Who's Who in Self-storage: Ryan Lorenzini, Director of the Claremont Companies

Self-Storage CX

“I believe that the most successful stores provide the best possible customer experience,” says Lorenzini. “The question is: What steps can an operator take to do this?”

In short, he states that operators can enhance their customer experience by focusing on “intelligent facility design,” utilizing “advanced technology features,” and strengthening branding, but all these items require purposeful deliberation.

“When making design decisions, of course we are considering costs,” he says, “but we are always cognizant of how the design will affect the overall customer experience.”

Claremont’s newest self-storage facility, Storelocal Hercules, a 98,298-net-rentable-square-foot, 794-unit property in Hercules, Calif., is a prime example of his laser focus on the customer experience in the design stage of development. Because the lot was approximately 3.5 acres, he knew from the get-go that a multistory building would be incorporated into the project to make it pencil, even though drive-up units are still favored by many customers for their ease of access. Both single-story and multistory buildings were included in the plan, but Lorenzini was determined to make the three-story building as convenient as the drive-up units.

Storelocal Hercules' loading area

“We wanted to ensure that our customers would have no trouble accessing upper-floor units,” he says. “We designed the building with a large, covered loading zone that can fit two trucks side by side. Customers access the building through automatic sliding glass doors, which open to a huge elevator lobby with two elevators and several over-sized hand carts. I can tell you from experience that our customers truly appreciate the ease of access; it has made it easy for us to fill the upper-floor units and to achieve higher rents on the upper floors.”

To maximize move-in/move-out efficiency, the loading area and unit mix were strategically mapped out. The elevators are located in the center of the multistory building’s loading area, and having one elevator on each side of the lobby minimizes the distance any customer must travel to reach their unit. “Of course, some units are going to be closer than others, and we can price these units higher, based on distance from elevator,” he says. “There is a unit mix strategy whereby the upper floors tend to be smaller units (predominantly in the range of 5-by-5 up to 10-by-20).”

With most of the market’s storage supply being older product, Lorenzini recognized that a high-tech storage facility would standout from the competition and attract contemporary customers. “As self-storage design has evolved and improved, the consumer’s perception of self-storage has also improved,” he says. “But along with this, customers’ expectations have also increased, especially in the age of Amazon one-click shopping. Self-storage is essentially a retail business, and consumers expect nothing less than what they have come to expect from other retailers. Our customers want an experience that is fast and simple and that can be transacted on their smartphone.”

Lorenzini understood that having mobile-enabled access control and contactless rentals would meet customers’ expectations while improving ROI. “With every project, you learn something,” he says. “What we’ve learned is that the technological aspect is huge, especially in recent years.”

He wanted Storelocal Hercules to be the “most technologically advanced facility in the market,” but first he needed to calculate the costs to determine whether his vision was financially feasible for this facility. “Ultimately, it was not a problem,” Lorenzini says, adding that they are able to charge premium prices for its high-tech features, which include a smart lock on every door, an advanced security system, and a mobile-friendly property management software.