Hong Kong storage start-ups jockey for piece of the action
With space at a premium in the city, several rival e-commerce start-ups have emerged offering on-demand storage of household and personal items
In crowded Hong Kong, a start-up race-to-the-bottom has begun, and the contestants have barely passed the starting line.
In the past seven months, five companies - Boxful, Spacebox, Klosit, StuffGenie and GoNLive (GNL) - have emerged to import a winning business model to a city strapped for space. Each offers the same service: a person with too much stuff lying around will open an app and order a plastic box to be delivered to their flat. The customer then throws his or her junk into the box (winter clothes, old photo albums, for example), and it is sent to a warehouse for storage. The customer is charged a minimal fee - usually about US$7 dollars per month - for each box.
These businesses leverage the internet to manage box booking, database technology to tackle warehousing, and use tracking technology to oversee a box's location. But their real technological innovation lies in a specific form factor - a reusable plastic box.
Boxful was founded by Norman Cheung and Carl Wu, whose last venture was Zooq, an e-commerce company that sells women's clothing. The pair acquired US$1.5 million in angel funding for Boxful, making it one of the better-backed storage start-ups in the city.
StuffGenie's team also has roots in China's fashion industry. Co-founder Miles Davison worked as general manager of Lifestyle Logistics in Shenzhen for two years, where he helped oversee warehouse space that housed inventory for luxury brands. He teamed up with his brother Charlie, a web developer, to build StuffGenie.
"We know that this on-demand valet storage model is not new, but we felt we had an opportunity to do it better than other companies had been," says Miles.