Dan Burdi and his cousin Justin Burdi started Campus Carriers in 2009, while still in college. The company provides full-service moving and summer storage to university students living in on- or off-campus housing.
The idea for the company came together when Dan found himself storing a lot of items at his college apartment when a friend moved out. “There weren’t enough self-storage options,” Dan said. “We came to the conclusion that there had to be another way.”
Campus Carries provides the boxes to store items, and picks up the items and delivers them to a secure storage unit in the nearby area. Items are then delivered at a prearranged date to the student’s next apartment or dorm room.
Dan and Justin decided it was essential to have the universities on board, to streamline the process and be able to reach students more effectively. They created partnerships with student government associations and campus housing authorities, and send out direct mailings to undergraduates advertising Campus Carriers.
So far, the duo has set up arrangements with their alma maters – Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech – as well as, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Clemson University, Rochester Institute of Technology and Savannah College of Art and Design. They had around 1,700 customers this year.
Their pricing model is based on simplicity. Their website makes it clear that “You only pay for what you store” and the service includes free insurance.
One of the biggest hurdles with their business model is finding a warehouse willing to work with a short-term lease – in their case usually four months. Most warehouses typically negotiate five or 10 year leases, and Dan said it took a good bit of convincing to get the first few warehouses on board. Most long-term leases require a due diligence period that he said tend to take the whole summer to complete anyway. His pitch to the warehouses is that they can spend that due diligence period before their next long-term lease turning a small profit with Campus Carriers.
“Every landlord we’ve worked with has been happy with us,” he said. “As reluctant as landlords are, by the end of the term they’re really happy with it.”
In the on-season, the duo hires more than 100 movers, mostly students at the specific universities they work with, looking to make a little money before classes start in the fall. In the off-season it’s just the two of them, working out of their office in Charlotte and a few location managers, usually upperclassmen or graduate students who oversee basic operations at their universities.
While they are currently not looking at any universities in the Charlotte area – their sweet spots tend to be colleges and universities with large out-of-state and on-campus populations – Dan describes the business environment of Charlotte as fundamental to their success.
“We came into and got very involved in the young entrepreneurial scene in Charlotte and we try to involve ourselves as much as we can,” he said.
He remembers the early days of the company, when the entrepreneur community was small and tight-knit.
“Back in 2011 everything was kind of quiet in Charlotte. I lived a few blocks from Packard Place,” he said. “At the time Charlotte was pretty inexpensive – unfortunately it’s gotten a little more expensive but its value for entrepreneurs has grown. I think there’s a strong community here and we like to involve ourselves as best we can, giving advice to newcomers. Because of the seasonality of our business we kind of keep to ourselves given, the business model, but by no means does that mean we’re not interested.”
Looking toward the future, Dan spoke about a desire to bring their 100% proprietary software – Justin designed it himself – to more traditional moving companies to see if licensing it out could be an option.
As entrepreneurs, Dan said differentiating themselves has been a key to their success that they plan to continue forward.
