How Matt Used His Own Algorithms to Find the Perfect Self Storage Site | Self Storage Explained

Hi, I'm Gavin Shields and this is Self Storage Explained expert advice on how to set up and scale your self storage business. Hello and welcome to everybody who's listening. We have a really exciting episode here. We're joined by Matt from Bien Sur Self Storage in France. So Matt, I've known Matt for a couple of years, the youth store, and that's why we know him. And what we want to dig into here is just really learn from Matt, his journey in self storage. And I really would like love to dig in to how he runs his self storage business because, you know, I think there's so much to learn from each other in this industry and you know, it's always good to share learning. So Matt, thank you so much and welcome.

Hi Gavin. Well, thanks for, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Can we start this with a. Could you give us a brief introduction to yourself and sort of, you have a very interesting sort of journey into self storage. I think just love to hear a little bit about that as well. So yeah, can you just tell the listeners about how you got to where you are today?

Sure. Well, again, so I'm Matt, I'm also the founder of Biensure. So today we have two self storage facilities in the Paris area. So we're actually close to Versailles. I'm originally in, I guess I'm an engineer by training. I worked previously in other industries, so in the solar industry and a little bit in finance. And then I launched our company five years ago and so actually you were saying, how did we launch into self storage? Well, we actually, at first we, you know, we tried to disrupt self storage. So we launched a value service business, sorry, Valley storage business. So where we would do the moving and the storage for customers. So the advantage was it seemed much more efficient on the storage side because you could store more stuff in less space. But there's a real complexity to the logistics of that. And so we did that for about two years. And so after trying to again disrupt self storage, we realized that we had failed. And so then actually we embraced self storage. And so in 2021 we pivoted and started to develop proper self storage site.

That's so interesting. So in 2019, this is what I find interesting here is I almost did exactly the same thing in 2019.

Oh wow, okay.

I remember. So just before I, about nine months before I opened my self storage site, I was, it was December, November 2018 and I was researching the industry and trying to figure out what should I do. And I was. And probably like yourself, I Think I've got to disrupt this, there must be a better way. And then I thought, oh, you know, if you, I was, I looked into the whole idea of bringing a box to somebody's front door and then packing it or letting them pack it and then you come and take the box away. And I find a few other services. There were a few at the time in the UK that did it and I remember looking at their, trying to, trying to figure out are these things profitable or are they making money. And I sort of found out that they weren't. And then looked at the, the I downloaded big yellow and safe stores annual reports and they were just printing cash. I thought, well you know what, maybe sometimes there's an industry that you don't need to disrupt, you just need to get into it and keep it simple. So, so is that with your valet storage there? So were you, did you have people actually going and loading stuff up into a van and into a box or how did you manage, did you have a lot of staff there or how did you manage that exactly?

Well, I guess you, you managed to avoid the trap and figure that out in a few months, whereas it took us two years to figure that out. But yes, what we, well actually we started off, I did an MBA program so and at first we, we basically were student storage and shipping company. Again it worked. We had great traction. Customers loved us. We were, because we were English speaking in France, which is actually in itself quite a competitive advantage. But it was just way too seasonal, market was too small. So we put it to again value storage. A bit like you. We tried at first, you know, have, you know, you deliver a box, people pack it. But then we realized that 95% of customers have objects that don't fit in a box. And so that just business model is just not viable because you're just generating all these leads and you know, you can only address, you know, 5, 5% of them. So it's just not, not viable. So you've got to offer a moving service. And yeah, I mean I completely agree. For me the unit economics are extremely challenging. We, you know, we had customer traction so we had you know, maybe 200 customers for valet storage. And actually we still have some customers today because we also, we stopped accepting new customers but we actually kept those around storage. So we still have maybe 30 of them in storage today. But just the whole, the whole value side is just, it's just much harder than it seems because as Kanye, you were describing earlier on paper, it just sounds like such a. That's a great idea, but really putting it into practice is tough. This moving in general is tough. There's a lot of competition. You. It's hard to have a competitive advantage in a sense that. Yeah. And especially if you're a company that does everything, let's say cleanly, that pays your employees and pays payroll taxes, that pays vat, which is particularly high in France and I'm sure is actually high in the uk. Well, it's very hard to compete against a lot of actors that don't do that, which is quite widespread in the, especially in the low end or in the cheap moving industry. And just the second you start touching people stuff, it just gets quite complicated.

I remember somebody about four years ago, one of my advisors in store stuff, my self storage business, we were looking at a few ideas and he said exactly that thing. He said once you start touching people's stuff, you become liable for their stuff.

Exactly, yeah.

So many more issues then you know, somebody's. Somebody's piano falls over or something breaks or, or it does, it breaks but it's not your fault. There's just so many issues or even.

If something disappears like I mean who, I mean who's to prove that it was there in the first place if it disappeared? I mean you have many employees how, who stole who, who took it? I mean, was it lost, was it forgotten? Just don't know.

And self storage is such. The thing I like about it so much is that you know, your, your gross profit on self storage is, I don't know, it must be 99%. You've built the units. If there's somebody in there or there's not, your costs are basically exactly the same. Yeah, you move somebody in and they're paying you €200amonth. That's all straight to the bottom. Like there's no additional cost of providing that service. You may attribute a bit of cost to marketing, but you know that's going to happen anyway. So.

