Business View Magazine | February 2018

226 227 commercial is 24 to 30.They call it a need-based product, it’s a life-event product.You got married, or kids moved out, you bought or sold a home.When people have a need,we want to make sure the ex- perience is as easy as possible, because moving and storing goods is not the most fun thing in your life. “Women are making more of the choice on where to store, because they want to feel safe when they’re there.Having a secure,well-lit facility is a huge thing.We have cameras and switched to LED lighting to brighten it up.All the new facilities we’re building have intercoms and music playing through- out.All our doors have ‘Secure Guard’ on them. It’s a lock on the inside of the door. So, even if someone came in and cut your lock, if you haven’t entered your keycode or the GPS on your phone doesn’t say you’re on the property, your door remains locked and nobody can enter that unit.Millennials are starting to store now, and they don’t want to inter- face with a site manager.They want to rent their unit on the phone, show up, and say ‘Hi’ for a sec, that’s it.Whereas older customers want to come in and talk, and we become part of the community.” BVM: What are your goals for Platinum Storage five years down the road? Genevieve: “To keep investing in people, technol- ogy, and end user experience for our customers and investors.And build on our platform and portfolio of properties.We’ll continue to develop in core markets, to acquire existing facilities, and be best in class at what we do. In the next five years,we’ll probably add another 50 properties.” Dane: We’re looking at how to accommodate changing consumer demand in the industry.Today, there are big-box logistics companies setting up Rented: 520 Reserved: 19 SelfStorageManager EnterpriseManagementSoftware 1 PREFERRED VENDORS n SpareFoot www.sparefoot.com SpareFoot is an Austin-based company that provides listings for self-storage units. Customers are able to view available units, real-time price quotes, view photos, and make reservations. The company currently works with more than 10,000 storage facilities across the nation, and has recently expanded its offerings by partnering with providers of other moving and storage services to include moving supplies, moving truck rental, and full-service storage with moving labor. n ESoftSys LLC www.selfstoragemanager.com PLATINUM STORAGE GROUP outside cities.How can we serve them–maybe we could be last-mile logistics? How can we serve more commercial customers? We’ll continue an- ticipating changes to technology and building on that, adapting so we don’t get left behind; miti- gating risk by developing or acquiring when the time is right.We’re even branching out into other real estate types with storage partners that also do multi-family or office, to see where we can develop with them on the self-storage front.” Genevieve: “Dane and I were both raised in an Italian family,where culture and communication is very important.And we truly care about our em- ployees and the people we do business with–it’s kind of an extended family.Working and creating as a team, as a family, as a community, and provid- ing great service is at the core of what we do.”