StorageStuff.Bid

StorageStuff.Bid is the First Fully Licenses Online Self Storage Auction Platform. This is the official blog. Visit us at StorageStuff.Bid for up-to-date auction listings.

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StorageStuff.Bid went to the Northeast Storage Expo

For the first time, StorageStuff.Bid attended the Northeast Storage EXPO. This was a mash-up of the Connecticut Self Storage Association, and the Massachusetts Self Storage Association. The EXPO took place in the Grand Pequot Tower of Foxwoods Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut from October 7-8th, 2015. The tower was beautiful, the reception hall was grand, and the hotel rooms had a skyscraper view of all the trees and amazing leaves changing color, all seen from 20 floors above. Since Florida is the home of StorageStuff.Bid, and many of us who work here grew up here, we don't have the luxury of seeing the leaves change color in the fall.  Also, what is fall? Here, we have Summer, and Winter… though our winter is barely seen as a winter according to the northerners. I don't know what my fascination with the leaves changing color might be; I just know that it is a truly beautiful sight to be seen. We had a very good turn out while we were on the floor. A lot of people are interested in the world of "online auctions" and we had all the information that they wanted to hear. Since everyone of us who work here have had years and years of experience in the self storage industry, it's not a surprise to our customers that we have all the information they need to hear. That's a big key point that sets us apart from a lot of other online auction "portals". Even though we are a "portal", we are here to assist you in any shape or form possible, whether it is about your legal ad, or about our site. We are very proud of our licensed auctioneers, and our customer service team. We will work hand and foot… okay, maybe not hand AND foot… but we will work diligently and effectively to make sure your needs as a customer are met. Of course, everyone who visited our booth was truly interested, and I hope they at least give us a try! One could hope… On the brighter side, even if they weren't as interested as I might have imagined in my own head (day dreamer), we had fun gifts to hand out called "fun badges" that are always a hit. They stick onto your "name badge". You know, the ribbons that stick on to your badge, "EXHIBITOR", "SPONSOR", "BOARD MEMBER", etc? Yeah, those boring old things…. We at StorageStuff.Bid like to spice things up a little bit. Our fun badges had phrases on it like "WORKAHOLIC", "OFFICIAL SOMETHING", "BORED MEMBER", etc. You get the picture. All in all, it was a great experience to be at our first Northeast Storage EXPO, the turn out was great; and the weather and scenery were a big plus too!

 Jennifer Schulman - StorageStuff.Bid Evangelist, Bookkeeper, Adept Photoshop Dabbler, Amateur Coder, Expert Makeup Artist, Gamer Girl, YouTube Addict, Vegetarian.

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Who Is Running This Company No. 2

The ebay Argument....

In addition to StorageStuff.Bid, my husband and I also own part of a live auction company called Legacy Auction Services. Legacy conducts or has conducted live auctions in 15 states across the U.S. This means my hubby travels all around the country and sells storage units. As we already know, I had a baby so I would not have to conduct auctions anymore, but this means I get to take meetings and have face time with the big guys, Nick and Rorman. In a meeting with N&R one day, we are discussing their favorite topic, REVENUE, specifically decreasing revenue in this case. As we pondered the future of storage auctions, Rorman asks me how I feel about online storage auctions. I said “honestly, I don’t see any reason why we cannot do that too.” I know all about their technology business and I also know how they love to co-mingle their various businesses, so combining the auctions and the technology seemed like a great idea to me. The wheels started turning, but it was only the beginning of many long conversations about this new venture and what it meant.

Picture this scenario, seven people sitting around a conference room table. There are two successful storage owners/operators that have been in the business since the beginning of time. There are two licensed auctioneers and there are three guys from a web design and internet marketing company (yes, I am the only woman – more on that later!) I am sure you can imagine how differently we all viewed this situation. The first big question we tackle… “is the primary focus of this company going to be technology or auctions.” Is this just a “web portal” or do we take this to another level and go for the full-on licensed auction company? Basically, we were trying to decide who had more to offer here. Who is the bigger player? Is it even necessary to bring auctions and auctioneers into this? We all know that most storage operators do not need to have a licensed auctioneer conduct their lien sales. They can just do it themselves. There is also the fact that auction law just has not caught up to technology yet and there are very few regulations for online auctions.