Yeah.

Okay. Well that's a really interesting.

And also what I'd say. Another little thing that people don't foresee with a value storage, which can be a bit tricky is again when you do a quote, a moving quote for a customer, usually there's a list. 80% of customers of a list matches what you said. But there are 20% of customers where there's usually more stuff than anticipated. So maybe you gave them a quote for a certain volume and then you pick it up and then he says, well actually it doesn't fit in that volume. And the thing is In a self storage unit. If stuff doesn't fit in the unit, there's no debate, it just doesn't fit. You need to get a bigger unit. Whereas here, because a customer isn't the warehouse, they think you're just trying to kind of extract extra money from them. So that's also actually a very, very, very tricky situation.

It reminds me when I moved house five years, almost five years ago, as a friend of mine does removals and I called him, I was like, you know, can you come around? It's probably only a few hours. Everything's packed.

Exactly. It always sounds easy.

Two days later, he's still there and we're still laughing at it because you just, you don't realize how much stuff you have. It's unbelievable.

Exactly. And all the work and then, you know, sometimes you, I don't know, you have a desk, you thought it fit through the door, but then it doesn't. You dismantle it. Yeah. Oh, and then I'd have a lift. Doesn't break anymore. It doesn't work anymore. Who knows? Just low variability.

So, Matt, so tell us then. So Biensur, Bien sur started in 2021, so it's been there for three years. You've got two facilities with more on the way. Can you tell us about the facilities? They're indoor facilities. Can you just tell us a little bit about their size, where they are, how they've kind of developed?

Yep. So again, two facilities are both in the Paris suburbs. So they're more precisely close to Versailles, which is to the southwest of Paris. They're both about a 20 minute drive from each other, which is actually quite handy for managing staff and managing any potential on site issues. It's indoor storage. Our first site has 300 units and our second has 600. So a total of 900 units. We opened a first site about a year and a half ago and the second one four months ago. These are indoor units. There's no, we have, let's say, smart access, that the entry doors are automated. But. There's no but, but each unit is closed with a traditional padlock.

Traditional padlock. Okay. Okay. And so 600 units. That one opened four months ago.

Yep.

So you've been the one for. 300 units have been open for a year and a half.

Yep.

How has the occupancy journey gone there?

Yeah, we've been, we've been very happy with how it's filled up. So today we're at. So on the first one we're at 78% occupancy. So we've, I think that's roughly somewhere about 250 units that we've, we've leased, which is actually ahead of what we expected. So we're very happy with that. And the second site we, yeah, we've actually ramped up even faster. So after four months we're at 120 units. So about close to 20%.

20% there.

Wow.

Okay, that's amazing. Okay. Because actually a year and a half ago a lot of people last year, 20, 23 in the industry would have said it was quite a slow year as we come out of COVID So it sounds like you have, you haven't, you've nothing to compare to before, but you certainly had a successful 18 months since you opened your first site and that, that second site's going well too. That's great. What I don't know, can you, can you put that growth down to anything? Like is there anything that actually before, before I ask that, I'd just like to understand what's your staffing situation on site? Do you have people on site all the time 24 7? How do you, how do you deal with people on site?

So for our bigger sites, our 600 unit site, we have someone on site Monday to Saturday, basically the full day. And then our smaller site we have someone that's there two days a week. So yeah, Tuesdays and Fridays all day, but the rest of the days it's unmanned. So I'd say that one is semi unmanned. During the ramp up stage, the small one, we did have someone on time, on site, full time. And then when we open our second site, we move that person to the other site. So. And actually we've, I've been surprised it hasn't had that big of an impact on, on ramp up rate. Again, we still have, you know, two days where we are there. And so actually now we. I was actually surprised we actually get quite a few people that, that. Well now our Tuesdays and Fridays are quite busy at that site because people actually. Well, you know, we write it all over our site that, that it's. Well, that there's no, no one on site the rest of the time. And so I've been surprised that people do, do seem to plan around it.

Okay, okay. Okay. So then back to my question. So is there anything that, what do you put down, put the success down to that? You clearly done a great job here.

Thank you. Well, I think. Well, I'd say there, there are a few reasons. I think the first one was site selection. We really. Well before Looking at sites, I mean I visited maybe, I know a good 80 warehouses before, before signing our first one.

0. 18.

