FEDESSA Online Conference 2020

Carl August Ameln (52) is the founder of City Self-Storage (now listed on Oslo Stock Exchange), EuroBox, HyrBox and Lovespace. He is also the cofounder of StoreBox in the UK and Ireland. Carl also is a partner in Trastering in Spain and GardeTout in France. Carl was also the founding investor in Zipcar UK. See www.firstriskcapital.com for more information.

Denis has more than 7 years experience in digital marketing and sales (at Google and outside).  He is currently an industry manager at Google UK, based in London.  He helps large advertisers across different industries to build their digital marketing strategy and grow their business.  Self-storage is one of the industries among others which he covers.  He was previously an account manager in Google Ireland, responsible for the growth of some of the largest retailers, managing department stores, private brands, luxury and high street brands.  He has spoken to self storage operators at SSA UK events on how they can increase their leads and conversions by better managing their Google AdWords and other services.

Peter has been CEO of Lagerbox since 2001, focusing not only on the management of LAGERBOX but also on marketing and finance. In 1997, he discovered his passion for self storage and has grown Lagerbox to be one of the major operators in Germany.  Driving the business through innovation and astute development.

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Cris Burnam has been in the self-storage industry since 1987, serving as President of StorageMart since 1999. Headquartered in Columbia, Missouri, StorageMart is the largest privately owned company in the industry, with 225 locations across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, comprising approximately 15,000,000 net rentable square feet and over 134,000 rental units. Currently, as Chief Executive Officer, Cris oversees all aspects of the organization.

 

In 2015, Cris and the executive team at StorageMart successfully closed on the largest ever completed self-storage CMBS transaction, which was in excess of $500 million dollars. In addition, the team closed other debt financings of $510 million dollars in 2015 for a total of $1.010 billion dollars in new debt, thus successfully recapitalizing StorageMart and positioning the company for future growth.

 

Cris has been recognized as EY Entrepreneur of the Year for 2014, and was also given the 2014 Torch Award by the Better Business Bureau. Cris is listed as one of Ingram’s Magazine of One of 50 Missourians You Should Know and has been a member of the Forbes Real Estate Council since 2018. In 2008, Cris led the company in its successful $416 million dollar takeover of InStorage REIT, a publicly traded REIT on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The transaction closed in March of 2009, and has since been fully integrated in StorageMart.

 

In 1994, Cris and his brother Mike Burnam launched an IPO of their family owned company called Storage Trust (NYSE:SEA). Storage Trust was successfully merged into Public Storage in 1999 for approximately $650 million dollars. Over the course of his career in self-storage, Cris has completed over $5.5 billion dollars in self-storage transactions. Under Cris’ direction, StorageMart has been a thought leader in the industry, forging the way with many industry firsts, like online reservations, a 24/7 contact center, and harnessing voice technology to improve the customer journey.

James Caan founded in 2004 the private equity firm Hamilton Bradshaw (HB) and joined the panel of heavyweight investors for BBC’s Dragons' Den in 2007. James Caan is one of the UK’s most successful and dynamic entrepreneurs. 

Kevin, Kai Ho Chan is the Chairman and founder of Store Friendly Self Storage Group, which was founded in 2002.  The company has over 130 branches all over Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan and Shanghai, which provide over 40,000 storages and 1,200,000 square feet.

Kevin is determined to build up a “Brand” when he first started the business. He believed the motto of “Do it from heart”, only the honesty and sincerity can sustain customer base.  As Store Friendly expanded to 10 branches, he discovered the bottle neck of expansion and management difficulty, so he implemented the “Franchise” concept into the company. This gave the company an inspiring outcome; 80 franchisees have joined the company in 5 years! Then on, Store Friendly became a household name.

New concept and strategy are very important for the growth of a company. Kevin found that red wine is gaining popularity in Hong Kong; the need of space to store boxes of wine increased the demand of storages. Hence, the first Wine Self Storage for Store Friendly established in 2011 and the Store Friendly Records Management Storage was started to provide service in 2012. Moreover, Store Friendly is proudly to announce Store Friendly GO to be the first storage service in the world to introduce having intelligent robots to help managing the storing service. We aim to provide excellent service and hope to bring excellent experience to customers to enjoy the new technology, while paying no effort on managing their goods.

Oliver Close is a Senior Director at CBRE Ltd, focussed on self storage transactional and advisory work. Oliver has over 20 years’ experience in self storage and has provided real estate advice to many of the major operators in the industry, across both Europe and the Asian self storage markets.   

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Christine DeBord is the Vice President of the Smart Entry & Facility Automation Division at Janus International, the leading global provider of doors, hallways, and automation technology to the self-storage industry. DeBord has a wealth of knowledge and experience with self-storage access control and technology and has spent five years in various sales and marketing leadership roles within the industry. Prior to joining the Janus International team in 2018, DeBord was the head of marketing for PTI Security Systems.  In addition to her role as VP of the Smart Entry & Facility Automation division, DeBord leads the marketing team at Janus International Group for all companies and business units. 

Peter Doman is the Broking and Sales Director at Basil Fry & Company. Peter joined the company in 2007 and has been the driving force behind Basil Fry’s self storage portfolio over the last decade.

With an operations and training background Peter understands the needs of self storage Operators and from 2016 to 2020 was a member of the SSA UK Board acting as the elected Supplier Board Member.

Outside of work, Peter lives in Southampton with his wife and daughter,  is a keen tennis player, enjoys the odd round of golf, and virus dependant has a passion for travel.

 

Taking a break from his roles on I'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here! Now, ‘Aviva Premiership Rugby Highlights’ and Sky 1’s ‘The Match’ and passing up a much higher paid job offer to host a massively prestigious event just because he loved his time with the self storage industry so much last time.  Mark injects a level of humour into the event while keeping things on track and managing all the questions from the audience.

