Mini Storage Shanghai

I recently had the pleasure of traveling to Shanghai in China to install our very first Mainland China installation! This was undertaken for a new company called Mini Storage Shanghai. Mini Storage Shanghai is located in Pudong, Shanghai, China and is a new construction which is, essentially, in the “western” part of Shanghai and has a large ex-pat community to support it.

This operation is unique for a couple of reasons; the first being that it’s one of about two “real” Self Storage facilities in Shanghai and, more importantly, it is Shanghai’s first purpose built multi-level facility. The property consists of four floors of storage with around 150 units on each floor, giving a maximum start-up of around 600 units.

Secondly it is the only self storage facility in Shanghai to be wholly owned by foreigners. Manuel Mauritz, one of the owners and the person who I worked with to bring the installation to fruition, is Austrian and comes from a family that has extensive self storage knowledge. Manuel and his business partner are using this knowledge to start to change the Self Storage landscape in Shanghai with plans to expand across Shanghai and eventually the rest of China.

Manual explained that using a proven self storage model is important, because it provides consistency of message to your customer and allows the building of your brand. This is, of course, the aim for Manuel and Mini Storage Shanghai as they grow.

With 100 million people in China’s middle class (a number that’s growing rapidly), self storage makes sense in Shanghai as it will provide a service that I believe that, once understood, will be in very high demand as this middle class starts to exercise its buying power and realise that they can too have “the toys” without having to keep them at home.

Storman is, as always, proud to be associated with any new self storage venture and I am sure that all of you will welcome Manuel and his team into the self storage community and wish them well as they face developing a whole new market. Thank you for choosing Storman, Manuel – and we all wish you well.