FROM THE DESK OF THE PRESIDENT: RICHARD LICATA – Page 2
The first half of the year is behind us, and we’ve managed to hold our own despite a challenging year due to the slow housing market influenced by high mortgage rates. As I often say, people may not love their home, but they do love their flat 3% mortgage rate. Despite these challenges, the strategic plan we laid out for the year is working. Our revenue is up 2%, even with a sluggish housing market. The Federal Reserve has not changed the key interest rate yet but has signaled a potential cut before the year’s end. Hopefully, that will stimulate more business.
Our strategy to focus on business areas not directly affected by mortgage rates has played a crucial role in stabilizing our performance. One of our more controversial moves was merging our storage with All Chicagoland Moving and Storage. While it made perfect sense to me—given we had 400 empty vaults in Naperville and they had 400 full vaults—the CEO Forum accused me of “sleeping with the enemy!” This criticism doesn’t faze me, as storage has always been one of our keys to success. Despite the sluggish household move market, our storage division is holding its own, largely because of this merger. Additionally, our self-storage division, Store Your Things, is up 14%, and despite concerns that record storage might one day become obsolete, we’ve grown that revenue by 10%.
Another sector of our business that is thriving is our Office & Industrial division. Thanks to the ongoing work from Bob LoBianco with Northwestern and the new business brought in by Brandon Capshaw, this division has grown by over 33% year-to-date through June. Speaking of Bob LoBianco, he has been Superman this year. Despite battling a serious medical issue, Bob continues to develop new business and does a wonderful job managing our biggest account, Northwestern University. Similarly, our International business has built upon the strong performance from last year, growing 25% year-to-date.
Thank you for your continued support and hard work. Together, we’re navigating these challenging times and finding new ways to succeed.