COMPANY

Back in August, I wrote about our tagline, “It’s a box… you put stuff in it!” and promised that I’d write about the “creative process” on how we came up with it.  Well, here goes.

It was the first summer that we were in business. We were still working out of my condo on Duval and we had a couple of MBA interns from the UT McCombs School of Business working for us.  They wanted to learn how to sell, and in this case, sell portable storage containers (8×40′, 8×20′).  

One day we decided to go make a couple of field calls to construction sites, and one of the interns, Barclay, was so excited that he went out, bought a hard hat, a new pair of work boots, and Wranglers work pants.  He was quite a sight to see.

Anyway, we went to one of our portable offices at the new Target being built at Parmer & I-35.  Barclay walks in and out walks this rough, tough, huge construction superintendent named Joe.

Barclay says, “So, how do you like our portable storage containers?”

Joe says, “They’re fine.”

Barclay says, “So, how’s our service?”

Joe says, “It’s fine.”

Barclay says, “So, do you have any other feedback for us?”

Joe says, “It’s a box… you put s*** in it, don’t take yourself so seriously!”

Silence, awkward silence, awkward silence. And finally, we all just bust out laughing.

Well, we left there and realized that Joe was onto something.  It was honest, it was simple, and it was how the customers viewed our product - it was the truth.  The tagline was born.  Obviously, we had to clean it up a bit.  And, THANKS BARCLAY!

Just recently, we got a nice compliment from Dr. Laura on the tagline as well. Click here >>  Dr. Laura Clip

I have to admit that I’ve been distracted in the past month.  With the stock markets plummeting, the turmoil in the US political scene, the devastating hurricanes, and the constant bantering of “experts” on the 24-hour news stations, it’s been hard to focus on our portable storage container business here in Central Texas.

Then, I bumped into Barry at my Rotary Club.  Barry has been a mentor to us at Falcon Storage pretty much since the beginning.  He’s a successful businessman with a strong altruistic streak.  He’s a marketing genius figuring out all kinds of ways to position our storage containers.  I guess he could see the angst in my eyes and in typical Barry fashion, he says with laser-like focus, “More successes are created in down markets than in good times.”  And boy, did that get me thinking.

In these turbulent times, the best thing we can do is to focus on those things that we can control - taking care of our customers, delivering our brand promise of “easy, friendly, and dependable”, building our Boxperts’ skills, honing our marketing messages, developing systems within our company, coming up with new and creative ways to customize shipping containers, and managing the bottom line.  All the other things in the world may affect us, but if we’re smart and focused, we will weather the storm… even better, we may come out stronger in the long run.

In the last week, I’ve chosen to “fast” from the news. You know what?  My optimism as an entrepreneur has begun to return.  My outlook has improved.  And most importantly, I’m focused.

When I got married a few years ago, we made our typical vows but my bride also made me promise that we would never live in a portable storage container.  That was tough.  I mean, come on, they’re sturdy, cheap, and spacious - 320 sq. ft. in a 40′ shipping container. You add four of them together and you’ve got a home that’s bigger than most of the homes in Central Austin.  Needless to say, I was not successful in persuading her.

Yesterday, this article hit CNN - Shipping containers could be ‘dream’ homes for thousands.  These guys in New Mexico have found a low cost, environmentally friendly housing solution for the exploding population in Juarez.  These container homes can be mass produced, easily setup, and are built from recycled shipping containers. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.  

In the past couple of years, we’ve been building prototypes in Austin, and the same concept of container homes could be applied to areas like Laredo, or even Galveston.  If you check out the website for PFNC Global Communities, you’ll see that they even have ideas for a multi-family development.  I love the creativity - used shipping containers into something usable.

So now the question is whether or not I try to revisit the idea of living in a portable storage container with my wife…

Jen and I took a trip up to the Pacific Northwest last week. Living in Austin, you see shipping containers primarily in transit - either on trains or being hauled by trucks. When you visit port cities like Vancouver or Seattle, you see these massive container ships coming into port, the cranes that they use to pull them off the boat and the depots that hold all the containers. The volume of shipping containers is truly amazing.  Mark Levinson even writes about the dramatic impact of shipping containers in his book “The Box : How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger“.

With natural trade imbalances, where would all these shipping containers go?  You can’t just throw them away.  The portable storage container industry is part of this ecosystem, recycling the retired shipping containers and finding a new use for them.   We’ve been “green” all this time, even before “green” was cool.  Who would’ve thought?  People will find more and more uses for retired shipping containers. My hope is that  Falcon Storage will be at the forefront of that innovation, figuring out what’s beyond portable storage.  If anything, I’m happy to know that we are helping with the whole green initiative.

A company’s tagline can be one of its most effective marketing tools. Sometimes I believe that people remember our tagline, “It’s a box… you put stuff in it!”, more than they remember our company name.  My buddy, Doug, won’t even say hello to me anymore. He’ll just look at me real goofy and shout out “It’s a box!”.

Being the thinker, or as my wife would say the “over-thinker”, I’ve often times wondered what it is that makes a tag line memorable. Is it because the tag line is funny? Is it because it rings truth? Is it because it resonates with current culturural trends? Is it because it summarizes what you do in a succinct package? Is it a little bit of everything?  I’m sure the guys at GSD&M have the art of tag lines developed into some type of proprietary formula, but we can’t afford to hire them yet.

When we first entered the portable storage industry, we racked our brains trying to come up with something creative for storage containers.  Good luck, right? Try to come up with something creative around big shipping containers. Talk about thinking outside the box.

Our first tagline for Falcon was “Bringing storage solutions to you.”  I can honestly say that it was a huge flop.  We then tried to take on our key competitor “Why go Mini when everything else is bigger in Texas!” The only thing that tagline did was to make our competitor mad.  There was even one networking meeting that I went to where I was so desperate to come up with something memorable that I shrieked like a Falcon. All people remembered, though, was that I was crazy.

So why does “It’s a box… you put stuff in it!” stick? And then the question is how long will it stick? Will it become trite? Will it become stale? And if so, how do we come up with another one? In Part 2, I’ll write about the “creative process” in how we came up with it.

When we started this business back in 2003, we were on the rebound of all this high tech stuff that we had done out in Silicon Valley. We wanted to go into a business that had relatively low technology risk. We wanted something simple. Heck, even our tagline “It’s a box… you put stuff in it!” has an air of simplicity. Portable storage seemed like a safe place and Falcon Storage could be a simple little business. I’d go to cocktail parties and see Venture Capitalists wondering “Falcon Storage… is that gigabyte or terabyte technology?”  Right…

Fast forward five years and we’ve built our business around technology. But, before we rest too much on our laurels, check out the innovation that is happening on the fringes. Those are some phenomenal innovations of people truly thinking “outside the box”. Or rather, they are thinking “inside the box”. I never would have imagined that shipping containers would evolve into these modern, contemporary structures. Dare I say, they are beautiful!

The question is did we misjudge the portable storage business? Did we not see the potential of the shipping container? After some introspection, I think that it wasn’t that we misjudged our industry. We misjudged human nature. I think one of the most amazing pieces of human nature is the ability to innovate. It’s been around all through history, not just during the last 100 years. That innovation takes the basic elements of what “is” and takes it to a whole new level. Even if what is before us is a rectangular box, human nature looks at that and imagines what it could be.

All this to say is that there is no industry “safe” from the winds of technology because innovation is hard wired into what it means to be human. It gives a whole new perspective on “innovate or die”, doesn’t it?

Welcome to Falcon Storage. We’re just getting started with this blog. In fact, this is our first post. We’ll be back with more to say soon.