Garage Storage Installer

I was researching some options for storage in our garage. I need LOTS of room to run my business in there and so I needed to get things up and out of the way. I want to use as much of the ceiling area as possible since it’s wasted space. (It’s a finished garage with an actual 8′ ceiling.)

I came across this storage company that sells kits allowing you to store things by essentially hanging stuff from the ceiling.

Here’s a picture of one of the 2′ x 8′ suspension storage thingys.

Essentially, you screw the posts into the ceiling and VIOLA, you have about 60 square feet of storage space, just like that. (You can adjust how far it hangs down from the ceiling from 30″ to 44″.)

As I do with every single thing I come across, I tried to think of a way to make money with this concept.

Do up some nice flyers, with a picture of the storage shelving and leave them door to door in a middle class to upper middle class neighborhood. Offer a complete installation of said shelves. The price of the 24″ x 96″ (2 feet by 8 feet) hardware is $80. Then add on the cost of the four 2’x4’s that it takes for the actual shelf surface. So, you’re into it for about $100 (including shipping of the hardware.) If you sell these, including installation for $175 each, I think you could sell a couple a day if you passed out flyers to about 500 houses a day. (Perhaps even 3 or 4, it would vary I would imagine.) Be sure to inquire with the storage company if you can get a discount for buying in bulk.

If you set up your schedule so you’re passing out flyers in the morning from about 7am to 11am. Take lunch and the from about 1pm to however long it takes, you can be installing shelves that you’ve sold from previous day’s flyer runs.

Installing just 2 a day, working only 5 days a week is $3000/mo. But I’m pretty sure you could ramp that up to 4 or 5 a day if you used some cheap labor to do your flyer distribution freeing you up to concentrate on the installations.

Of course, once you get to the house, you can do some upselling by recommending to them that the 4′ by 4′ shelf would fit nicely “here” and “here”. By the time you leave the house, you could feasibly have sold 4 or 5 shelves, all of different sizes. Because you’re working in volume, you can use the price drop method for closing the sale by saying, “since I’m already here, I can do the rest for 25% off the regular price.” You’d still be able to make $250+ for a multiple shelf jobs. You’d be amazed at what you could upsell once you get there. People who have their garages stuffed to the gills would probably salivate at the prospect of freeing up their entire garage floor space in one big swoop. Sell their dream of having all their garage floorspace, not the shelves. Remember, always sell the benefits, not features.

You’ll want to partner with some local outfits that do various things. Like lawn maintenance, repavers, siding, roofing and even those people that seal your garage floor and make it all nice and glossy. Just leave them a flyer of all these other services and have an agreement with these other guys to give you a kickback of some sort if they get a call from your lead. (Of course, they would be doing the same with their clients, for you.)