附近上门

On-demand storage is hotter than ever as more people seek convenience in storing their belongings.

A flurry of startups have popped up in recent years to pick up people鈥檚 things and store them elsewhere and then bring them back to them when needed. Now, one of those companies, Clutter, is to be raising somewhere between $200 million and $250 million in a round led by . (On Feb. 19, 2019,聽Clutter it raised $200 million by SoftBank.)

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Los Angeles-based has been among one of the biggest funding recipients in the space even before this rumored round. Founded in 2013, it had raised a known total of 聽prior to this round. Its previously last announced raise was a June 2017 valuing the company at $176 million. Backers include UK-based , , and (formerly known as Google Ventures), among others.

As our own Joanna Glasner wrote in 2017, Clutter 鈥減itches itself as a tech-enabled storage company that lets people store extra stuff without having to leave the house. Clutter offers optional packing, pickup, and digital cataloging of all items. Customers can also pay to have their stuff returned at any time.鈥�

It鈥檚 one of a number of companies in the increasingly crowded space of valet self-storage. New York-based is another, and it鈥檚 raised $57.6 million. San Francisco-based has brought in $8 million.

I reached out to Clutter for comment on this latest funding round, and haven鈥檛 heard back. We鈥檒l update the story if I do. But all this is not surprising to me. Before I joined 附近上门 News full-time, I used to cover the self-storage industry on a freelance basis for , a marketplace for self-storage operators that ran its own news arm. Self-storage has been one of the bright spots in the commercial real estate sector for a number of years now.

Plus, Americans鈥� ever-increasing appetite for convenience has fueled demand for services such as the type that Clutter offers. Many of these companies make money by renting or buying warehouse space to store people鈥檚 belongings in areas that are not super close to a city core. Thus, they spend less on overhead and are able to store things for people more cheaply than if they operated facilities in expensive real estate markets like San Francisco. Plus, people like not having to schlep back and forth to facilities to get their stuff. I expect this won鈥檛 be the last mega round in the space.

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