If you haven’t read our first blog about why we started our self storage startup SaveSpace in Frankfurt, check it out here first to learn about the back story.
Here we want to share a bit about our first few months since launching. How it’s been, what we’ve learned and achieved so far.
Well, let me start off by saying: a lot has happened and a lot has changed. It’s crazy to think it has only been a few short months.
Having the foundations in place…
First let’s backtrack a bit. Obviously to launch a lot of things had to already be in place so that we would be ready to take on orders. We decided to do everything ourselves (along with a few very helpful family and friends) to know and learn as much as possible in the process.
This included everything from coding our website (props to my co-founder Kelvin), to leasing our storage facility and our environmentally friendly electric van, to getting all the insurance, legal and administrative things ready and defining our marketing strategy.
The launch in Frankfurt
All these elements, and much more, we had to get ready to start full-blast.
With all this in place, now it was about getting customers. About getting people to actually know that SaveSpace self-storage exists.
We decided we would start with the people we knew best and who represented us when we had the idea for SaveSpace. Students in Frankfurt.
Our flexible, affordable, and practical storage-by-the-box offering is perfect for students or young professionals with limited space in Frankfurt (and soon other regions in Germany). These people don’t have cars, a big budget or need big storage units.
So, what did we do? We distributed over 5000 flyers in our first three days in the mailboxes of students.
A quick realization
A big reality check we had in the first week that we can share with any aspiring “entrepreneurs” – when you start your own business, you need to put yourself out there and do things that aren’t exactly 100% comfortable or glamorous. Not even 50%.
This included flyer-ing (But to make you feel a bit better after sticking about 1000 flyers in “please no flyers” mailboxes it starts to get a little easier).
If you got one of our flyers and didn’t want one – sorryyy. But if you got one and were one of our first customers, thank you and we hope we could help you out!
Marketing, marketing, marketing
The flyers were a good start and got us some customers, but they weren’t the magic bullet to exponential growth.
Here is another learning we can share, don’t underestimate marketing and getting your product in front of people. We did so much, and in the beginning you need to be realistic and accept that growth will be slow and each customer you win is a big step!
In addition to the flyers, we started pushing out a lot of content on social media and doing a giveaway on our Instagram @savespace.eu (give us a follow if you want to support and keep up!).
We also wrote about every Frankfurt news outlet that exists for some PR. And to our happy surprise Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, HalloFrankfurt Blog and Radio Frankfurt were interested in reporting about us. Here the link to the FAZ article (in German).
Again, something where we had to go out of our comfort zone… you can check out our radio “elevator pitch” here, enjoy.
This plus about 50 other things got the ball rolling in the first month.
A big addition and first expansion
While SaveSpace and storage-by-the-box was starting to gain traction, we were seeing a trend.
A lot of customers who were interested in SaveSpace, but wanted to store large furniture and large volumes, weren’t covered by our storage-by-the-box model.
While we were able to provide storage to some of these customers by using a workaround in our website, we lost some others. And this was going against one of the main pillars of SaveSpace, or really any other start up nowadays, namely, that the product needs to be as digital as possible.
That’s when we decided to add another product – whole storage units to our portfolio. The concept will stay the same, we come and pick up your things, store them and then bring them back when you need them, but now we can also do this for people who want to store their bed or couch or whole apartment belongings for as long as they need.
With this new category co-founder Kelvin, who codes everything to do with SaveSpace, revamped the whole website and added the new product. Go check it out here. For our storage unit offering we have already expanded to new cities in Germany including Mainz, Karlsruhe, Darmstadt, Mannheim, Heidelberg and more surrounding regions.
Conclusion
We are so excited to actually be helping out people with their storage needs in and around Frankfurt. It’s crazy to believe that in 4 months we have come so far and we are excited to see what the next months bring.
We have big ambitions with our expanded offering, and who knows, if you aren’t in one of our serviced cities yet, you’ll soon be able to order a SaveSpace pick-up when you need one.
We will let you know how it goes! If you have any questions or comments you can shoot us a mail at info@savespace.eu.
Your SaveSpace Team
