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Whether you live in bustling London, Tokyo, New York or any other too-expensive-for-your-own-good metropolis, chances are the thing you crave most is SPACE. Space management is booming business, and the following three concepts have global appeal. Hold Everything, owned by US-based Williams-Sonoma Inc, who also own Pottery Barn, offers efficient yet stylish products to get your home or office in order. Its customers appreciate the targeted focus, and the sheer number of expected and unexpected solutions. City Closet: this New York-based company has set up a very mobile closet solution for owners of closet-challenged apartments: it will deliver a closet (which you can customize online) to your house, including any packaging materials you may need. You then load off your excess clothes, collectibles, books and what have you, they’ll pick up the movable closet within 24 hours, and store it for you in one of their warehouses. Need something? City Closet will bring back the closet whenever you want them to; (you get two free returns a year to start with). A patent is pending. Manhattan Mini Storage: for a more traditional storage model (yet still not common-place in most of the world), check out Manhattan Mini Storage, whose safe and spacious storage rooms have started doubling as dressing rooms and small business offices for some Manhattanites.

Opportunities

Hold Everything, City Closet and Manhattan Mini Storage cater to true urbanites lacking space and willing to pay for innovative, convenient storage solutions. However, this market is many, many times bigger than the current New York/San Francisco scope: millions of small urban dwellings in Europe and Asia spring to mind!