Rental-storage first appeared roughly 40-years ago in the United States, where it is generally known as "self-storage." Over that 40-year period, US capacity has averaged 10% annual growth to reach roughly US$23 billion (JPY1.8 trillion) today. In the US, one in ten households uses rental storage resulting in 10% penetration. Over the past 20 years, rental-storage also appeared, and has exhibited similar growth rates in Canada, Australia, the UK, Europe, Hong Kong and Singapore.
The Japanese market for rental-storage emerged in the 1990's when warehousing companies began renting industrial space to consumers, owners of obsolete office buildings began renting makeshift closets to consumers, and owners of vacant land rented outdoor shipping containers to consumers. The safety, cleanliness and accessibility of these products varied, but was generally low.
In 2002, Quraz opened its first rental-storage facility in Tokyo as an experiment and customized the popular US-style of rental-storage for the Japanese market. Quraz purchased an obsolete office building and converted it into a rental-storage facility, equipped with 24-hour secured access, digital video monitoring, onsite sales service staff, temperature and humidity control, and free onsite parking. The experiment was a success, and since then we have opened a total of 39 shops in ten of Japan’s largest cities, with a total capacity of 24,000 storage units and growing. We’ve averaged over 30% compound annual revenue growth since 2006.
Our two primary competitors, Arealink (dba Hello Storage) and Reisebox, serve the market with alternative business models. Arealink typically leases single or multiple floors in underutilized office buildings, installs 50-100 storage units with access control, and sublets space to end users. The majority of rental storage facilities in Japan are operated under lease, similar to Arealinks business model. Alternatively Reisebox typically contracts with land owners to construct a pre-fabricated, two floor storage facility equipped with access controls, turns the facility over to the land owner, and manages the facility for the land owner.
We estimate that Arealink and Reisebox maintain 16% and 12% of the indoor rental storage market, respectively, as measured by revenue. The top five indoor rental storage competitors including Kase Soko and Terrada Soko, represent approximately 60% of the market.
Today, Quraz is the indoor rental-storage market leader, with approximately 20% share of the JPY24 billion market. In both 2009 and 2010, as a result of years of commitment to our mission, the market and to our customers, Quraz was also independently ranked #1 by consumers in quality, customer satisfaction and value.
Quraz, rated Japan’s No. 1 trunkroom by Oricon.
Based on an Oricon national survey of customer satisfaction, Quraz has been rated Japans No.1 trunkroom for 2 consecutive years. In fact Quraz was rated No.1 in all 11 categories of comparison including;