Yeah, sorry, maybe not visited, but at least looked at. And then maybe I might have visited 10, 15. Okay. And, and we basically before also what we did is I'm. Well, I think a great let's say model for self storage is supply and demand. And with demand being linked to local population and supplying supply being other self storage centers. So we, we mapped out actually the whole of Paris and its suburbs and kind of figured out which zones we thought had an undersupply so that had high demand. And the warehouse, well, so our first warehouse, actually a smaller one we think is in a place that's particularly undersupplied. And so I think that's one of the main reasons why we filled up so quickly. Just because we're in a place where no one else is. So I'd say that's the number one contributor. Then I'd say the other ones are. Well, I think we, I think, Well, I think if you do. I think in self storage is many industries if you do the basics right. Actually you've already done 90% of the way there. I mean, for example, we have, you know, stuff that picks up the phone when people call. You know, I, I think, I mean I'm extremely happy with, with the stuff we have. We're extremely friendly, patient. We don't try, you know, being too aggressive on a sales side. We really do try to advise people. For example, when a customer calls, we usually tell them, hey, you need a, you actually don't need as big a unit as you think. You know, you need a smaller one. And that actually creates a lot of trust. But again, there's no, there's no, there's nothing, you know, there's no silver bullet. We. Yes, I think so. Yes. So good stuff. Also, I think we have a beautiful facility. We invested a lot. So the first one, we invest about a million euros into the construction. So, you know, beautiful building, beautiful units. We try to keep it very clean and we try to offer great customer experience as well. So customers can, well thanks to Stora, book completely online if they wish. So if they wish to. But also they can, they can call us up, they can come and visit, they can email us. So now we even have a WhatsApp button so people can contact us on WhatsApp. So really many channels that people can use to contact us.

Okay. The location thing is so interesting because you know, like you said, it's number one, number one thing. And I'm sure that is absolutely. If you can, it sounds like you really took a really rigorous approach to finding a good spot where you looked for under supply. First of all, tell people, anybody who's new, or even people who are looking to open new sites, what did you look for there? So you mapped out Paris. Did you go down to finding every single site in the Paris area, try and figure out how big it was, how much supply there was there or like how. And what did you use? Like how did you figure out what's the demand? How did you, did you have some.

Well actually I'm an engineer myself so I actually coded a little algorithm which. So on one side I pulled basically population data of all the greater Paris area. So again that was a proxy for demand. And then I found every single self storage site and I think there were at the time maybe 120 in Paris. Try to estimate the size of each one. Cooled up a bit, cooled up all those. It didn't have our prices online. So to our competitors or French friends. Sorry if I called you but. And yeah, based on, based on. And we looked at a few signals such as pricing or where a price is high. Then you can somehow try to get an idea of how occupied a site is, how big it is and that's your supply. And then we had some algorithm that for every. We then made a GPS grid of all comparison for each location. We said well calculate what's the undersupply or the oversupply. And then we. So we had an exact listing from like best location to worst location of every single of like each kilometer squared in the Paris area. So that's how we did it. But maybe, maybe that's not know feasible for, for everyone. And that did take quite some work. But I think there are easy ways to do it which is just to look see where your competitors are and, and actually being close to competition isn't a problem itself. I think that. Well my take is that the main, main thing is to be in an undersupplied area. So where maybe around the, the like a, a 10 minute drive, 15 minute drive around where they're, where they're. Yeah. Where you're. I guess. Yeah. Where you're under supplied. Yeah, yeah. Then also I think you obviously want to find a site where the building works and there are a lot of. Well I guess you want it to be the right size, you want it to be accessible. Ideally you want it to be visible from the street. That last part is good to have not a must have Are sites visible? So the first one, not at all. It's completely hidden. You can't see it from a street. And so we've yet we filled it 70% exactly. I mean we even had, at first we had customers that they wanted to come see us and they just couldn't find us. That's how hidden we are. So we ended up putting a sign. So now people find us. But actually our second one now is extremely visible from, from a busy street. And we do know, we, we get, you know, a lot of customers thanks to it. So. Okay, clearly, I mean it really helps. But I mean if you're an undersupplied area, I'd say it's, it's not a, it's not the most happy.

So this, this moves, I think gets us into a topic that I'm really interested in which especially given one's visible and one not visible. So you think like the customer's journey starts, you know, they have a need for self storage, they go and search for it on Google or they ask a friend or whatever, how do you, what are you doing to get found by those customers? How do you get find. How do you. At the start of the customer journey, how do people find BNs?

Yep, I asked that badly.

But you get, I asked about three. You got my question. Sorry.

Well, most people find us online. Again, you're right on Google. So then there are two ways to be well positioned in Google. Let's say Google search, which is. Right, you do SEO. So you try to have, I guess a lot of backlinks that point to your site. Good content basically. So we do that SEO. We also do sea, which is paid ad, which is pay per click. Right. We bid on keywords to be the number one or top four results. So I'd say that's probably somewhere between half and two thirds of our customers. And I think that's a pretty, I mean for myself, number one.

So that's how. Even with the site that's not visible because you're visible line. Is that how you see it?

Exactly. And then you'll. And so some people also search on Google Maps because they like to find people, well, facilities close to them. And also it's important to have an updated Google Maps kind of website. Well, Google Maps page and reviews. That definitely helps. Yeah, go ahead.

