Cityboxes: value innovating the storage market
New York City is space-starved, and Cityboxes designed a solution to bring cheap and convenient storage to the masses there. It's true we live in a material world, but NYC urbanites are faced with unique challenges that standard storage cannot solve. For example, local commercial real estate is cost prohibitive, residents are without personal vehicles to lug boxes around and the average apartment is about half the size of other major US cities.
Enter Cityboxes. Taking a page from Fresh Direct and Net Flix, Cityboxes secured less expensive warehouses in surrounding areas and a fleet of trucks to deliver storage space by the box. Of course, to manage thousands of boxes coming and going every day, they were going to need robust systems and a solution for scheduling that traffic.
Fortunately, Cityboxes and Pound partnered early, and we designed a complete solution that allowed customers to schedule service in tight windows up to the previous night. We empowered the drivers with remote access to the same central system and streamlined everything around the goal of being fast, reliable and flexible for their customers. In late 2006, Cityboxes ran several small, but highly successful, tests. They plan to scale to full market in 2007.
Business Highlights
- Consulted with client to streamline operations end-to-end through software and systems
- Leveraged extremely friendly usability on the website as a competitive advantage
- Centralized all reservation information to allow for 2-hour service windows and next-day reservations
Technical Highlights
- Connected field staff, customer service, management and customers through a single data system
- Built easy-to-use tools for warehouse staff to mitigate mistakes and reduce stocking time
- Ported system to field devices for real time information and to reduce redundant tasks and record keeping