Speakers
Session
Co-founding Stor-Age at the age of 24 Gavin has grown it to an empire of over 85 properties across South Africa and the UK, with another 14 in the pipeline, along with creating a management company and self storage digital marketing agency. Hear his journey from the first major self storage stores in South Africa, to publicly listing and expanding into the UK. Mistakes made, lessons learned and future ambitions and some humorous stories on the way.
Co-founding Stor-Age in 2005 at the age of 24, Gavin has successfully led the organisation to becoming the leading and largest self storage property fund and brand in South Africa, and the first and only self storage Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) to be publicly traded and listed on any emerging market exchange globally.
Successfully listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in November 2015, Stor-Age made a strategic entry into the UK self storage market in 2017 through the acquisition of Storage King, the 6th largest UK self storage brand. The Group services more than 40 000 tenants across its portfolio of 85 properties (SA 55, UK 30).
In addition to its development pipeline of 14 properties across both markets, the Group offers a third-party management platform in the UK – Storage King Management 1st and has an additional 7 properties trading under the brand.
With an embedded entrepreneurial ‘start-up’ culture at the heart of the organisation, Stor-Age successfully launched its bespoke digital service offering to independent, third-party operators in the UK and Europe in 2020, and today has 35 properties trading on the platform, across five countries, including England.