Jim Gibson was a member of the founding management team of Big Yellow Self Storage in 1998. Big Yellow Self Storage opened its first store in Richmond in May 1999 and 21 years later owns and manages 75 Big Yellow Self Storage centres in the UK across 5.7 million sq ft NLA. Big Yellow Self Storage also manages 25 Armadillo stores across a 1.0 m sq ft platform.  Big Yellow Self Storage is listed as a REIT on the London Stock Exchange in the FTSE 250.

Jim originally qualified as a chartered accountant and worked in professional services with  Arthur Andersen & Co. where he specialised in the property and construction sectors, before leaving in 1989. He then worked in real estate at Heron Property Corporation until 1994, before joining Nick Vetch and Philip Burks at Edge Properties. Edge was a developer of and investor in retail warehousing and sold to Granchester Properties PLC  in 1998. Together, they then founded Big Yellow Self Storage.

If anyone knows about the power of branding and customer experience, it’s Alex Hunter – the former Head of Online Marketing for the Virgin Group and the creator of Attaché, an award-winning online travel. Appearing at events all over the world as a sought-after keynote speaker, he shares his insights into developing brands and customer loyalty by blending start-up creativity with emerging technologies.

Kennards Self Storage is a private family-owned company with 92 locations and employing over 270 people in Australia and New Zealand. The business began in 1973 when the first storage spaces were built by Sams father Neville Kennard

Sam joined the company in 1991 when they had just 8 locations, then in 1995 he succeeded Neville and became Managing Director. The company had 14 locations at this time. Having worked running storage centres initially, Sam developed skills in property acquisition and development of self storage.  KSS acquired its major competitor, Millers Self Storage, in 2004, which more than doubled the size of the business instantly. In 2007, the company entered the New Zealand market, where it now has 8 locations.

KSS is the largest private owner-operator of self storage in Australasia. The family company wholly-owns the majority of centres under its brand, while also offering self storage management for select investors.
 

Christel is a popular business coach/consultant and an experienced sales and marketing trainer with extentive experience working in the self storage industry.  

When completing her MBA in 2008 Christel conducted research on the recessionary effects on the European self-storage market and how companies should adapt their marketing messaging in that environment.

She has worked at a store level, local management level (Operations, Marketing) and central management (IT Manager) at City Self-Storage.  She is also certified in various different coaching techniques, has worked as a full time business coach and currently teaches international coaching certifications.

Roger Martin-Fagg is an economist who combines insight into the financial and policy worlds with management strategy. As such he delivers both an economic outlook, and what organisations should do to prepare. After studying Economics, Economic History and Geography Martin-Fagg worked as an economist with the New Zealand Government. He returned to the UK to work in the air transport industry before teaching strategy and economics at Henley Management College to senior managers from a wide range of industries.

Neil has worked in the general insurance market for over 25 years and has handled placement of numerous medium and large complex risks. Neil’s specialism is in the removals and self-storage sector where he is highly regarded for his comprehensive knowledge of the options available contractually, by utilising all terms and conditions currently utilised within the sector. His experience in identifying gaps in cover and reducing risk can be demonstrated through his work with both new and existing clients. Neil holds the Advanced Diploma (ACII) qualification and is responsible for managing the overall relationship with his clients.

Hugh is a chartered engineer with a background in power plants, including nuclear engineering; he then migrated his engineering skills to fire and security systems. You might see him in any number of capacities from initial design survey to technical support or representing Knighthood and Bearbox at trade shows.  He developed an intelligent Cloud based security system which can monitor all types of inputs and provide the necessary warnings and alarms to allow customers to control access to their sites and manage the security within it.

Ollie Saunders is the Lead Director for Alternatives across EMEA at JLL, where he has specialised throughout his career since the mid 1990s in self storage from a valuation, brokerage and corporate finance perspective, enabling him and his team to provide first-hand transactional experience with valuation professionalism.   He leads a team of more than 10 surveyors and data analysts working across Europe in more than 12 countries, and has transacted a number of sales of self storage assets across EMEA, as well as equity raises.  He joined JLL in 2014 from Deloitte where he was an equity partner and the head of valuation.   Ollie co-authored the UK Self Storage Association Survey between 2009 and 2014, and the FEDESSA Survey since 2014, and also authored the RICS guide on valuation methodology for self storage and other alternative asset types

Ryan has worked in the insurance industry for 37 years having worked for both insurers and brokers and achieved chartered qualified status back in 1993. Ryan has specialised in insuring self storage and removals companies since 2002 and attended his first FEDESSA conference back in 2003 in Manchester. Since being involved in insuring the self storage sector Ryan has insured operators in the UK, Europe, USA and Asia and has expert knowledge on all relevant policy covers applicable to the business. Ryan has assisted numerous operators via training on the subject of insuring customers goods in store and making sure that the business is fully protected from customer claims while at the same time maximising operators income from insurance sales.

Rory has 15 years’ experience in the self storage industry and has been in his current role of Operations Director of 1st Storage Centres Ltd for the last 10 years. Previously, Rory worked for Aardvark, which was the largest independently owned self storage company in the UK before it was sold onto Mentmore plc. who operated Spaces Personal Storage. Rory stayed with the company through the move, and for a further two years, before it was sold to Safestore, who Rory briefly worked for before joining Norman and setting up 1st Storage Centres Ltd. Rory joined the Board of Directors in June 2015.

A national Rugby hero, Sir Clive Woodward’s philosophies for winning and creating high-performance teams resonate across both the sporting and corporate worlds. As a keynote speaker, he draws from his experience as the Director of Sport for the British Olympic Association, achieving World Cup victory with England, and as a businessman.