Well, the interesting thing about that is I think, you know, thinking about more sites, you'll pay more for a visible site. Like a lot more. Buying a warehouse, you know, if you, if you know how to be visible online you could make a decision. I'm actually going to save 20% on the purchase of my site, maybe save myself 2200,000 pounds, 300,000 Euros. And that's going to make, you know, my, my startup costs lower and I can reinvest a lot of that and making sure I'm visible online, maybe with Google Ads and things like that. But I suppose it depends a lot on the local market and the competition and where they're located. Maybe if you were hidden and there was a really great competitor with a massively visible site, I don't know, maybe it would be a bit different.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're. Yeah. And I'd say it also depends on, you know, the skills you have in the sense that we had. We knew a little bit about, let's say Google and digital marketing before because we done value storage before and that was 100% online. So we were fairly confident in our abilities to do well there. But it's true if, you know, if a new operator knows nothing about digital, it's a bit risky to risk it all on success on a digital front. So. But yeah, I mean, I think you're exactly right. We're definitely willing to pay more for a visible site. I'd say it also depends on. Depends on the error. Depends your. Because also on digital you might have slightly younger customers. We do know there are some customers that just won't find us digitally and we see that in our visible site where we actually have some customers who just have never seen our website because they see our sign. Or sometimes we'll try other campaigns. You know, we've tried handing out flyers, we've tried, I don't know, mailing, you know, old school stuff and that sometimes works and it works with a different kind of population. I mean, we've been surprised. You know, we've sent out flyers and we've had people show up like four months later and then, oh, well, I saw your flyer, I kept it and you know, so depends on the people.

So as well as. So you've touched on it. But I was going to ask, what other marketing strategies do you use? It sounds like online SEO, paid ads. You've tried a bit of flyers. Anything else that you do, from a marketing point of view to the initial kind of get customers in the door, prospects in the door.

Well, we tried a lot of things and we. Sorry, apologies. Can you hear me?

I can't.

Yeah, okay. We, we like to try stuff and see how it works. That's kind of been our approach. We've tried flyers. Funnily enough, they worked very well at one site. Not at all at the other. We've tried street advertising, which worked very well in one site, but not at all on the other. So word of mouth actually has become quite, quite a big thing. So even so, you know, in our first site, although it's quite new, I think we have 8% of our customers are from word of mouth, which is. How do you. We just ask people, we ask them, how did you find us? How do you hear about us? And we try to ask every single customer. Yeah.

Do you give any sort of. Do you give your existing customers any kind of an incentive to recommend people or is this just happening naturally?

Yeah, we do, we tell them. But we have not a single person has really asked for it. It's quite surprising because we obviously, we intend on, you know, again, there's a referral fee. It's €50 for a customer, €50 for the ferry and for the referral.

Okay.

But usually a lot of people only tell us, you know, they've been referred after the fact of signing and once everything's done, although we do advertise it, so I've been quite surprised. So clearly it works even without.

Okay, and what. Okay, so. So we've talked a little bit then about how you sort of get cost, get prospects in the, in the door. People are either on your website or they're on the phone. How do you, how do you handle that then? So I know on your website you let people book online. Can you talk a little bit about just the different strategies you have for turning a prospect into a customer and make. How you optimize that?

Yep, of course. So that depends on the, let's say, first point of contact. So I'd say we have three main points of contact. One is, well, maybe even four. So we. It's about, maybe 25. Our number is about 25 of our customers book completely online. So they, they completely independent. They don't call us, they don't, they don't visit, they just book online. And actually that's, that's quite a good number. Well, I mean, I think that's higher than a lot of our competitors. And actually I attribute a lot of that to Stora, which I think does a great job on that. So thank you, Kevin. But yeah, and so then for the other types of customers, so we have a lot of people who, I expect the majority, the first point of contact is that they. Cool. Okay. And so obviously usually our calls last from anywhere from five to 15 minutes. Where we try to understand the customers need. Usually the number one question they have is what size unit do I need? And so we try to answer that question and then they have other questions around safety, how secure is it? How do I cancel? And so we obviously deal with those over the phone. Then most customers won't sign on the spot, although some might. But then, so we'll usually we'll send a quote afterwards and we'll try to encourage a customer to come visit because our facility is extremely clean. We've got cameras everywhere. We've true, as soon as customers come and visit, I mean we know that 80% of them convert on the visit. So that's the phone people. Then we have walk ins, the people that spontaneously show up to the warehouse. Then we again pretty much same process, we show them multiple unit sizes, show them the security features, show them how the center works. And it's true because we have such a big clean facility, it just creates so much trust. And so I'm very glad we invested a lot into the warehouses. And then occasionally we'll have people that will reach out on WhatsApp or by email, in which case we usually try to get them on the phone because it's quite hard to respond to people over email. And yeah, I guess that's how we, that's how we deal with customers. But so as you can see, I mean what's, what's surprising is. Well, at least I remember when I was trying to, you know, to try self storage. I was like, you know, you know, how hard can self storage be? You just, you just take a warehouse, put some units inside and you're done. But, but no, I mean 75% of customers need to, need to speak to a human. So it takes a lot of time and you've got to train those people. Fortunately, my people are extremely good, but you've got to train them on what to say, how to handle questions. Objections. Yeah, I mean so far a lot.

Of fun and yeah, okay, so sounds like, yeah, sounds like you've got a pretty, you must, you're obviously doing a lot of stuff right to have hit the occupancy levels you've hit so quickly. But it also sounds like you're kind of letting, you're letting your customers decide how, what suits them best and meeting them wherever they are. Which is, which is a great approach. You know, if people have questions, you want to answer them. So then, so once they've booked then, so just one of the things that sometimes comes up is like how do you let People pay because obviously with our payments, if you can have cards, direct debits, but you can also just let people pay by bank transfer and stuff. But the downside of that, it can require a bit more time checking bank statements and marking off invoices as paid. Where stuff's automated, do you force everybody to use a certain payment method or do you let them. How do you see that?

