Today we’d like to introduce you to Jorge Camps.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jorge. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Our business concept was my sister’s idea. She was moving from New York to Miami and had an opportunity to purchase a condo at a great price if she could close on the condo in 2 weeks. This meant that not only did my sister have to handle purchasing a home, but moving in and storing her things crammed into a 2 week period.
She quickly discovered that the hardest part was organizing and storing her things. In the age of Amazon, Uber, and Lyft storage were way too difficult and disorganized. Self-storage companies offered no help picking up, (my sister’s little convertible was not made for moving) and were mostly located in areas that were far from her condo and not in the best neighborhoods and she didn’t feel safe and secure.
Local movers were not really interested in moving a dozen boxes and few pieces of furniture. They were very expensive as they had to be hired for ½ a day had enormous trucks and they were even less interested in establishing a relationship for returning her items when she needed them.
That is when she had her “Aha” moment. She asked herself, “If I can order almost anything new I want and have it delivered in 2 days why is storage so difficult for a single woman like myself. I need Amazon in reverse! I need a service to pick up my items, I can catalog them online and then have them delivered as I need them”. Stow Simple’s reason for existence was thus born.
I, (Jorge Camps), was working as the manager for the Container Store in Kendall and knew my sister had a great idea for a business. We knew that we could deliver commercial quality reusable bins to a customer, they could take a picture and write a description in their online catalog, (or Lookbook as Stow Simple calls it), and from the comfort of their home or phone order bins to be delivered for them to fill and have us take storage. When they need their items they simply go online, pick their items, (with a picture and description to remind them of what they have in storage), and schedule the return of their items.
I have a background that started after college as an Economic Consultant for PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Tampa Florida. It was my dream job to get after graduate school. My first project was working on the Economic Impact of Super Bowl XXX, (30), on the city of San Diego. I thought what could be more interesting than combining sports and economics.
However, I quickly realized that I enjoyed the jobs I held working I got to work with people. I preferred that to sitting behind a desk all day running spreadsheets and economic forecasts all day. This led me to a dynamic, unique and quirky company, the Container Store, with an employee first culture that had just opened its first store in Florida. I joined as the sales manager and then became a store manager and was in my 12th year when my sister told me about her idea and I knew we had to bring the concept of Valet Storage to Miami.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been a beautiful challenge with many ups and downs.
Challenge 1: Educating the market about storage on demand. We are a small family business with limited resources. Storage with pickup and delivery is such a new concept. They don’t know that they can safely and affordably store extra stuff without leaving home. We have a limited marketing budget and educating an entire market is not possible for us with a traditional multimedia advertising strategy.
As first-mover in South Florida, we bear the brunt of educating the market. If the concept was better known, we could spend more time competing we on our exceptional customer service and price. Our customers love us, (we are Miami’s best-rated storage company) and we get nearly every customer via a referral.
Challenge 2: Long-term careers for our great people: The biggest challenges have been holding onto the great people we have had the pleasure to employ. Our business is very cyclical right now. We go from being extremely busy during certain times of the year, such as summer college storage season and Christmas / Holiday storage season, to very slow times like the summer lull.
What this means for our employees is that during our busy seasons it is hectic and our employees have plenty of hours and overtime, (which they love!). Then we get slow with reduced hours. We have been very fortunate in our hiring and Miami has given us wonderful employees who our customers love, work super hard and are very smart. We have trained them and helped them develop their customer service and business process skills.
So much so that they have moved into other companies in management and full-time positions where they have a more steady income stream. We can’t wait to expand our business to bring some of these employees back as managers for our future locations in Broward and Palm Beach.
Please tell us about Stow Simple.
Stow Simple is the simplest way to store and get back your stuff. We are transforming storage by giving you on-demand access to your things without ever visiting a storage facility. With a click of a button, we pick up, safely store and return your things. We like to think of ourselves as feel-good storage. Can you remember the last time you felt good about schlepping stuff to storage?
Our mission is to make storage easy. We do this by simplifying the lives and living spaces of those we serve and offering the most trusted and convenient way for you to store and retrieve your things.
Our typical customer lives in greater downtown Miami (including Brickell), Coral Gables or Miami Beach. They don’t have the means (a big car) or the desire to travel across town to a remote (and scary) storage facility. They live an increasingly on-demand life (Uber, Instacart etc.). Many have sacrificed space to live in the mix and outsourced transportation. They would love to have a spare closet to live more comfortably. We’re like their spare closet when they have little room to spare.
We specialize in customer service. Our customers love Stow Simple and how we can help organize and simplify their lives. Customer’s love the convenience of getting their holiday decorations, winter clothes, or anything that is taking up valuable space in their beautiful homes and have it stored only a click away. We love it when our customer’s say that they can now have family stay at their condo for the holidays because they were able to store the things that were cluttering up their guest bedroom and closet. They can’t believe that for as little as $49 per month they have gotten a room and closet back.
We don’t have a direct competitor, however, we do compete with self-storage companies as an option. We are very proud that we can offer our Brickell and Miami Beach customers valet storage for less than self-storage within a 10-mile radius. We have customers in Coral Gables and Coconut Grove who choose us because not only are we super convenient we are less expensive than self-storage where they have to do all the work!
We are also very proud that we offer our customers the use of high-quality American made commercial bins to store their items. These plastic bins are much better at protecting our customer’s items, are much better for the environment as they can be reused, and they do not attract bugs, (all Floridians know that bugs love corrugated cardboard boxes as they eat the glue and make their homes in the corrugations).
What’s your favorite memory from childhood?
I grew up in rural Lakeland Florida back when Lakeland was a sleepy Florida town. I remember going house to house gathering up all the neighborhood kids to go on our various adventures in the woods, lakes, abandoned phosphate pits and orange groves that dominated the undeveloped landscape of southern Lakeland. We would play outside until sundown.
It was a special time and place before everyone had put up fences and kids could still walk through yards and neighborhoods. We would play outside all day and it was not uncommon for us kids when thirsty to simply knock on a neighbors door, whether we knew them or not, and seven or eight kids would ask for water (if an outdoor garden house wasn’t around).
Yes, we did all the things we shouldn’t have; dug underground tunnels, held BB gun wars, played dodgeball with rotten oranges and fished in inter-tubes in alligator-filled Scott Lake. It was wonderful time and place.
Pricing:
- Store by the bin for $6/month ($30 mo. minimum. Bins measure 27″x17″x13″)
- Hall Closet (similar to a 2’x4′) $49/month
- Walk-in-Closet (similar to a 5’x5′) $79/month
- Larger sizes are available. There is a 3-month minimum storage term for most plans.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1951 NW 7th Ave.
Miami FL, 33136 - Website: www.stowsimple.com
- Phone: (305) 900-6700
- Email: hello@stowsimple.com
- Instagram: @stowsimple
- Facebook: facebook.com/stowsimple
- Twitter: @stowsimple
- Yelp: stow-simple-miami
Getting in touch: VoyageMIA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
