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Toronto Storage Solution

Company aims to cut downsizing aggravation

CHRIS ATCHISON/METRO TORONTO

Storage Stadium owners Cliff Beaton (left) and Richard Frappier demonstrate just how much one of their storage crates can hold at their booth at the Home Show at the National Trade Centre, Exhibition Place.

For anyone who has ever had to downsize their living quarters, either permanently or temporarily, they understand just how difficult it can be to deal with excess "stuff."

Students and those waiting for homes to be built, for example, have to find a place to store their furniture and housewares between academic years or until their new place is finished.

But a four-year-old Toronto company is aiming to extend not only its operations, but a message that moving to a smaller dwelling needn’t be a nightmarish experience.

Cliff Beaton and Richard Frappier, co-owners of Storage Stadium, have tried to revolutionize the way people store their goods.

They stress Toronto's Storage Stadium is not a moving company. Instead it focuses on the long and short-term storage of items in crates in a warehouse facility – seems like an old concept until Beaton and Frappier explain their system in detail.

Where Beaton and Frappier decided to make alterations on the old self-storage idea was to bring the 1.52-metre wide, 2.13-metre deep and 2.44-metre tall crates to customers' homes for a fee of $169, regardless of the number of crates needed. From there, customers can fill the crates themselves, or pay a Storage Stadium employee to do the job for a rate of $28 per hour, per worker. "The customer has total control over the price," Beaton says. Clients can even bring their "stuff" to the Storage Stadium facility, leaving only the $74 per calendar month storage fee to pay.

According to Frappier, the concept is a simple one that the two wanted to develop in order to meet customer demands that fell between the services provided by moving companies and self-storage facilities.

"At one end of the spectrum, you have the moving companies charging a fairly significant rate, handling the items several times, and we thought there was a significant market in between," he says.

"We wanted to provide the Cadillac storage offered by the big moving companies and bring it to the customers. Why would they want to use a self-storage facility?"

The Storage Stadium concept came to Beaton when he learned of similar services in the United States that offer storage, but without manpower to pack the crates or moving blankets to protect the contents.

Besides the extra service options, the most important aspect of the concept for customers – who have unlimited access to their goods at the storage facility with 24 hours’ advance notice – is safety and security, according to Frappier.

"The biggest thing that people like is that integrity factor. They see it going into the vault and they see it coming out of that same vault. They have that piece of mind that there won’t be any missing items."

Chris Atchison/Metro Toronto