Bill Simonson explains how this company is reinventing the moving and storage industry.

In the past, when people needed to store their belongings for an extended period of time, they needed to rent a moving truck, load it before the day was out, and pray that each item survived the transition. After witnessing this model—and its pitfalls—for several years, former storage industry executive and entrepreneur Tim Riley saw potential for a niche service. In 1995, he formed Kent, Wash.-based Door to Door Storage.

John Rogers

Door to Door delivers storage containers to customers’ homes, allows customers to fill them on their own schedule, transports the containers back to a secure warehouse for as long as needed, and returns the containers to the customers at their request. The model worked so well that by 1998, Door to Door had expanded into Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

According to Simonson, the business model was so convenient and flexible that customers began using Door to Door for their moving needs in addition to their storage needs. Door to Door created City to City Moving in 2002 and began rapidly expanding. Within 14 months, the company opened 13 metropolitan locations across the country. “We went from an alternative, more convenient solution to traditional storage to an all-around moving and storage logistics provider,” he said.

Bill Simonson

The process also works the other way: customers near a Door to Door location can load containers and have them shipped to an affiliate, who will unpack them at the final destination. “By leveraging a network of partners, we have brought our services to 200 additional metropolitan areas and have the reach to move over 80% of the population in the US,” said Simonson.

After the initial growth spurt that resulted in 21 locations from coast to coast and a fleet of 63 delivery vehicles, Door to Door slowed down, choosing to concentrate more on further penetrating its existing markets than widening its footprint. “At that point, we were still learning and needed to spend time perfecting our business model. Today, we fully understand the business and know where the hot markets are, so we will be growing at a more measured pace as we move forward.”

To drive that growth, Simonson has plans to beef up Door to Door’s once passive marketing efforts, which have until recently relied on search engine optimization. “Now, we are putting more focus on brand awareness,” he said, noting that in 2005, Door to Door Storage and City to City Moving became a single identity: Door to Door Storage and Moving. Future campaigns are likely to leverage traditional marketing channels, such as television and radio, as well as some untraditional viral marketing.

Reinventing the business
Simonson admits that Door to Door has, until recently, remained low-tech, partly because the business model didn’t require it, and partly because very few off-the-shelf software packages were available or appropriate. Over the past two years, the company has recruited an inhouse IT team, which developed ORCA (online real-time customer application), a Web-based system hosted on Door to Door’s internal network. The program manages the customer relationship from the moment it is initiated until the last empty container is retrieved.

“In the past, we ran our business through e-mail and fax. ORCA has eliminated 10,000 sheets of paper every month that were faxed to our accounting department and given every employee in the company real-time access to customer accounts,” said Simonson, adding that branch locations have reduced the amount of paper-work that requires manual data entry by 50%.

ORCA was initially tested at the flagship location in the Bay Area throughout 2006, and the company-wide rollout was completed in March of this year. Results are promising: the program has created efficiencies that have allowed Door to Door to reallocate certain positions, reduce its clerical staff, and downsize its hiring efforts.

“We run a cyclical business. For three or four months in the summer, we are extremely busy because people are getting married, on school break, and moving. Between November and February, business slows down. We tend to hire additional staff to help us get through the summers, but ORCA has reduced the number of bodies we need to run the business overall,” said Simonson.

“Moving people and their possessions from one place to another is one of the oldest industries. The staff and I are having fun reinventing it,” he concluded.