Yeah, spot on. We only let customers use direct debits and automatic credit card payments. We don't accept cash, we don't accept checks, we don't accept wire transfers because you're right, it just becomes too complicated to manage. And also when it's automatic, well then customers can forget. So we just keep it simple. And these days everyone has a credit card in the bank account and if they don't, then they might, they might be a tricky customer.

Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's how I run my site as well. So I always just use these pool methods. So your, your customer gives you the money out of their account or that's what we all do with Netflix and this and, and I, I actually much prefer that because I sort of, I trust people to take right, right amount and I have to win and every, every month, like pay some invoices and stuff. So anybody who sent an invoice to, to me at Stora will know that I might pay that instant or it might take six months because I just haven't got around it. So anyway, yeah, that's exactly, that's the only thing I often ask people. Can I just set up a direct debit here? And if they do, yeah, you're right.

I mean it saves everyone time. I mean both the customer and, and, and the supplier agreed.

The only, the only instance, and I had, I've only ever had one customer where it's a big business and they're like, look, we aren't going to give you a card. We're paying about a thousand pounds a month. And this was really early. I was like, well, I need to bring them in. And they had to do bank transfer. So I said okay. And, and like that was actually for the first five or six months they never paid their invoices public company and I had all sorts of issues. In the end, I had to. Every six months they asked for a reconfirmation of my bank account details. And so I'd send it to them and then the reply, they're saying, oh no, no, you actually have to post this now to this address in Singapore. This happened actually physically post it yeah, you have to post this thing that tells us what your bank. State bank account number is. Yeah, Copy to this address in Singapore. And I was like, this was after. But it took me about a year and a half to get paid. And this was about a year and three months into.

And probably a lot of effort from you.

And so I would, I actually would not do that again. I just, I would never do it.

But.

But I know a lot of our, A lot of our customers do have business customers who will. And they've maybe been used to doing it anyway so that they maybe have the processes in place to manage this. So they still do it. So do you ever have a business saying, look, we have. We. You have to send us an invoice, has to go through our payment department and we'll wire you the money. Have you ever had that or just hasn't come up?

Yeah, actually we had that just one time and we did it your way. Fortunately, they paid in a reasonable amount of time. But it did. And actually we only allowed it. We said, okay, it has to be payment for per term as opposed to per month because I just didn't want to have to handle it. So we did allow it in that one instance. I'm not sure we'd necessarily do it again unless there's a very good reason. Because it does. Because they're unable to tough as you. Yeah, I mean, it just, as you mentioned, it just takes time. You've got to chase up with people. Yeah. It's just. And when you have, know, 900 customers, you just at one point you can't be doing. You can't tailor your product to everyone.

I think it's a, It's a really interesting thing. We come up, we come up with this, in this discussion with especially we've got operators who are moving the story and have been used to maybe 10 years of, you know, we're raising invoices and then, you know, we're. We're watching our bank statement, we're taking off the invoices. They have processes built to manage all of this. And for me and you as well, at my sites, like, we've just never even built these because you've got these pool methods. You just don't need this process. So if you can force everybody on the cars and direct debit, yes, you may at one point lose a customer or two. But you're making your life so much easier. You're moving all of that now still, of course, some people's direct debits might fail sometimes. Some people's cars will fail. But there's things to get those eventually and so you have to chase those people up. But it's such a smaller portion of people than it is people who just forget to pay the invoice. So it's a really, really interesting. And I think it's probably people who've just started in the past two or three years who've never done it. We just think well why would I ever get into that?

Agree. And I think there's a real cost to a non pull method as you say, which is just you or your employees time that has a cost as well as we're being paid much later. So yeah, I'm so glad we don't do it. And I think actually it also helps having a much lower level of failed payments. Yeah, I know our, let's say ours is extremely low. So we're happy with that.

Excellent, excellent. Okay, great. Okay. So we've talked then about sort of how you find customers, how you sort of bring them in once they've booked and paid and well just quickly and do you do ID checks? Do you do contracts?

So we do, we do ID check and contract. So customer pay. So they go on our website. So more precisely on the store part of it, they book, they put in their card details. Boom, it saves their card and then they have to sign a contract. So it's. Yeah, I guess it's a contract. They sign it, they, they have it. It's. I think it might be a bit different than in the uk. Well again this is just obviously the contract is tailored to, to French, French law. And then as part of a contract they must, they must upload a ID and also yeah, they upload an ID and because we, and so basically this contractor, you can either sign it online. So we have a, we have a, like a Docusign. That's not Docusign, it's not a provider of it. It's called job form which we think is exceptional. And so they can, they can, they can, they can either sign it online, they upload as well a picture when their ID when they sign the form. We also used to ask for proof of address. They sign and then they can also do that in person. So we have an iPad in our, in our, in our facility where again you have the same job form document and you can fill it out on site.

