According to a press release just out, B2 Interactive has purchased Storage.com, including the domain name, intellectual property, and any ongoing business operations from from Self Storage Co., a subsidiary of Extra Space Management, Inc.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“B² Interactive’s founders have a long history of providing online marketing services to the self storage industry, dating back to 1998 when co-founder Bill Hipsher built the first online directory for the industry. Hipsher’s partner and co-founder, Brandon Taylor, has been developing websites for the storage industry, including websites for large and small operators, since the early 2000s. The B² Interactive team includes both storage and digital marketing professionals that have histories in providing online marketing services to the self storage industry for more than a decade.
The website and domain will be entirely owned and operated by B² Interactive with the company’s headquarters located in Omaha, Neb. B² Interactive has added more than 80 employees since 2012. The company serves the digital marketing needs of the self storage industry through its self storage websites while also providing marketing, SEO and web development services to hundreds of other local, regional and national firms through their digital marketing agencies.
The last 17 years have led to this opportunity,” said Hipsher. “As a company, we have worked diligently over the last few years to build a team that can execute on a vision that we have had for Storage.com for a very long time. There were limits as to how far our teams could go in executing our vision for Storage.com without owning the domain name and business interests of the site. With this acquisition we can confidently say that we are poised to successfully develop Storage.com in a way that provides real value to self storage owners.”
Storage.com will release plans for improvements and additional services in the coming weeks. “Storage.com is meant to be more than just an online marketplace for the storage industry,” said Taylor. “We are excited to continue building out services that benefit a storage owner’s online marketing efforts in the same way we provide services to our agency clients.”
The storage facilities using Storage.com services will see no changes nor disruptions to service as a result of the transaction. The team operating Storage.com will remain intact, and all clients will continue to have the same client support resources they have come to know over the last decade. B² Interactive will also continue to operate the other self storage related websites that the firm has operated for many years including USstoragesearch.com and StorageUnit.com.
Storage consumers who have rented self storage units on Storage.com will see no changes to those rentals either. Consumers will continue to be able to search for current deals and pricing on available self storage units from facilities across the United States and rent self storage units online at Storage.com”
Here in NC, we are seeing many people relocate to the state. Self-storage units are everywhere and it’s apparently a good business model. Quality generic domains are both a helpful entry point into an industry and also an obvious enhancement to well-established businesses.
Storage.com is not that in profit. Then why would have B2 bought it?
It was also interesting to note the link on tntnames.com/blog/thedirectory-com-agrees-to-acquire-top-level-domain-portfolio-and-directory-platform.html It would seem that quality TLD generic groups when used to define/market the root domain in a particular area of commerce are being used intelligently in lead generation and that I guess is only possible by not holding the debt burden of paying to much for the portfolio ? Quinstreet & Bankrate proved the model but at a very high (not unwarranted) price.