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18
magazine
The new venture from Brett Akker,
co-founder of the Streetcar car sharing
scheme, aims to shake up the self-
storage market by providing a no-fuss
service with clear pricing, no minimum
storage requirements, no hidden
charges, greater ease of use and free
collection.
LoveSpace charges a flat monthly fee of
£4.95 per box (with discounts for 15 boxes
or more). The price includes the supply of
the box and other packaging materials;
collection from a customer’s premises;
storage in a secure, temperature-controlled
facility; and £100 of insurance cover.
When a customer wants to retrieve a
box, LoveSpace returns it for an additional
charge of £7.95 per box. At the moment,
there are no plans to allow customers to
collect the boxes themselves.
Akker says that LoveSpace is simpler,
more transparent and more convenient
than services offered by other self-storage
providers – qualities it shares with the
entrepreneur’s car club venture, sold to
Zipcar in 2010.
“My view is that LoveSpace is to
traditional self storage exactly what
Streetcar was to traditional car rental. It
has two user benefits: you only pay for
what you use; and it’s totally hassle-free,”
he said.
“With Streetcar you could pay for half
an hour rather than twenty-four hours
and you could get the car from down the
road rather than having to go to a car
rental depot on the outskirts of town.
With LoveSpace, rather than taking a big
unit or going with a storage company
that has a minimum number of boxes and
Storage
Storage made easy
Following a soft launch last summer, storage company
LoveSpace is rolling its service out nationwide, giving
businesses and consumers a hassle-free way to store files,
marketing material, books, CDs, clothes and anything else
cluttering up a home or office.
Levent Çaglar, chief ergonomist for FIRA International Ltd,
makes the case for sit-stand working.
LoveSpace is
simpler, more
transparent
and more
convenient...
Levent Çaglar, chief ergonomist
for FIRA, standing up at his
adjustable height desk.
In his lifetime an average office worker spends
in excess of 80,000 hours or about 10 years
sitting down.
The human body is not designed to sit for any
length of time and is more suited to standing up
or walking, yet many office workers spend 84% of
working time in a seated position, 10% standing and
just 6% moving around.
A number of studies show that extended sitting is
the biggest cause of musculo-skeletal disorders and
back pain in offices. Rodney Graham, Rheumatology
Professor at University College Hospital, London, refers
to this phenomenon as ‘chair disease’ and advocates
standing up for periods throughout the day.
Fifteen years ago I started working in a standing
position for some of the day and have enjoyed
significant health benefits as a result. In particular, I
no longer experience the tiredness that I used to when
I sat down all day, even in well designed chairs. Now
I stand for as much of the day as possible and would
never go back to just sitting.
Alternating between standing and sitting will make
you fitter, as long as you use a desk at the right height.
A surface should be roughly at or slightly lower than
your elbow height when standing, as this will allow
you to work without stooping.
The best solution is to use a desk that adjusts
in height from sitting to standing, but you could
also use a high table or filing cabinet as a work
surface while making notes, using a laptop or sorting
through paperwork.When you work standing up, it is
important also to move around.
Levent heads up FIRA’s Ergonomics Team which
advises businesses on how the use of ergonomic
furniture including sit-stand solutions can improve
employees’ working environment and efficiency.
01438 777 700 [email protected]
www.fira.co.uk/consultancy/ergonomics.
Float is a new sit-stand
desk from ergonomics
specialist Humanscale
minimum fees, you can store one box for
£4.95 a month. And you can do it from the
comfort of your home or office.”
The simplicity of this offering makes
it ideal for individuals wanting to de-
clutter their homes, as well as small
businesses needing to clear space taken
up by documents, old business machines,
promotional materials etc..
The standard service will meet the
needs of most small businesses, but
Akker says that other demands can be
accommodated.
“We have had businesses using us
and saying they would like to have boxes
destroyed at the end of such and such a
year or in five or six years’ time. And we
have a number of companies who use
us to store and distribute promotional
materials.We can pick a box up from
one address, store it and then send it to
another one.We try to come up with
bespoke offerings for business,” he said.
www.lovespace.co.uk
OPINION
Get up, stand up