So knowing the way store works you, you've built, you don't use the store identity product and you don't use your own kind of form which you just so you Create a form and put into the store system, which is a. Yeah, a great way to do it. That, that gives you the flexibility to do it whatever way you want. So collecting IDs, collecting proof, address, that's all possible. Just build your own form.

Exactly. Okay. And it's true. We looked at the store solution, which I guess is also a stripe solution. I think the reason we didn't use it is because I think it doesn't actually remember. Well, it doesn't actually say the name of a person and you say you don't get to keep the id, so you kind of lose that proof. And then there's a bit. And then, I mean, I think it's a great solution because it's out of the box, it works well. But at least for our use, we thought this other solution, although we did look at this stripe solution and we launched it with Stripe solution, it's extremely easy.

Some of the limitations, you're absolutely right. With Stripe Identity, which is the thing we have, it doesn't at the moment, doesn't necessarily. You have to pass the identity check, but you could actually. It doesn't necessarily match it up with the person's name who's booked.

That's funny. We noticed exactly that, but I didn't want to say. But you're right. Yeah.

And so we've become aware that's it's not something that's generally. It's potentially a way to kind of get around it, but you have to actually still get through an ID check. So, yeah, we've planned to actually change that so that it's going to match up the names. So it has to be the same booked. And then the other thing that was. That's the main issue with it, actually. And once we fix that, I think it'll. It'll make that a little bit. A bit more seamless.

Yep. Yeah.

Okay, cool. Okay. So they've paid, they found your site, they've spoken to somebody or booked online, they've set up their payments. So they've received an invoice, they've signed a contract, they've done an id, they've given you their id, their identity. The other things I'll say about the identity process is I think we're going to be able to change that soon with our ID thing where you have access to the identity as well. I think we're going to change how that works. So anyway, there's a couple of. I think two improvements that will come there that might be worth looking at in the future. Anyway. It doesn't matter just if you use it or not. It's there if you like it. So that's happened. Then what happens then? So they've signed their contract, everything's good. Do they get a code? How do they get into the facility? Do they have to tramp one over their staff there? How do you manage access and move in?

Well, so for the move in they so on the more so again the customer selects a date for their move in which can either be today or date in the future. And so if it's today, then obviously he gets his code instantly. If it's a day in the future, he receives his code on the morning of the and so that's mostly done through stora. And then yes, they receive a code which lets them get into the facility on the day of. We usually also give it to the customer beforehand, just let's say as a matter of courtesy and in case there's a problem with the email. But that hasn't been the case so far. And then we try to recommend for customers to move in during our. When, when we're there because we think it, you know, usually the customer needs to look for their, you know, where's our unit? They might have questions on a day of. So we recommend that they do it when we're there. That's not always possible so that they can, they can do it even outside of when we're there thanks to the code. And then we've tried to put a good signage in so people can find their unit and then, and then people. So we don't have, we don't have smart locks we have on each unit. We have just regular padloc. And so in our small, let's say semi autonomous site we actually have a, we have a padlock kind of distributor. So like a, like a vending machine. A vending machine, exactly, yeah. Padlock vending machine. Okay. It's a cute, it's a cute green vending machine. Quite small, but it works. And we. And so that also lets people who don't bring a padlock that lets them check in any time of, any time of the day, even when we're not there.

So let's say Matt, somebody turns up on a Sunday afternoon, can they go on their phone from outside your building, book the unit, do the ID check, sign the contract and get a code and move straight in then themselves.

Somewhat, well, somewhat because store lets us do that, but we haven't done it yet because we want to check that the contract is well filled out. So there's Always a manual step. So if someone booked on a Sunday, it's two format happens very rarely. So we do actually need to validate the contract before we let them in. So.

We'Re saying, so this is the end of September 2024, we're in about two weeks. We're releasing built in contracts into Stora. So maybe worth having a look at that because you can validate, you could validate all that. Our system will validate things now on your behalf. So maybe that's going to be an option shortly. But for now the reason you don't allow that is that you like to check the contract is properly signed to make sure that covered. They're covered. Etc.

Yeah, and actually that's very important because in, well, France tends to be very protective of tenants and namely if a customer doesn't sign a part correctly, basically if they don't pay their bill, instead of a two month, let's say. Because I think what's quite standard is after two months, if the customer doesn't pay, then we have a right to evict them from our unit. But if you don't, if a contract isn't properly filled out in France, it's not two months, it's a whole year. That's a part that we need to check.

I see.

Well, it's a minimum of a year. It's a year until we can notify them and we need to get a judge, we need to go to court to get them to do it. So it's extremely lengthy, extremely costly. So we really just obviously want to avoid that situation and we need to really check. Okay.

Okay, Excellent. Okay, so they've moved in. I had a question there about the padlock. So if somebody's moving in, let's say, so they move in on Monday, let's say, and there is nobody there, you've checked the contract, everything's happy. So they've turned up, they've used their code to open the front gates. They don't have a padlock with them. So they're buying a padlock.

Yep.

Do you leave the unbooked units unlocked then for them or.