Of course, with two licensed auctioneers in the room about to lose their foothold in this new and exciting business, the argument is made that if you pass yourself off as someone conducting auctions and advertising auctions and selling things via competitive bidding, you really should be licensed per state statutes regarding auctions and auctioneers.  This was then followed up with “what about eBay?”

What about eBay? eBay is an auction site, right? An auction site without licenses, right? That is not exactly right. eBay is a little bit different from what we wanted to do because eBay facilitates consumer to consumer sales. We would be facilitating business to consumer sales. We were not 100% sure what the implications of this were, but we knew it made us different from eBay.  We began to examine eBay a little bit more in-depth. What we found is that eBay is very careful to differentiate their online marketplace/trading forum from a traditional auction. For example, the image below is from eBay’s website regarding bidding.

Source:  www.ebay.com

Do you see what they did there? They say buyers are bidding in an “auction-style” listing. Why make a distinction of “auction-style bidding?”

 Here it is again in the eBay Glossary…

Source: www.eBay.com

Here, they go so far as to define an “auction-style” listing in their glossary. In parenthesis, it says (online auction format). Hmmmm, this really brings up a ton of questions for a licensed auctioneer who knows a little something about auction law. eBay has been sued over licensing issues countless times and so far, they have been victorious. However, there are many states that are really pushing back at them and operators of eBay drop-off locations regarding licensing requirements. The gavel will fall (pun intended) on this issue at some point. The internet and all of its transactions are not going to be immune from laws and regulations forever, but we have no way of predicting the outcome. The only thing we could all agree on during our discussion is that we did not have as much money or power as eBay and therefore could not afford to assume we would have the same protections.

It became clear that what we were calling the “eBay Argument” might not be the model we felt most comfortable with. Would it be legal for us to create a website and allow storage facility operators to use it to sell their delinquent units? We THINK so. We are not 100% certain. Do we need to have auctioneer licenses?  We DON’T THINK so, again, not really sure. In the end, we had to take into consideration a lot of factors before deciding how to proceed. Please join us for the next installment of Who Is Running This Company when we tell you why being licensed was the right decision for us.

About the Author - Cheli Rosa - Managing Partner, Auctioneer, Company Administrator, Social Media Manager, Mom, Reading Machine, Pinterest Addict and Amateur Scrapbooker.

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Who is Running This Company? No. 1

When I started writing for this blog, I knew my goal was to write a blog that people would actually want to read. I can get the news or a recap of a television show from other sources. I didn’t need to find a link to it in a blog. I spent a few years working as a Social Media Manager and after many conferences, seminars, classes, websites, and YouTube Videos; I think I might know what people want to see in a blog. I also happen to think that the Kardashians are good quality entertainment, so I might not be a very good source of authority. However, I am going to give it my best shot. I wanted to journal the evolution of StorageStuff.Bid for our readers. What could be more entertaining than the evolution of an online auction company? I know that in the months it took us to get this company up and running, I laughed, cried, slammed a few doors, and celebrated a few times. I hope you do as well. With that, I give you….

 Who Is Running This Company?    No. 1

I am told that the best stories have well developed characters, so I want to introduce you to some of the key players in StorageStuff.Bid. I am Cheli Rosa, a licensed auctioneer (in three states) and wife to the StorageStuff.Bid Principal Auctioneer, Chris Rosa. I never really loved being an auctioneer. I went to school to be a teacher and that seemed to be good fit, at least in other people’s way of thinking. When people would ask me what I did for a living and I said “auctioneer,” they would look at me kind of funny. That sort of thing starts to get to person after a while. I got the opportunity to stop being an auctioneer after I got pregnant. (Ha! My evil plan worked!) It is hard for a young lady to auction storage units in the hot Florida summer at eight months pregnant. I moved over to a desk on the operations side of a self storage management company. My title was Social Media Manager, but I had a lot of jobs, including working on all things lien sale related for the properties that my company owned and managed. How did I just “move over to this desk?” Well, the guys that owned the management company also owned part of the auction company and now own part of StorageStuff.Bid. These gentlemen are named Nick and Rorman * Names may have been changed to protect the innocent. They happen to be great entrepreneurs and all around good guys to work for and with. They are also rich, so when they come to you and ask you if you want to be a part of their next business venture, you say “YES.” Especially when they offer to provide the financial investment. Now, the only piece we needed was the technical side. Luckily, Nick and Rorman also owned part of a web design and internet marketing company. It was all a natural fit, really. Our tech team is Michael, Ken, and Izzat. These guys have really done most of the sweating up to this point, seeing as how you cannot have an online auction company without a website. Now, if you were counting, you counted seven partners. That’s right, SEVEN partners, each with different personalities and visions of what we were doing. I would love to tell you that we all walked hand in hand down a path of rainbows and teddy bears, but that would be a slight fabrication. Okay, that would be a fabrication of epic proportions, but our journey has not been dull and I hope you will join us for the next volume when I get to tell you about ‘the Ebay argument.”

