YSN Board

Paul started his Self-Storage adventure in 2012 with NorthWest based storage experts BiG Storage and was lucky enough to be initially mentored by two of the best independent operators in Kevin Murphy and Paul Fahey, whilst in his in his group sales manager role. Alongside the whole BiG team, Paul’s abilities to raise standards and in particular revenues led to the Big Yellow/Armadillo  group acquiring the business in early 2015.

After being the only member of the senior management team to be retained, Paul assisted with integration of the two businesses before being given a golden opportunity to join Mike Wilson at Smart Storage in late 2015. After implementing radical changes to the business as well as new technology and a sixth site, it was decided that with new opportunities on the horizon that they would prepare the business for sale. This occurred in early 2018 achieving a sixfold return for the investment group after less than three years involvement.

Mike and fellow storage entrepreneur Andy Wood formally of Storage Boost now had investors and capitol in place to realise the dream of creating SureStore. Paul has become a key part of developing and operating these multi-purpose facilities which not only cater for domestic and commercial storage requirements, but offering office space, drive up units, retail spaces and trade counters all in purpose-built brand new, high specification, environmentally conscious and technologically advanced sites. Bolton was the first site to open in April 2018 and seven more sites across the North West and Midlands have followed, with a substantial number of sites due to open across the UK in 2021.

Paul owes his success down to his team of hard working but life enjoying individuals and eats drinks and sleeps the wonderful world of Self-Storage. Paul has four amazing children aged between 6 and 20, with the eldest recently learning the ropes as a part sales advisor at SureStore, so he is always busy and, in his spare time enjoys disco dancing, origami and welsh poetry. 

Tom Joined the Lok’nStore Group in 2012.  After working throughout the business including in the group’s serviced document storage offering, he settled to the position of Director of Acquisitions.  Tom has since acquired land and/or buildings for the development of 16 self-storage centres for Lok’nStore. Today he continues to acquire sites for the groups’ ambitious growth strategy.

Alexandra is the office manager at Britannia Lanes’ Devon branch in Exeter.  She is part of the third generation of Lane family that run their 3 sites across the West Country.  In addition to self storage, each depot offers removals, shipping, full record management services, together with confidential document shredding and van hire.  The Exeter branch is being expanded presently to offer a further 7000sqft of net lettable space.

Tim is the founder of Brant Self Storage & Removals, starting the company in 2007 when he realised there was no self storage in the surrounding areas of Hampshire.  Since then the business has grown from strength to strength and now has over four depots comprising of 700 storage units ranging from 20 ft.² up to 2000 ft.² across the Hampshire and Surrey area.

Adam is the Technical Director & Global Account Executive at Basil Fry.  He originally joined the company in 2006 but left in 2012 to work in the City of London for Marsh and QBE on some of the most complex energy risks in the world.  He returned to Basil Fry in 2016 and is now a dedicated Account Executive with a portfolio of both domestic and international clients, responsible for technical direction, compliance matters and international business.

Anthony is the co-founder of Engage Management Services Ltd, an independent management company that supports both new and existing self storage operators. He joined the self storage industry in 2006 as a marketing assistant for a small independent operator and now works with other storage businesses to grow their storage facilities into mature, profitable enterprises through effective sales, marketing and operational strategies and systems.  When he's not knee deep in websites, Google Ads and spreadsheets Adam spends time out in the fresh air, preferably on a bicycle. He is also a bit of a tech geek and loves to spend time investigating ways in which technology can be used to improve people’s lives and of course, the way self storage operates.  As part of the Young Storage Network, Adam hopes we can encourage more young people to join this forward thinking and incredibly friendly industry.  He believes there is a huge amount of value in a self storage career and, given it is still in its infancy, there is a real opportunity to contribute to the industry’s evolution.