When the elevator is broken, it usually looks like this: A fitter drives his company car to the manufacturer’s warehouse, fetches the necessary spare parts and takes them to the customer to repair the elevator. But it could also be like this: The fitter orders the spare parts from a warehouse near the customer, picks up the spare parts there and drives the short distance to the customer on a cargo bike. Dream of the future? Not at all: The Austrian start-up Storebox is working on solutions like this one.
Ferdinand Dietrich, 35, and his two co-founders started with the idea of creating a kind of Airbnb for storage space, an intermediary platform. But it turned out that, above all, huge rooms were offered in the outskirts of the cities. The founders found out in contact with their customers that the actual need is in the city centers, where smaller storage options are in demand. More and more apartments no longer even have a storage room, says Dietrich. Many tenants are therefore looking for a storage facility that should not be too far away from the apartment.
The cooperation with Ikea promises growth
This group currently makes up the majority of Storebox’s customers, as Dietrich says. However, the start-up is experiencing stronger growth with commercial customers – keyword micro-logistics. There is, for example, a cooperation with Ikea. The Swedish furniture store has created an interface to its IT system for Storebox. This makes it possible for customers to have online orders delivered to the Storebox warehouse of their choice – there is no need to travel to the greenfield stores.
Storebox is not the only provider of storage space, “but we were the first to digitize all processes,” says Dietrich. The company is looking for commercial space in city-center locations that will become vacant on several channels such as real estate portals or through local contacts. Storebox also has partnerships with some chains. If a branch is closed, the start-up has the right of access. On average, the warehouses have an area of around 250 to 280 square meters, the largest being 1,000 square meters. Storebox does not operate all of the warehouses itself; instead, the start-up issues franchising licenses, similar to what McDonalds does.
A new location will initially be equipped with Storebox technology. The start-up has developed its own patented solution for access control, which allows access rights to be fine-tuned. The individual storage sections, which start from one square meter and are up to 15 square meters in size, are also monitored with sensors for humidity and temperature. It is billed monthly, a storage room with 1.6 square meters in Munich-Giesing, for example, is 93 euros.
There are currently 140 locations in German-speaking countries
Storebox and its licensees currently operate around 140 locations in German-speaking countries, the so-called DACH region. The focus is currently still in the home country Austria. However, the focus of the start-up is on the much larger market of Germany. There are currently 35 locations there, which can be found not only in large cities such as Berlin, Hamburg or Munich, but also in smaller cities with 30,000 inhabitants. Next, the company, which recently closed a financing round, plans to open warehouses in Luxembourg, after which it plans to conquer other European countries. A total of ten to 15 new locations are to be added each month.
The staff – currently 50 people work for Storebox in Vienna and Berlin – is to be increased, in about nine months it should be twice as many employees. “Good sales” made the rapid growth possible, says co-founder Dietrich, who first completed a technical degree and then added a master’s in innovation management and a master’s in marketing. In some cases one is already cash flow positive, “but we are still clearly in the growth phase,” says Dietrich, “it’s about investing in the future.”