Hello Africa, this is how we do it

A journey which has taken 10 years of hard work and sacrifice. Is about in its first quarter. Here at Cedar Storage we have moved along steady and slow. We are very proud of our storage facility here in Kya Sands with bright orange office and face brick buildings.

We started with many ideas as to how best do what we love and took a few swings at the brass ring. From sectional title units to fractional ownership and many more ways to raise the seed money. Finally a man with a lot of courage and just as much money gave the green light.

My being the only one to have been involved with the project from day ONE till now shows how much faith I have in this dream. With help and guidance from many different people and companies our little company has gone from having 152 units on day one. 1 May 2010 when we opened the doors and welcomed our first tenant.

Some of the original people have left our company and returned to use our storage space again. I was astounded to see that all those years of staying up late reading articles on the internet paid off. They all had one common thread when it came to storage companies that were successful all around the world. You the best people to support you and the best systems to support your people.

It was by no means a smooth tarred road to today but a bumpy lumpy ride. So long as we all held on and looked ahead we were OK. Yes we had some people leave us as they did not share our passion for looking after people’s dreams and possession’s. Never an easy task at best. We strove for service excellence and a great product mix. Only by selecting people who are focused on having the best company by far can we be satisfied that you our loyal patron will stay longer with us.

From time to time I have heard it whispered by our team that they work for the best company ever. Well we would like to say to our team that we can be the way we are just because you all do your best for the company no questions asked.

Just as we would like to build long-term relations with our tenants we believe our team should feel the same about us. We focus on looking after them just as they look after our clientele. Each team member here is like an extended family to us and must be treated as such. So when they do-good. We praise them. When they do wrong we ask, how can-we not let that happen again.

With this simple attitude we can move forward and grow as each of us as a team member grows too.

It is with a lump in my throat I am writing this letter as I have lost some battles to, to be here. As I said earlier not everyone shares my passion and faith in this little storage company. I believe that should we chose to keep to our company mantra KISS (keep it simple stupid) we will keep growing and moving forward to a better life. From these humble beginnings I believe we can grow enough to stave of big business from trying to buy us out and be big enough to keep growing for the next 20 years.

In 3 years we have grown from 152 units to 794 units in 2013. We have been waiting to get a green light from the managing director to complete the storage buildings here so we can move to the next site. Again it is with gratitude and hope we move forward with the dream.

We have many firsts under our belt here at Cedar Storage, we were the first to introduce units less than 9m². We are the first to develop home grown storage software that allows you the client to book a storage unit online from the safety and comfort of your home or office. We also started with an eye to being a green company with a very low carbon footprint from day one.

We have recycled 98% of all our building waste back into the development at cost to us and a huge benefit to the environment. All the indigenous plants on site were first removed and replanted in other areas around us that are not going to be developed. All our gardens will be re-established to be indigenous to, with many species of plant which no longer appears naturally.

The team at Cedar Storage is also keen to move over to solar power as soon as we can for many reasons such as reliability and service delivery. The added green finger aside, will be a bonus for me personally. I want my grandchildren to breath fresh air and run around with great biodiversity as can be here in Africa. Who knows, maybe one day we will supply power to the grid from our 6000m² roof area.

Thank you to you all for making a dream come true.

Anthony