While it's hard not to live in the day-to-day (or month-to-month), a savvy operator should be looking to the future.
And that future should be measured in years.
What's on the horizon? What predictable events and trends should you keep in mind when making business decisions?
Take a listen as John Chang (Marcus & Millichap) tells Tommy and Melissa what trends to watch over the next 5 years.
Question: "What trends will affect the storage industry in the next 5 years?"
Check out the video clip below to hear their answers:
In this Gabfocus Session: 2024 State of the Industry, Tommy and Melissa were joined once more by John Chang of Marcus & Millichap. He broke down what trends and insights he could offer for the self storage industry heading into 2024.
Check out the full Session to dive deeper!
Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what John had to say:
Let's walk through this together. Right?
We have industry consolidation versus the smaller niche players.
You're going to have the major players going into the major markets. You're going to have the niche players going into the smaller markets, and that's going to probably shape the industry as a whole and how it progresses. But again, if you have a model, a high-touch customer base in a major city and you are using a service based model, you may be able to outperform the major players because they're going to be more focused on automation.
Right?
When you get bigger, automation becomes more and more important. That's where the smaller independents are going to be able to outcompete. If you have great management and great people, you're going to be able to outcompete in that type of an audience.
I think that the construction continues to rise.
I think that there is continued maturation of the sector. I think there's going to be more standardization.
I think that the internet marketing, we've seen that become more and more important over the last five years or so, and it's going to become paramount. Right? Just a few years ago, it was very difficult to rent a storage unit online. Today that is accepted as the standard.
That is the way it's done.
So it's really going to interweave that technology as we go forward."
—John Chang
