Who First Sold Empty Space?

 The self-storage industry is the largest in Europe, however, thirty years ago – it didn’t even exist. You may wonder who are the geniuses behind the master plan of selling empty space, and why exactly it is as popular as it is. Here is a quick article on the entrepreneurs who started one of Britain’s fastest growing industries and why our hoarder-instincts are encouraging the storage industry!

It may not seem like a fantastic idea; however the self-storage industry has boomed in recent years and produces a whopping revenue of nearly £500m per year! The industry is the product of huge sociological shifts, and Danny Dorling, professor of Geography at Oxford University has said “we have six times more stuff than the generation before us!”

By stuff, we mean furniture, clothes, technology and beloved knick-knacks that we continue to cram into the smallest of homes and refuse to get rid of. This is exactly what encouraged the storage boom and the constant pop-up of multicoloured storage units for us to safely store our excessive stuff!

Roger Dudding, also known as ‘Mr Lock Up’ became one of the first storage millionaires, and says his portfolio of properties is worth over £100 million. As Dudding built his empire up, he freely admits that he didn’t anticipate their ultimate use, and he originally expected people to store their cars over night.

80% of lock up garages are actually used for domestic self-storage, but as Dudding initially gave Britain somewhere to store their home wares, it was Doug Hampson who in fact created the modern day self-storage industry.

Hampson is titled as the ‘father of UK self-storage’ and brought the idea from America, where the self-storage industry had started in the early 1960’s and is on an enormous scale today! In 1979, Hampson had set up Abbey Self-Storage, the UK’s first storage chain, and the idea was pretty simple – disused factories and warehouses that were “past their sell-by-date and obsolete for their former use.”

Today, self-storage isn’t necessarily the industry it was, but owners are in agreement that this is due to the fact that buildings and land prices are continuing to rise and becoming harder to obtain, and not because of a decrease in our desire to hoard!

 

Here at Lock Up Garages, we offer high quality and cost-effective lock up garages on a rental basis to suit any storage purposes. For further information regarding any of our services or large garage rental options available, please feel free to get in contact with our friendly and helpful team on 020 8882 8575 today!

This article is on the lockupgarages.co.uk site so you can read it there:- http://www.lockupgarages.co.uk/news.php