It's been sparked by the raise of Airbnbs which rarely offer luggage storage.
A similar trend is in self checkin solutions.
It's interesting to note the herd effect on this kind of startups: it becomes easier and easier to raise capital to solve problems many others are trying to solve already.
When we were starting Bounce, we noticed players in their local markets. We weren't impressed with the product or execution at the time. It's been really interesting to see the development and some of these players have done quite well.
It seems like most folks started with a slightly different idea but the market pulled everyone closer to the same thing.
I started Bounce out of a burning vision. You can read more about it here: https://medium.com/@codycandee/the-story-behind-bounce-21aea...
Do you go to conferences? Let me know if you need some tips, I'll be happy to share.
I haven’t plugged into many conferences in the space. We’ve been a very small team grinding daily.
Thanks for being such a power commenter on this thread btw!
I absolutely love VRWS which this year is in France in October. It's the best for networking with the leaders in the VR space.
You may want to check out Host London 2020 (from Terrapin) as they seem to give speaking slots to startups.
Many of the luggage startups mentioned here were present last year.
Drop me an email and I'll introduce you to the organizers.
You may even get a free startup booth from them.
Also, check-out Trips Community where you may become a partner if you commit to integrate when it's ready, getting some visibility.
At least that's what I used to do.
I have a room full with crap; even at $1/day per case (which I would pay long term), I can put enough cases in there and easily get them out to pay triple the mortgage on the entire house every month... All my chinese and thai friends (where I store stuff now) would gladly long term store cases in their houses: 20-30 of them for sure.
Short term they would not but 2 weeks or more; many people working abroad would jump at that.
Seems I always forget something or forget to bring it home. Would be nice just to not stress about them during packing and just focus on clothes laptop etc
I don't keep dupes of everything. My cables and plugs bag is the same one I use day-to-day. But I do keep a general travel pile that has most of the stuff I may need on a trip other than clothing--which varies by location/season/type of trip.
That's very interesting, I'm sure more and more people will need this in the future.
How much would you expect to pay?
I probably wouldn't pay more than that to permanently store a suitcase somewhere. That would be the ceiling for me.
Some frequent business travelers may be willing to pay more.
I'd see it as a $x/mo + $y per bring it to me at the airport (or maybe hotel, depending on the situation)
There are luggage delivery services but they're fairly expensive especially if you normally get free checked luggage.
And that was also a weird case where I had a hiking trip after a multi-leg business trip so I didn't want to lug all my gear with me. In general, I travel lightly enough that I'm not checking luggage anyway.
Would this entail buying several sets of clothing, tailoring them if needed (some of us can't buy clothing off the shelf), doing laundry and stashing them in the local locker every time you visit?
Also, the other problem for me is temperature, formality etc. -- for city i with mᵢ seasons, and nᵢ situations (casual, formal, etc.), I have to own ∑ᵢ mᵢnᵢ sets of clothing.
Generally, if you don't have competitors, then you don't have a market.
What I meant is that I notice a herd mentality in VCs.
Particularly in Vacation Rentals there's many problems waiting to be solved and yet it seems everyone is trying to solve the same ones.
Critically: No, in business, it more often means that the market doesn't exist. If it did, you'd likely have competitors.
My point was just to note that this isn't unique to startups or VCs--it's common to all markets. It is generally a worrisome indicator if you have no competitors, and it is easier to justify chasing things other people are chasing.
The theory of evolution, calculus, etc were "discovered" by multiple people with zero contact at the same time.
An event or change in the world (like airbnb here for example) trigger people to come to the same conclusion.
Now imagine you have a team of people working on it who are "just ok" - maybe they lack the product or engineering skills but still bring something to market. When the next team comes along that is truly stellar, they will out-execute.
With VC, it is really interesting. They may decide to invest in the team that is farthest along because they look like the leader in what is a new market. Or the stellar team may raise money and then the B team that started earlier and has more scale may go to investors and say "Look, this company raised money and we're way bigger - give us money too!" and they have a pretty good case for it at the surface level.
That is my take on how these things may happen and evolve.
Japanese train stations are great for this. But it's very uncommon in many/most places.
I was trying to store my luggage at lockers in Tokyo Station, and I tried different locker clusters but they were all full.
I wonder if there's a way to check for empty lockers, or to reserve the lockers? (I don't read Japanese so I genuinely have no idea)
And support for multiple languages!
When I went to japan, the occupancy of these lockers were often 100% -- people would be standing in line waiting for a locker to open up!
Just wanted to say: thank you for demonstrating a mature, no-nonsense approach. With the world drowning in hype, it's refreshing to see someone (anyone!) take the no-fluff route.
Do you feel that you'll be able offer competitive coverage with that quality bar?
I do like the idea that this is a solved problem, but if I'm in some tiny town, I still might need a service like this, and my go to service would have it covered.
I get that launching city by city makes sense at first, but just curious how this rolls out coverage wise!
Also, do you insure the luggage?
It scales really nicely with coverage. We get daily requests from stores all around the world who want to sign up. We will catch up to the coverage of other companies this year or next year.
We offer $5000 insurance...absolute peace of mind!
Gee, after you add on all the "extra" web services you need when you use AirBnB, it's almost as good as a hotel.
Help me understand this. People go to an Airbnb, unpack their luggage, then take it (or have it picked up) for storage elsewhere? And when they are ready to go, they get it back and pack?
I'm basically a minimalist packer, so if this is what people actually do, it's very foreign to me.
Many hotels will store your luggage after checkout, until you are ready to depart.
Keycafe:get the key from a self service box in a shop.
Keesy: get the key from a machine.
Vikey: keyless. Enter with a code.
And many many more.
At Host London exhibition there were at least ten new ones.
Unfortunately in many cities, particularly in Europe, you are not allowed to stick a lock on the wall of the building.