Doorage Storage Solutions, a Chicago-area on-demand storage startup, is expanding to Wisconsin, bringing dozens of new jobs to two of the state's largest cities.
The startup, founded last year, expanded to Milwaukee and Madison at the end of March and is expected to bring 30 to 40 jobs to the state within the next 18 months, said Founder and CEO Sean Sandona.
The new jobs will range from movers and packers to route drivers and logistics workers. The Wisconsin operations are slated to serve residents living in Waukesha, Pewaukee, Brookfield, Mequon, New Berlin and Fox Point, and even those living as far south as Racine and Kenosha.
As part of its on-demand model, Doorage comes to customers’ homes, packs their items and takes them to its storage facilities. If a customer wants an item back, they can notify Doorage and receive it within the next day.
To offer a better and more secure storing experience, Sandona said Doorage stores items using an advanced warehouse management system that allows them to know exactly where every item is at every moment. Sandona said Doorage is currently storing thousands of items for about 1,200 customers.
“There’s rows upon rows of racking and everything is inventory-controlled,” Sandona said. “We’ve never lost a single item.”
And unlike other companies, Sandona says Doorage can offer storage services cheaply by storing items in a meticulously-organized warehouse, instead of personal storage rooms. Using this method, Doorage charges customers based on the size of each object they are storing, allowing consumers to only pay for the exact amount of space they are taking up, rather than an entire unit. Furthermore, if a consumer takes an item out of storage, their storing price immediately goes down.
Pricing starts at $1.40 per cubic foot for total volume between 0 and 50 feet, and can drop to $.35 per cubic foot for volume over 801 feet, according to the startup's website.
Doorage’s corporate offices are in Elk Grove Village, and its storage warehouses are spread out throughout Chicago’s suburbs.
The startup currently employs about 20 people, but the staff is growing rapidly as the startup hires people in Wisconsin. In the next five years, Sandona said he plans to have Doorage active in 50 markets, and to reach that level of growth, Sandona is looking to raise a seed or Series A round of venture capital funding.
Doorage isn't the only on-demand storage company out there. Clutter, a Culver City, Calif.-based on-demand storage startup, just raised $200 million in February and is valued at $600 million. Additionally, SpaceWays, a German-owned on-demand storage tech company, launched in Chicago in 2014, but ultimately ceased its services in the city to focus on expansion in Europe.