Exactly. Yeah, yep, we leave all the units unlocked. At first we thought that might be risky, but it turns out at least our customers have been so far extremely respectful of that. We've only maybe had a handful of customers take another unit, but that's really been occasional. So we think that actually works really well. And also that's really facilitated by the fact that we have CCTV everywhere. So every single corridor is filmed so in case someone takes the wrong unit, we are usually able to trace that back and solve it. Yeah, I mean that's worked pretty well for us so far.

How much do you sell the padlock for?

We, we sell them. We have, we have three types of padlocks. We have key padlocks and pin padlocks. The cheaper ones are at €9 90 and the more expensive ones at 1490. Sure.

Do you know roughly what percentage of your customers buy those?

Roughly half of them.

Okay. Okay. Right, nice.

We have a little, we actually engraved our little logo. So kind of like that. There's our big bias, your logo on it. So hopefully when customers leave us, they'll still think of us.

Okay. So that is a, it's a, it's a very efficient way to actually manage a move, a sort of a self serve movement. That is because you're, you know, you've got a, you've got a git system which is, is, you know, you have to invest in that. But it's relatively inexpensive to put a gate system in place and doors. Whereas if you get to the point where you're putting locks on every single door, you have 300 doors. It's quite a big investment. Now at my sites I just had to do that because I just didn't want to. I just thought it'd be worth doing. I didn't want to ever have to go in and overlock people. But you're, you're, you've got quite big sites, you've got staff who are there or at least around and so people can move in and you've got a revenue stream there in the padlocks. I suppose the risk is like you just said, there are people move into units, take liberties, take a bigger unit and try and get away with it. But that doesn't happen very often. So that's interesting to hear somebody that's been doing that, taking that approach and it's worked well. So that is really good to hear.

Yeah, well, we considered as well Sparlocks at the beginning, but I think we came to a conclusion that. Well, my conclusion is it makes sense on small sites that are unmanned where I guess your budget is not as important. I'm sure we have stuff there. So kind of exactly as you were saying. And then also my fear with Smart Pallox unit, well, sorry, with fully smart entry systems is like these are quite new products. You also, your. I'm just always afraid that you can have issues. I mean it may sound pretty reliable and maybe you can attest to where there are issues but also another thing that one reason again why we didn't do it in those sites is also you become dependent on one vendor and I think there's just quite a high risk variant case that the systems aren't intercompatible. So I think you want to do it if it really makes sense. But yeah, so I'm convinced that maybe in 10, 15, 20 years from now it'll become ubiquitous. But I think today it's not a. I'm not convinced it's a must have. Although I think there are definitely advantages to it.

Yeah, interesting. Okay, so looking ahead, where do you like, where do you see Bianca in the next five or ten years? Do you have some, a long term vision for where you want to bring the company?

Well, we're obviously trying to grow to find new warehouses. Well, my intent is to. Our intent, we're here for the long run. We have no intent of selling the company. At least as of right now there's no plan. I mean the plan is still to remain independent and to manage this business for a long, long time. So, so yeah, we're looking at developing new sites, both finding the right. Well the hard part is just finding a real estate also, also, also raising the capital and where so the future. Yeah, so we're just going to try and copy paste what we've done so far, just develop more sites kind of like we have now. But we're also looking at potential new avenues for growth because it's true or let's say our bottleneck and I'm sure it's probably the same in the UK is actually finding the right real estate where you can. That makes sense both economically where you get the right planning permissions, where you, where basically everything lines up, where the fire department is, well, is happy with your project. And so we're looking at potentially in 5, 10 years we might, well, we think we've built system that works well. We are, you know, we have good online presence, we have good systems in part thanks to store. And so we, we think there's maybe something to be done in third party management or maybe franchising. That's not a project for today but I mean that's maybe for in a few years because we think also a brand works well so there's value there. So yeah, so if so, yes, third party management would mean we would manage properties for other people. Franchising would mean. Well we would maybe, you know, they would use our brand, we would generate leads, maybe some sort of mixes as well. We're also looking at buying other self storage operators right now only in France so small maybe independent shops so if ever you're French or know of any French people and want to, who, who want to sell their storage site well feel free to, feel free to reach out. I'll be happy to help or Zane if you want, if you want someone else to manage your storage site and.

Will you be thinking about just France keeping things in France? Would you rather stay around Paris or what's geographically, what's your what do you think?

Yeah for the next few years we're definitely thinking of sticking around Paris. We think it's, it's a big market there's plenty of opportunity here. We'll eventually look at growing to other parts of France and then the other parts of the EU maybe at some point but I think what we have realized is we've got to be realistic with these things too because it's obviously very sexy to say hey we're going to launch in Berlin next year and London two years from now. But but again storage it's well you know it's obviously different languages it's so legally things are different and then also it ends up being a real estate so it's very you know, very. Unfortunately real estate is slow and heavily regulated so each country obviously has different regulations even in front sometimes different localities of different regulations. Yeah you need different legal contracts, legal entities.

Yeah even just you know your knowledge there about you know if people don't sign the right contract it can take a year before you can even. That's not the case in the UK but there are other challenges in the UK that I'm sure. Yeah France, Germany, they're all, all different I'm sure and so. Yeah. Okay. Okay so what about. So if you've mentioned engineering a couple of times so you have an engineering background how do you think that's influenced your career as an entrepreneur and a self storage operator? You mentioned really helped like you know the ability to look at the Paris market and build some tools to help you but at a higher level. How do you think that's impacted your career?

