For self-managing owners who feel like they’re doing it all, you’re not alone. This is a story about two entrepreneurs who built a storage business from the ground up. And then turned their lessons into a management system to help other owners thrive.
Product-market fit is the secret to most successful businesses. Find an unmet need in the market and provide a solution.
When they met at Harvard Business School, Alex Hartman and Peter Smyth identified a major gap in the storage market: renters in metropolitan cities needed more storage within walking distance of their apartments.
With a background in real estate, Peter knew there were apartment buildings in New York City with unused or under-used space on the ground level.
Peter pitched the idea to Alex, who agreed to pursue the endeavour. They immediately began talking to landlords in NYC to better understand what kind of spaces were available.
And so Local Locker was born.
The first Local Locker location was a basement in Manhattan’s East Village with about 60 units. Peter and Alex negotiated an agreement with the landlord and converted the empty space into a storage facility.
They didn’t raise any capital, so the entire operation was bootstrapped. From answering phones, writing delinquency notices, dealing with lockouts, and testing marketing channel by channel, everything rested on the shoulders of Local Lockers’ two founders.
“You open the doors, flip the switch, but it’s not like there’s a line out the door,” Alex Hartman recalls. “There’s no ribbon cutting in storage. It’s just you, your Google pin, and your first lead.”
Eventually, the facility leased up and the business started cash flowing. The pilot project worked, and now Peter and Alex could focus on opening their next location.
But that also meant they had to figure out how to build a scalable business model.
From day one, Local Locker facilities were designed to be operated remotely. With only Peter and Alex involved, there simply wasn’t the manpower to have someone on-site at all times.
Unfortunately, the facility management systems (FMS) during 2018 were designed for the exact opposite: in-person staff needed to manually complete the leasing workflow.
So Alex and Peter created a custom tech stack that included a customer-facing website that reduced friction in the booking process and an FMS backend that could handle the entire customer journey.
The tech stack ended up looking like:
“The standard self storage tech stack that existed at the time really didn’t work, so we had to take a step back and rethink how we wanted to build our infrastructure,” said Alex.
This custom-build system allowed Local Locker to scale to over 60 locations. By filling the gaps in self storage technology, tech stack enabled facilities to operate nearly autonomously with true remote management.
Hear the entire Local Locker backstory here:
Once Local Locker hit critical mass, Alex and Peter took an in-depth look at the self storage market and realized they could help other owners with the knowledge and systems they’d build.
“The experience that we had led us to understand that a lot of owners and operators probably had similar problems,” recalls Peter.
So they founded White Label Storage to bring the operational playbooks and technology that made them successful to owners across the country. The driving purpose was (and is) to help independent self storage owners thrive.
Alex and Peter wanted to build a purpose-driven company, so they developed a management philosophy that guides White Label Storage from top to bottom:
1. Unyielding Commitment to Clients
Many other management firms own facilities and are actively looking to acquire. Their management practice often comes second.
White Label Storage is only focused on maximizing results for owners so your businesses become more profitable. The harder we work, the better we serve you.
2. Never Stop Innovating
With an in-house development team, White Label Storage is continuously building new technology that optimizes how they operate.
From granular reporting to AI-driven revenue strategies to pinpoint marketing campaigns, the company is always working on new methods to improve results for clients.
3. No Two Clients Are Alike
Self storage is local, and every market is unique. White Label Storage tailors their approach to match the opportunities and needs of each client.
With the trifecta of their management philosophy, industry knowledge, and operating model, Peter and Alex began growing White Label Storage.
It didn’t take long for their approach to catch on and within a few years, they were managing over 200 facilities across 40 states.
This year another milestone was reached. Inside Self Storage (ISS) released its annual list of top operators, which they compile based on a range of metrics. This year, White Label Storage was named the #6 Facility Management Company in the US.
The winning formula has always been a combination of systems, process, and expertise:
It’s a winning playbook built for independent owners and based on the first-hand experience Alex and Peter acquired in dusty NYC basements before they scaled it across a national footprint.
If you’re self-managing and recognize your week in this story—answering calls between errands, chasing payments at night, juggling vendors—it doesn’t always pay to do it yourself.
You can assemble that yourself piece by piece (the way Alex and Peter did), or you can plug into a team that already lives it and turn your investment into passive income.
Ready to see what this looks like at your facility?
Get in touch with the White Label Storage team for an assessment of your phones, booking flow, and collections process.
We’ll even build a proforma to forecast how your revenue can grow with our help.
