Linkletters Put New Show on Road: Mobile Storage
Art and Jack Linkletter have the darndest idea about how businesses should store stuff.
The father and son duo, who have used their familiar Hollywood name to dabble in more than 70 different businesses during the past 25 years, have a notion that they say could help businesses save millions of dollars by storing inventory in “mobile” storage units.
Although storage is nothing new, the concept of “mobile” storage is. In mobile storage, the items are packed and kept in a trailer that can be trucked to and from company locations. By contrast, in self-storage, belongings are placed in stationary bins.
The Linkletters’ business, Linkletter Mobile Storage, uses an airtight metal trailer, big enough to hold four rooms of furniture. The trailer is trucked to the site and can be kept there or hauled back to the Linkletter facility in Long Beach.
“I never thought my name would appear on giant metal boxes,” said Art, pointing to the the trailer-sized metal containers that dot the Linkletter Mobile Storage site in Long Beach. “I’d prefer to see my name on a marquee,” he said. Linkletter, 72, is best known for his 45-year television and radio career, hosting such popular shows as “People Are Funny” and “House Party.” Although he has lent the Linkletter name to dozens of business ventures, he believes that this could be his most successful yet.
Art is chairman of the Costa Mesa-based Linkletter Properties, the parent of Linkletter Mobile Storage. His son, Jack, a 47-year-old Laguna Beach resident, is the company’s president. Art has the corporate contacts and money to invest, while Jack, a former talk show host with a business degree from USC, has the business acumen. “Our biggest challenge is explaining what mobile storage is,” said Jack. “It might seem silly to make something when you have to explain to everyone what it is.”
The Linkletters are 15-year veterans in the self-storage business through Linkletter Properties. The company also has commercial and industrial real estate holdings in Southern California valued at more than $30 million.
What the Linkletters have devised is a new niche in an old industry. Movement and storage of goods is an annual $600-billion industry, experts estimate. With the high cost of land, mobile storage gives storage companies the opportunity to stack trailers one atop another, using less land. At the same time, it gives companies quick access to their stored supplies, the Linkletters sayl.
Despite the benefits of mobile storage, it faces a number of problems. First, there is a massive public education project of informing people just what mobile storage is. And although the Linkletters believe mobile storage will not cannibalize their self-storage business, with less than six months in the new field, they say that it is too early to tell.
$80 Monthly Rental Although customers rave about mobile storage, they also point out that the trailers’ heavy doors can be difficult for employees to open. At the same time, some customers worry that the parked trailers might be vulnerable to thieves. Another problem is that various city zoning codes may not permit trailers to be parked behind businesses.
Still, mobile storage is probably more handy than self-storage and in most cases cheaper. The big, metal canister can be rented for about $80 a month. Pickup and delivery charges are extra. The object, of course, is for businesses to keep inventory from choking off valuable office space.
If the prototype Long Beach facility gels, the company will open similar operations in San Diego and Los Angeles later this year. And the longer-term plan, according to Jack, is to expand nationwide to a number of coastal towns like San Francisco, Seattle, and Baltimore.
At the Long Beach facility, the storage bins are stacked four high, drastically lowering real estate costs, the businessmen say. An $85,000 fork lift is used to maneuver the heavy canisters. Security measures at the site include numerous locked gates and an intricate alarm system.
By advertising in key trade publications, especially those within the hospital and electronics industries, the company hopes to build a market. Because hospitals keep records and supplies for years, and electronics firms require gobs of inventory, both types of operations demand massive storage, Jack said.
“We see this as a step beyond self-storage,” said Jack. The company trucks its containers right to the client’s door. The bins are 8 feet wide, 20 feet long and 8 1/2 feet deep. The $2,000, Korean-made metal cubicles--with 1,148 cubic feet of storage space--are sealed tight, hence waterproof and fireproof, the company says.
Lew Buchman, manager of the Cinedome Theater Complex in Orange, said he was at his wit’s end trying to find a place to store snack bar supplies and equipment at his six-theater complex. For years, he actually stored supplies behind the movie screens. “Sometimes, we’d have to rummage behind the screens with flashlights in the middle of shows,” he said.
Buchman said he called half a dozen local storage companies, but not one had an airtight shed in which he could store supplies. Then he called Linkletter. “They’re the only company I called that could help,” Buchman said, adding, “Now, whenever we need supplies, we just run out the back door and get them.”
Similarly, Tom Churchman, manager of Pier One Imports in Montclair, keeps a Linkletter storage bin behind the store. So do Pier One stores in West Los Angeles and Covina. “Every store manager’s major problem is that there’s never enough room to store things,” Churchman said.
While the Linkletter trailer solves Pier One’s storage problem, it also causes a new one. Churchman said that most of the store’s employees are female, and few of them can open the numerous latches and heavy door on the trailer. “I think that half the time they say we’re out of something rather than run out to the trailer and get it,” he said.
Certainly, Art has had plenty of other business entrees besides mobile storage. Among the most successful was his toy company, Linkletter Toys, which produced Life, a board game that is second only to Monopoly in all-time sales. That same division also produced a version of the Hula-Hoop 23 years ago that sold almost as well as the original Hula-Hoop made by Whammo Toys.
His book, “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” ranks among the 15 top selling books in U.S. publishing history.
Not all of Art’s investments have been big winners, however. For years, he purchased millions of acres of cheap Australian farmland as if he knew some trade secret. But the land’s value hardly budged, and of the 3 million Australian acres he once owned, he has sold off all but 20,000. “My kids don’t want it, and it’s a long haul down there just to look at property,” he said.
