More Market Research

Industry associations are a good thing. Not only do they tell you where not to be, based on others experience, but if you step slightly to the left of your industry, they tell you a whole lot about your competitive advantage.

We've been attending a monthly series of web seminars for self-storage operators and here's just a few of the really important things we've learned that help us further cement why we're at the right time at the place with our business.

1. Primary competition, if you can call it that, is from other self-storage operators; some of whom are adding wine storage services
2. Those competitors have some very high barriers to entry in their business:
• The cost of properly securing an area with high value contents
• The cost of proper insurance - including bailment liabilities
• The cost of limiting the value of contents customers can store

That's right - many storage operators have lease agreements that limit their exposure to lost contents to less than $2500.00. Anything over that, and you're outta luck.

When you think about it, does it really make any sense to be storing your wines anywhere near a bunch of old mattresses and junk, oh, and Ricin?

There's a huge, and very underserved need for properly secured wine storage - and when you add that into all the other pieces of the puzzle we've assembled, we're really excited about where this is going to go.