Manhattan Mini Storage is a self storage and moving company based in New York City, United States, owned by Edison Properties, a real estate holding and development firm based in Newark, New Jersey founded in 1956. The company is affiliated with the family-run Gottesman Real Estate Partners. It has 17 locations in Manhattan, all of which are open 365 days a year; some locations are also open 24/7. Manhattan Mini Storage offers a program where clients can give away objects that take up their storage space, as well as auctions to sell off objects belonging to clients who do not pay storage rents.
Operations
Manhattan Mini Storage is the largest personal storage company in New York, and one of the largest in the United States. The firm has 17 storage locations throughout the city, open 365 days a year and some of which are open 24 hours per day. Manhattan Mini Storage has approximately 250,000 clients. Facilities include high-tech security system, free concierge and onsite managers. Manhattan Mini Storage also operates a service with Portero through which customers can "dispose of unwanted valuables that clutter their storage units." The firm conducts blind auctions of the belongings of customers who fail to pay their storage bills.
Marketing
Manhattan Mini Storage prides itself on "identifying what matters to New Yorkers," and markets itself as "an extension of your home where you can keep the things you want to keep but can't quite accommodate in your tight Manhattan apartment." The company creates all its own advertisements, then advertises on billboards and phone booths across Manhattan. Some of the taglines used include, "Your closet's scarier than Bush's agenda," "Your closet is so narrow it makes Cheney look liberal," as well as "We have more wiggle room than Herman Cain's morals." Manhattan Mini Storage's 2011 Ad campaign included topical and New York City-centric billboards such as "Michele Bachmann says God told her to run for President. How come God never talks to smart people anymore?" "Remember if you leave the city, you'll have to live in America," "Why leave a city that has six professional sports teams, and also the Mets?" and "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married". The company's gay marriage ad was also accompanied by a promotion aimed at gay newlyweds after the Marriage Equality act was passed in July 2011. Adweek's Tim Nudd writes about the 2011 campaign in a March post: "Remember, if you leave the city, you'll have to live in America" — one of most quintessential New York headlines you'll ever see." The company has also had other pro-LGBT advertisement campaigns, including an "If you don't like gay marriage, dont't get gay married" campaign in 2013. Some advertisements have been controversial. In 2007, a billboard, with a picture of chihuahua wearing pearls and the words "Your closet's so shallow it makes Paris [Hilton] look deep", attracted a cease and desist letter from Hilton's lawyer. In 2014, representatives of start-up storage company MakeSpace, which advertises "cloud storage," criticized Manhattan Mini Storage for having an advertisement that read "Don't trust the cloud." A Huffington Post writer commented that some of the advertisements in Manhattan Mini Storage's 2015 campaign, which featured "a transgender woman, or male drag queen, by a vanity with furs and wigs surrounding," could be potentially taken out of context.
Community outreach
Manhattan Mini Storage has sponsored community groups such as: Friends of Hudson River, Medieval Festival, Project Back to School, Friends of Carl Shurz Park, NYLaughs, Furnish a Future, Aids Walk, NY Class, I Care, Score!, NY Dream Center, Animal Haven, NY Classical Theater, and The Diabetes Research Institute.
