The United Parcel Service is taking aim at the $38 billion dollar self-storage industry with its latest service: Storage on Demand. The shipping and logistics company has launched the new service in the Atlanta metro area.
Customers who use the service will have a brown UPS truck drop off an empty plastic crate. The customer fills the crate with their belongings and UPS will later pick up the crate and store it in one of its warehouses for as little as $5 a month. Customers can have their belongings delivered back to them on demand, even within one day.
“Storage on Demand solves a problem that is becoming nearly universal as our population and demographics evolve. Millennials are moving into small homes in crowded urban areas. Baby boomers are downsizing for retirement. And small businesses need space for excess inventory,” said Darren Kamensek, strategy and innovation manager for UPS and one of the co-founders of Storage on Demand in a news release.
Storage on Demand was created by four UPS employees over the course of an internal innovation competition.
The valet concept isn’t a new one. The two biggest players in the valet storage space are Clutter and MakeSpace. Both have attracted significant investments from private capital firms—and in the case of MakeSpace, from publicly-traded Iron Mountain. Several smaller operations have given the full-service concept a go in cities across the country with mixed levels of success.
But on-demand storage companies has yet to breakthrough as a serious threat to traditional storage operators. The country’s largest storage operators, including Public Storage and Extra Space, have largely ignored the pick up and delivery model, instead investing resources into acquiring and building more self-storage locations over the last few years.
