I can think of a couple people I know who basically have an extra bedroom in their apartment for their seasonal wardrobes. If the service is less than the 500 bucks a month that bedroom costs, and it’s more convenient than a storage unit (i.e., people without cars), I can see it being viable.
You make fun, but I could see this being pretty useful. We don’t all have large homes, and we don’t all have cars or vans that make it easy to get things into & out of storage units. There are lots of people in large cities who have neither.
A service that could quickly & cheaply store and return things I want to keep but don’t need all year round (like maybe winter clothing), could free up a lot of room in a small apartment. It’s not the box that’s novel, it’s the storage & delivery service. I could see myself paying for this.
If there’s a way to place things into storage, and simultaneously list them for sale on eBay or Craigslist or Half, and then have that order fulfilled without having to touch the item again, I could use that.
I refuse to even consider it if my junk isn’t going to be encrypted before I pass it on to the driver. (Now I am picturing standing over the box and shaking salt into it before I seal it up for the driver)
This actually looks super useful. Their ad copy is pretty ridiculous, though.
There kinda is, although it’s not always the best deal:
Basically the FBA storage fees for amazon are roughly equivalent to the price per cubic food for a storage locker, for big expensive cities like NYC anyway. You can just list it for sale as used, ship it off to their warehouse, and if someone buys it amazon will just take their cut, pay you, and ship it out to the buyer.
I assume what they mean is that MakeSpace syncs your physical goods, making them available to you anywhere, at any time. I guess that makes it more like a backpack than a box.
Indeed.
Definitely someone needs to come up with a box that contains a 3D scanner and printer. You just drop something into one of them, and it’s automatically scanned and reprinted in every other box you have.
I wonder if they will be able to make their prices competitive outside of extreme markets like New York City.
For example, their minimum package costs about as much as 2 square meters of decent residential space where I am.
Of course there are people who are willing to pay a premium for the flexibiliy and often they have good reasons. However I am not sure that the market of people for whom this is superior to using their own space or relying on conventional storage companies is all that big in most locations.
So this is a smaller version of pods.com ?
Bubble!
I think that city-folk, whether in Manhattan or Tokyo, will find this very useful. Folks that live in the suburbs will probably make fun of this, because they forget the mountains of stuff they have in their basements and double-garages.
Hmmm, an internet of things, seems like it should travel in a series of tubes…
Should I write my passwords down on paper and store them in this?
We have a great storage system around here for things that are taking up space. It’s called Craigslist, and it pays me money when I put old crap into it. When and if I want it back (which is rare) I can get the same or similar item at a discount as well.
And seriously, if seasonal clothing is a space issue in your home, you need to have less clothing.
Oof – put the emphasis on “premium.” $29 bucks to get a tote delivered…on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7am to 9pm, and Saturdays from 10am to 6pm. Miss your delivery appointment? That’ll be $35. And while it might seem that 3.32 cubic feet per tote (27"x17"x12.5") is kinda small, MakeSpace is actually doing you a favor…since it limits its liability to $250 per tote : -)
Just saw this on BB yesterday, but it seems relevant today as well.
“Interesting… Where you going with this, Ikea boy?”
Top comment:
"This is a serious encroachment on my web startup, youhavetoomuchshit.com. Aimed at people who continually purchase useless crap despite the space limitations of their $2,000/month studio apartments, we will drive to your house, pick up all the things you have two of for no apparent reason, slap you in the face with a giant rubber dildo (they usually have a few lying around, because they had a GroupOn and why let that go to waste?), and leave. "