Yeah well I think it's had both positive and negative impact. I'll start with the negatives because I hope it'll be quick but yeah as an engineer you're taught to well you're taught to be a perfectionist and you can be prone to analysis paralysis so that's been a challenge of mine to overcome that. Unfortunately I think I'm getting better but they're mostly positives I Think being. When you're, I guess toward as an engineer, you try to become very logical, rational, you try to approach, break down complex problems into simple ones. Also I think just the world is getting more complicated and more technological. Right. You especially here where you have to deal with hardware. So I mean, which is the whole facility and also software and namely software. I mean even though we use Store and that sort of majority of our software issues are still, it's still extremely helpful to know how, how it, how it kind of works in case you troubleshoot or. We built our own actually CRM. So this was because we started using Store before you had a CRM feature. Do we still use that? And we've built it using kind of no code tools. And it's. And it's just building that has been. Well, I took care of building that initially. Now I've handed that over to one of my colleagues who does a great job of that. Yes, I mean it just helps you understand how a computer works. And so we built, I think these processes that really simplify our lives because in the end we, we just want to keep the admin to as little as possible. And so I think the best way to do that is just to automate as much as possible.

Yeah, yeah, Nice one. Okay, so just to the last kind of question. If you go back to the start of your time in self storage, so like not the valet storage, but back to the time when you started 2021 and in self storage, are there. Are there particular lessons that you've learned? Any advice you would give to yourself if you could?

Yep, yep. Well, a lot. I think the few ones. I think the first one is to not underestimate how complex self storage is. I'm not saying it's the hardest industry out there. I certainly think it's not. But there's a lot more complexity to it than one might initially seem. Namely, construction is very hard. I mean we had 20 different companies, 20 different contractors do construction. There's also a lot to do around permitting. That's also quite hard. And at least in France, it's quite complex. Well, and especially in France, there aren't clear rules for self storage. So let's say the legal, legal environment isn't very clear because it's quite a new industry. And so I would highly recommend people who launch themselves to really speak to people who have done it, whether, you know, like, for a lot of operators are happy to do that freely. But also there are some consultants out there and I mean, I know I learned so much from One particular consultant, you know, you know we were all, I mean the fees I paid him were probably the best investment I've, I've done at biasio. He, he just avoided, he helped us avoid so many kind of mistakes and pitfalls that would have cost us so much money and so much time. So.

And was that somebody in French, Was that somebody in the French market or somebody in the. From the UK market or elsewhere?

This was someone from a French market. Yes. I would definitely recommend someone who knows your local country. He's actually I think Belgian but he worked in France quite a while.

Do you want to recommend him or is he too busy to be recommended to lots of people?

Yeah, he's a great guy. His name is Peter Broodkorn. So Peter Bruidcorn. He used to work at, I think he used to work for many years for Shoreguard and now he does that on the site and he's amazing. So highly recommend him.

Great. Okay. Yeah, so.

Or also I'm very happy to. I'm also very happy to help people just on a, you know, to get on a call. Feel free to. I'm happy to help on a free basis.

Great, thanks Matt. Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure there'll be people listening who'd love to hear more because we've touched on I think quite a lot of really interesting stuff here and there's lots of stuff we haven't got talking about but. And I think I found it really interesting. I love to hear how people run their self storage business. I just think it is just so fascinating just even just learning the way you handle the padlocks. That for me is really interesting. I just think that. Okay, that's funny because lots of people, lots of our customers talk to us about how to manage the move in process and having a, having a vending machine on site with padlocks, leaving your doors open, that's. It is a great solution. Great solution. That is really interesting and where you are, it's 70% on in a year and a half. That's through 2023. That's, that's, that's something. So there's obviously lots to learn from you Matt. So I'm sure the be, if anyone is listening, I'm sure they'd love to take you up on that.

Yeah, well I'd really be happy to help. I mean feel free to anyone listening is welcome to reach out to me on LinkedIn or you can find me. My name is Matthia Bernand. Well, I'm sure maybe Kevin, you'll include a link, but I'm very happy to answer to any questions. Also, I mean, I do want to say I also feel like, well again 3 years ago I knew nothing about self storage and I also, well, I feel it's normal to posit baton because I've learned so much from so many not exactly competitors, but other people in self storage industry have been particularly, you know, particularly kind with our time and I've spoken to so many people who have explained so much of this and so I'm also, well, I just want to give a shout out to all those people and yeah, and self storage people in general I think are very friendly, even local competitors. We have great relationships with them. So I think it's a great industry to be in.

Absolutely. Okay. Matt, thank you so much. Thanks for joining us. It's been great to talk to you and hear more about your journey at BNSure and look forward to seeing where it goes.

Thanks for having me Gavin. It was a pleasure.

Thank you for listening to Self Storage Explained, where we aim to provide expert advice on how to set up and scale your self storage business. For more resources including financial models and in depth guides for setting up or growing your business, visit our Self Storage Academy at Stora Cora and if you would like to find out more about how Stora can help your business grow sales and save time, set up a demo or contact us at Stora Co Stora Co. Thank you.