  About the Author - Cheli Rosa - Managing Partner, Auctioneer, Company Administrator, Social Media Manager, Mom, Kite Flyer, Pinterest Addict and Amateur Scrapbooker.

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StorageStuff.Bid Debuts at ISS World Expo in Las Vegas

Are expensive trade shows worth it? Do they really help you get business? Our team at StorageStuff.Bid is made up of several different types of storage industry professionals and we have all served our time on the trade show floor. We had all but given up on getting business from shows and expos. Not only is it very costly, but also we ended up spending many hours just standing around wasting time. We even stopped going to shows in our home state. It just wasn't worth the expense.

When we decided to launch this brand new business, we knew we had to give trade shows another shot. The ISS World Expo turned us back into believers. Our booth had visitors the entire time we were on the floor. Our team of 7 was frequently occupied and a lot of people actually came back a second time. Online lien sales are a hot topic right now and we were ready to talk. Our technology team was there to demo the site and answer tech questions. I, our resident lien law and auction law guru, was there to answer the really tough questions, and we had our licensed auctioneers in the booth as well.

One of my favorite things about trade shows is the freebies that everybody is hoping will draw people to the booth. We had bright, bright orange cleaning cloths for glasses and cell phones and mobile device screens. Of course, they were fashioned with our company logo right on the front. This is your standard trade show type of freebie, so we also wanted to try something a little bit different to get people to our booth. Anybody who goes to trade shows probably has a pile of name badges hanging somewhere in their office. Some people at shows have a long stream of ribbons coming off their badges. You know them...Owner, First Time Attendee, Direct Member, etc... We decided to have a little fun with this and brought some badge ribbons of our own. Our ribbons said things like "Bored Member," "Plays Well With Others," and "Party Animal." 

We had an awesome response to this, so it will be a staple at out booth going forward. We will be on the “trade show circuit” for the rest of this year. Come see us at the Florida Self Storage Association Expo, Booth 45 for your badge ribbon!

About the Author - Cheli Rosa - Managing Partner, Auctioneer, Company Administrator, Social Media Manager, Mom, Kite Flyer, Pinterest Addict and Amateur Scrapbooker.

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StorageStuff.Bid Launches First Fully Licensed Online Auction Platform For The Self Storage Industry

StorageStuff.Bid is the first fully licensed and bonded auction company to offer online auction listings to storage facility owners and operators. StorageStuff.Bid is a joint venture between industry leaders CrucialClicks.com and Legacy Auction Services.

In addition to being overseen by licensed auctioneers, the website offers many other unique features. Each account on StorageStuff.Bid has a multi-level user management that allows operators of all sizes to assign permissions of use to each member of their team. The website uses Responsive Web Design, which means that it will be fully operational on tablets, smart phones, and other mobile devices. This also allows facility operators to upload photos and unit information directly from their mobile device.

To learn more about StorageStuff.Bid, be sure to stop by and visit us next week at the ISS World Expo in Las Vegas April 7th and 8th, Booth 509.

Visitors will also receive a chance to win a PlayStation® 4 (PS4™), so be sure to stop by.

If you would like a personalized demo of the site, please reply to this email or call us at [phone] to schedule an appointment while you're in Las Vegas.

You can read the full press release here.