Public Funding for Stora Limited

The popularity of self-storage units is climbing worldwide as an increasing squeeze on residential property availability and household finances puts upsizing out of reach for many. In the UK, 2% of households currently rent one or more self-storage units -- a significant increase on the 2018 rate of 1.29% -- with 7% considering renting one within the next year (Statista,2023). In the USA, self-storage rental rates have risen to 1-in-10 households from 1-in-17 in the 1990s (Self\_Storage\_Association), and in the EU 40% of individuals either currently rent or have considered using self-storage (FEDESSA,2022). But despite rapid sector growth, self-storage facility management outside of the largest companies (\>10 sites) remains outdated, heavily reliant on manual intervention in contrast to many other industries where tasks such as bookings, on-boarding and payment collection are automated. As much as 80% of staff time is currently taken up by these tasks (Stora\_research,2023). Stora is working to provide an accessible alternative for small self-storage business owners. We have successfully developed and launched a transformative online bookings, payment and management platform that has seen excellent uptake in the self-storage sector, adding value by automating many time-consuming manual tasks. We now need to go much further, revolutionising the accepted approach to self-storage by delivering a novel dynamic pricing module to automatically adjust unit rental pricing based on factors including occupancy, local income levels, demand, and historic customer behaviour (e.g. typical drop-off points) This will be game-changing for the UK self-storage sector, transforming conceptions of units into physical, limited commodities with dynamic value like airline seats or hotel rooms. We are uniquely positioned to pursue this innovation, with a proprietary end-customer behaviour dataset collected and curated since launch enabling rapid development and training of the novel machine-learning models; existing US competitors cannot offer the same level of data and accuracy for the UK. Development of the novel dynamic pricing functionality will allow our target customers, SME self-storage companies, to intelligently adjust unit costs to maximise returns. This will increase profitability, accelerating growth for individual companies and the sector as a whole while helping to ease churn rates by identifying windows for offering price drops/deals to retain or attract end-customers. The resulting growth will better serve the UK public, creating more self-storage options as people increasingly look for out-of-home storage opportunities due to the squeeze on home space caused by rising house prices and decreasing rental supply.