Family-run storage company boxing up the industry as online businesses boom

LEEDS family business McCarthy’s Removals and Storage has been around for 40 years, and is now expanding due to increasing demand from online businesses.

McCarthy’s was launched by the current managing director Mike McCarthy’s parents Mick and Margaret in 1970.

They launched the firm with one van doing drop offs, before moving to fixed premises in Roundhay.

Now the firm has 48 staff and a turnover of £3m.

The current MD Mr McCarthy started working for his parents’ firm when he was 13 years-old in the school holidays, which carried on through his university career in Manchester.

He, like his brothers (one in banking in New York and the other in property development in London) started off in a different industry, working at retailer Next’s head office in the overseas and franchise department.

“I wasn’t particularly corporate and wanted to work for myself. I was living in London at the time and saw the growth of self storage,” Mr McCarthy said, “and then I realised we already had a company back home that did office and home removals, and it seemed an inevitable step forward.”

He has now been back for 15 years working at the firm his parents founded, and has helped diversify the business from relatively humble beginnings.

He said: “On average, a person moves every seven years. We have a good reputation and do a great job in that area, but we might not hear from customers for a while. I wanted to get into an area with a more sustainable, repeatable income.”

So the firm moved into archive storage for hospitals and professional services firms, in 2000, then self storage in 2005, as well as industrial shredding for law firms and other businesses, a more environmentally way of doing it without it all ending up in landfills – it all ends up as toilet roll!

Now the firm has additional self storage facilities in Harrogate and Wakefield, the latter of which opened a couple of months ago.

The latest area of growth for McCarthy’s is with business customers.

McCarthy’s estimates that there has been a 20% increase in the number of business customers in the last five years, and a 30% increase if you look at it in terms of the space they rent.

Mr McCarthy said: “There’s obviously been big growth in internet and online businesses. Internet and eBay traders for example need somewhere to stock their goods but not necessarily a full office.”

The Leeds-based firm has catered to these needs with a business centre attached to their storage facilities to help growing internet traders, with 25 offices.

He said: “We’re effectively their warehouse. It works for businesses, particularly around areas of surge orders such as Christmas. We hold excess stock for them. They can upscale and downscale as they need without a long term lease. They can work on a month-by-month basis, and SMEs in particular like the flexibility of that.

The firm used to lean towards domestic and individual storage, with 80% of their business in that area. According to The Self Storage Association’s annual survey, it’s now a 59% to 41% business split. “It’s been a big shift in our space,” Mr McCarthy said. “I’d say we’re a bit more business, more around 45%.”

With 125,000 sq ft of space at their Leeds site, 30,000 sq ft in their Harrogate site that was opened in 2010, and the new Wakefield site, which totals 40,000 sq ft, the firm is only adding to its fast-growing portfolio.

“We’re looking at other sites, but we’re a family business and a Yorkshire business, so we want to stay loyal to the region before moving outwards.”