built this is because you're aware of the problem and that's because you have your own self storage business. So can you tell us a little bit about your self storage business, how you run it, Kind of what it's been about 15, 16 years, a little bit about the history of, you know, where it's come from and how it's got to where it is today because it's a, it's a sizable business.

Yeah. So I think to be quite honest it's tough at the bottom and I think you have to fight hard and that's me being very honest. There's a lot of people in the industry that have a lot of money and they can throw at it but I think when you start from the bottom and you work hard, you know all the tricks and you know all that. We've forgotten the actual business. We run a hq. I'm in HQ now, Alton Hampshire. We've got quite a few satellite sites across the south and south of England and we basically run a central office. We have a full sales team here, calls come in here, inquiries come in here. And the joy of that is we're right next to each other. We can talk about problems, we can solve problems much quicker than, you know, managers in every branch. I totally get why they did that. But the central office is much better. We can make quick decisions, we have loads of CCTV and then we have caretakers at our sites which you know, you will always need somebody who can mop a unit, who can meet a customer or deal with a broken gate. So that's pretty much how we run our business. I'm not saying all my tricks and tips to Gavin because that's what keeps me ahead of the game.

Of course wouldn't expect that from you Tim.

No, but.

So one of the questions I've asked another one of our, another operator was what's the strangest thing you've ever found in a unit?

Yes. So funny enough, it's not an item, it was actually a human. And I drove into one of our sites in Farnham probably about five years ago. Both doors on the container were open. They're nice tidy units. Lovely little site down there and there was a guy with a chair in there cutting some guy's hair. And I walked up to him and I said, oh, what's going on here? And he said, oh, are you my 3 o'?

Clock?

I said, no, no, sorry, what are you doing in the unit? He said, I hair in here, it's cheaper than a shop. And he said I could just sweep it out. And off he goes. He literally had a chair in it. And this guy there, it was all battery with a razor. And I, I just thought, fair play to him. He's still there as far as I know. I never did get a haircut, but it was quite funny.

Very good. Okay, what about. So when you think about growing the business and moving it forward, what are some of the challenges you see in the next couple of years?

I think competition, I think markets are getting saturated and that's why exactly people need to use this tool. I think people know operators are struggling, I think people that are coming into the industry are struggling and I think AI will definitely change our industry. It's about to take every rule we had and tear it up like, and throw it down the road. So if you're not on the forefront of AI, you are going to be on the back foot. We have got our Charlie version coming out probably in the spring that's going to include some amazing features which is the average cost per click on Google in that area. It will also include the average rate in the area. So for example, the square footage rate and that will be split between container operators and inside operators. And you'll also be able to split container operators versus inside. So you'll be able to see are you going to be the only container operator in that town or are you going to be the inside operator? So those are some great features and also we're nearly at the point where we can get a bit of AI kit, which you'll put in some pre filled boxes, for example, what your criteria is. And if a piece of land comes available on our commercial land, it will email you saying this is the perfect site, it's ready to open. Look at this lead and follow it up. So AI would effectively be doing everything for you by signing the lease.

Wow, that sounds amazing. Great, exciting plans. Okay, Tim. Well, thank you very much. It's been really, really interesting to talk to you. Really great to get the introduction to the tool we've covered. If anyone wants to get in touch, they can get in touch with Brand Self Storage and they can find out more about the tool. Thanks a lot for joining us. Been great to chat to you.

Thanks mate. It's been a pleasure.

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