Small houses are a gap in the market for a company that collects and stores items 24 hours a day

Boxie24 previously transported a life-size statue of Beyoncé and the entire furniture of an office building. But the storage company is also responding for four dining table chairs, such as today in Amersfoort. Within a minute, a Boxie24 employee lifted Nazir Kudun’s chairs into the empty trunk of the truck. Kudun wanted to temporarily remove the chairs from the house for renovations. “You’ll bring them back, won’t you,” he says, laughing.

The chairs go to the Boxie24 storage facility in Amersfoort: a huge warehouse of at least 12 meters high where items are stacked in racks up to the ceiling. Washing machines, bicycles, mattresses, sofas and many moving boxes – the most diverse products are packed per owner. “I often call it the Ikea, but the other way around,” says Boxie24 founder and owner Gerrit-Jan Reinders, as he walks through the aisles of the warehouse.

As a young chartered accountant at Deloitte, Reinders (39) saw that large amounts were being invested in storage companies. He immersed himself in the industry and took the step into renting out storage boxes in 2014. How he distinguishes himself with Boxie24: the items are collected and returned via ‘pick-ups’, the customer can stay at home.

Berlin

Its first storage location was in Berlin. “I chose Germany because that country has an attractive climate for start-ups,” says Reinders. He still did most of the pickups himself at the time. ‘That makes you humble. Carrying that around is hard work.’ The largest Boxie24 location is now located in Berlin, with a hall of almost 80 thousand cubic meters.

Thanks to an investment of 5.5 million euros from the Van Veggel real estate family in 2016, Reinders was able to experience a growth spurt with Boxie24. ‘They were strategically interested because it is rental income, with real estate as the underlying component.’ Boxie24’s storage buildings are partly owned by the company and partly rented.

Boxie24 now has 74 storage locations spread across the Netherlands, Germany, Australia and the United States. “That’s what the 24 in our name stands for: all day long, 24 hours, our vans drive around the world with stuff,” says Reinders proudly. He started his company with the name ‘Box at work’, but the Germans found that difficult to pronounce.

The significant growth that Boxie24 has experienced in a short time is partly due to the housing crisis in the Netherlands and in major cities worldwide. Due to a lack of square meters, especially in the busy Randstad, more and more people are storing their belongings outside their home. New, popular concepts such as cohousing and flexible living often involve small apartments.

Other storage companies such as Shurgard and Allsafe are also breaking their own records. ‘Many houses nowadays are too small for the racing bike, guest sofa and the dryer,’ explains Reinders.

Competitors

Unlike its competitors, Boxie24 hardly offers ‘self storage’. At other companies, the customer rents a storage box and can place or collect items themselves. Boxie24 will pick up and deliver the items when the customer wants, but in between times the customer can only access them by appointment.

‘People think they want permanent access to their belongings, but in practice this is often not necessary,’ says Reinders. ‘You don’t have to see seasonal products such as a surfboard or snowboard all year round. And you don’t look at the sofa every week for which there will only be room in the next home.’ A few months ago they had a customer who paid in advance for fourteen years. ‘It was a cupboard for when his young son left home.’

Reinders saves on costs with the pick-ups because someone does not always have to be present at the storage location. Boxie24 can also determine how the storage space is used. Employees do as many pick-ups as possible in a day. Camera surveillance allows the warehouse to remain unmanned.

In the beginning, some customers used Boxie24 as a cost-effective moving service: the boxes were picked up, stored overnight in the warehouse and delivered to the new home the next day. “I lost quite a lot of money with that,” Reinders says, laughing. People now have to pay storage for at least two months, even if the items are there for a shorter period of time. On average, their customers store their goods for 36 months.

Beyoncé

According to Reinders, the company receives many requests from students who are temporarily moving abroad or living with their parents for a while. Clothing stores and tech companies are also customers. ‘For example, the life-size statue of Beyoncé was for a Sony event.’

“It often concerns personal items, so you have to handle them carefully,” says Reinders. ‘I can think: ugly cupboard, but maybe someone inherited it from their grandmother.’ Things sometimes go wrong. ‘I was once there when an antique cupboard bounced down a narrow staircase. But things only go wrong with a tiny fraction of all the pick-ups we do.’

Reinders has big plans for Boxie24: ‘We want to take over the whole world. In every country and in every city, people need storage. It creates peace and space. I’m only 3 percent of where I want to be with the company.”

When Reinders has finished his tour of the storage building, Kudun’s four chairs are stacked and wrapped in foil on a pallet – ready to be placed in the warehouse with a high forklift truck. Reinders does not dare to do that. ‘That really should be done by professionals.’