Working at a frozen yogurt shop in middle school taught Sam Chason that a minimum wage was not enough of a reward for the hard work involved. So at 14, he began hustling — mowing lawns, selling everything from T-shirts to a BMW online. 
He earned $30 an hour, plus tips, serving gourmet hors d’oeuvres to executives at a catering company. He made enough to save $50,000, which he put in his parents’ safe, before entering Wake Forest University. His entrepreneurial itch would kick into overdrive during his freshman year.
A new cohort of college students finish final exams each May, but face a problem, especially those who live hundreds or even thousands of miles away. They have to depart rooms full of furniture, TVs, refrigerators and personal items, much of which will be needed when classes resume in the fall.
Chason saw the business opportunity while a freshman at Wake Forest, where 80% of the 4,000 students residing on-campus come from outside the state. In 2017, he started Storage Scholars as a solution for classmates to store their belongings over the summer months.
The company served 64 Wake Forest students in the first year. Seven years later, its customer base topped 8,600 students at 73 campuses nationally. They typically pay about $550 for the cost of moving and storage.
Storage Scholars expects revenue to top $5 million this year, versus about $2 million in 2022. On a single day in mid-May, the company handled about 3,000 moves.
Finding motivated staffers, then paying them well, has been critical to the company’s growth, Chason says. It has 13 full-time staffers, up from four a year earlier, and about 1,000 seasonal workers, typically students at the client universities.
Each worker is paid at least $15 per hour, plus tips. For experienced staffers, pay can reach $25 to $27 an hour. Student wages are expected to total $1.75 million this year, up from $1 million in 2022.
Chason credits much of this success to an epiphany moment while working at a frozen yogurt shop near his home in Westchester County, New York. “There are clearly better ways to make money and spend your time,” he says. “Storage Scholars was a natural culmination of doing dirty, sweaty work like lawn mowing, being a handyman, shoveling [snow], and working for a catering company.”
He made even more money as a teenager by “selling things on Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, and garage sales with thousands of items, anything from a T-shirt for 25 cents to a $20,000 BMW M3. I’d find ellipticals for free on Craigslist and sell them for $400, or clean out attics for people and sell things on commission.”
Chason left for Wake Forest with his $50,000 nest egg. Still, it didn’t cover the difference between tuition at Wake Forest and a public school, which is what his parents, both teachers, were on board to pay. The annual cost of attendance at the university, before grants and discounts, now tops $87,000.
Debt-free Ambitions
It only took one visit to Wake Forest for Chason to choose the school. He credits Spry Stadium, the school’s soccer venue, as a factor because of his love for the sport. His only caveat: No student loans.
“I looke
d at how much money I’d saved and figured out how much I’d have to make each year to graduate without debt. It was never a question of taking out student loans. It was always, `What do I need to do to pay off that bill each year.’”
Chason shared his view with classmate Matthew Gronberg, now Storage Scholars’ co-founder and chief operating officer. Hewas earning $7.25 an hour as an intramural referee, and Chason told him, ‘You are never going to pay off school doing that.’”
They built the business by convincing university administrators to make them a preferred service for on-campus residents and their parents. The key was gaining access to dorms at the start and end of semesters, then delivering great service. It typically takes about 100 customers per campus to be profitable, “and still see some meat on the bone for future years,” Chason says.
Storage Scholars provides supplies for students to pack their items, photograph everything, and upload the photos to their account. Company movers then deliver the packed boxes to temperature-controlled storage facilities near campus. When students return for fall semester, Storage Scholars has moved the boxes into their new rooms.
The business launched with a couple of hundred dollars. Customer deposits of $50 covered costs of storage, labor and supplies, Chason says. Putting $10,000 into marketing and infrastructure “would have been throwing money at things when I didn’t know what was going to work.”
Last October, they gained a $250,000 vote of confidence from billionaire Mark Cuban during the CNBC show “Shark Tank.” After the show aired, Cuban asked the company to move his daughter into Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “it’s definitely a relevant problem for him,” Chason says.
Cuban is the company’s only outsider investor, with 10% equity. “We send him updates every week and if I emailed him right now he’d probably answer in 20 minutes; he’s been phenomenal. When we ask questions, he’s like: ‘Figure it out boys.’”
Sweat + Tech
Chason, now 25, aims to serve 150 campuses next spring. He and Gronberg now live in Austin, Texas, for personal reasons. The senior manager at the Winston-Salem office is Chelsea Goodwin, head of business development.
Frank Shelton, director of housing and operations at Wake Forest, says Storage Scholars is the ideal partnership because of its student-centered business model. “It’s Wake Forest alumni providing services done by Wake Forest students for Wake Forest students — it’s a really good fit because they speak the student language better than administrators.”
This year, Storage Scholars handled more than 600 moves at Wake Forest, a 10-fold increase versus year one.
“The best feedback I can have from parents and students is not hearing anything, because the things I hear about are the problems,” Shelton says. “Over the years, any issues with Storage Scholars have been minimal and, if there is a problem, Sam and Matt bring five possible solutions for how to solve it.”
The pandemic tested Storage Scholars, which packed students’ belongings during the mid-semester shut-down in March 2020 and returned them to newly assigned rooms the following fall, or kept them in storage as needed.
Chason was a senior on spring break at that time. “I took a red-eye back and started writing proposals to do body cams and wear haz-mat suits,” he says. Instead of their regular process, which takes a few hours, they walked into rooms filled with personal belongings. Utilizing FaceTime to connect with students, they tackled the task of packing up rooms left unexpectedly. ■
