12/11/00

Industry Trends

Self Storage Industry

The self storage industry is one of the few remaining industries where local, small operators are king. According to industry reports, the top ten operators control less than 20% of the self storage market. Although some markets are saturated, overall the industry continues to grow. National occupancy rates ranged from 85% to 91% in the last few years. As of 1997, 6,994 self storage facilities existed in the United States, with the majority of those establishments located in the top eight states of California (1,217), Texas (704), Florida (567), Washington (287), Georgia (240), Virginia (204), Illinois (201), and Ohio (195).

See:
1997 US Economic Census, US Census Bureau. How to Start a Self Storage Center. Entrepreneur Magazine Group 1993. Available to SBDC Business Advisors through SBDCNET.
"New Players Swarm into Personal Storage Market" Los Angeles Business Journal, 7/19/99.
"Self-storage Comes Out of the Cellar" Washington Business Journal, 2/17/97.
"Self-Storage Industry Seen Coming Out of the Closet" Going Public: The IPO Reporter 21 (45):8, 11/10/97. "Self-storage Saturation" Louisville Business Journal, 5/28/99.

Basic Resources for Small Business Research

There are thousands of small business resources online. Some of these are honest attempts to assist small business people, many are only advertisements for a new "get rich quick" scheme, and still others fall somewhere in between. At SBDCNET, we use a wide variety of paid subscription databases; but at times, we find ourselves falling back on the free resources available on the Internet. As a researcher, there are only a few resources that we find useful and authoritative for our research. We thought we would share these resources with you, so that you and your client's market research time could be efficiently spent.

The Kauffman Center bills itself as "a world of resources for entrepreneurs." The Kauffman Foundation is dedicated to entrepreneurship and many of the educational materials on entrepreneurship have been created by or funded by this foundation. Their web site provides many links to educational programs as well as articles about small business issues.

Convenience Store Industry

Under the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS)*, convenience stores are classified as 44711 for gasoline selling stores and 44512 for non-gasoline selling stores. Information on the number of stores, number of employees, annual sales, and annual payroll for states, counties and metropolitan areas can be found through the 1997 Economic Census.Merchandise line sales for 1997 can also be found.

State of the Industry Report includes a benchmark worksheet to allow your client to compare their store with the industry averages. This report includes financial comparisons, top merchandise sales and profit margins, average store size, and operating income comparisons for the higher performing and lower performing stores.

How will competitive trends shape your client's future? Find out in the 2000-2005 Future Studyproduced by PriceWaterhouseCoopers for NACS.