The UK Self Storage Industry Report 2023: easyStorage takes a look

The annual self storage industry storage report is out, showing industry data from 2022.

For easyStorage it’s a way to benchmark its own progress against the industry in general, just as it did in 2022 with 2021 figures.

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easyStorage is delighted to report that it’s doing incredibly well against industry standards, and many of the results validate the easyStorage business model. The company operates differently to most self storage operations in that it collects people’s belongings, stores them sealed, and returns them when the owners need them back. (You can read more about how easyStorage works here here: The easyStorage Difference.)

Sadly for all of us, a large number of customers across the industry perceive self storage as poor value, yet they have no plans to move. This implies, according to the report, that self storage is not simply a discretionary spend, but a necessary one. If you add to this low unit access rates (read on!) and the fact that it tends to be older people who store for longer, we suspect that this reflects one of the reasons that people often store with us: a family member going into care. (We’ve been thinking a lot about this over Dementia Awareness Week which just passed – as an aside, the message, loud and clear, is to get tested as soon as you suspect!)

easyStorage does well on price, with storage coming in at as much as half the price of traditional self storage. It may be for this reason that people look to easyStorage almost as a utility – the growing numbers of lifestyle storers who make the best of their space by keeping it clear and decluttered rather than ‘upsizing’ their homes in the face of the cost of living crisis.

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Around 62% of self storage industry customers travel less than 15 minutes to access their storage unit. Perhaps another reason that they perceive poor value may be that they’ve selected on location rather than on price and needs. The reality is that only 23% of customers access their storage unit more than once per month, a figure that reduces to 13% when considering purely domestic customers. Less than one in five of all storers access their storage units once a week or more.

The industry is selling them a luxury – access  - that they don’t usually need (unless accessing as part of running a business. It’s clear that  many small business storers use their self storage units as cheap office space). The easyStorage model, mobile storage, is just as convenient as having something on your doorstep, if not more so, since easyStorage returns your belongings to your door!

Industry wide only 59% of storers were ‘VERY SATISFIED’ with their self storage facility. At easyStorage we’ll say nothing other than to point you at our current TrustPilot ratings, where, at time of writing, 90% of 4,334 reviews, at time of writing, rated the service as excellent (5/5).