It’s easy to not be aware of how the products we see on grocery store shelves or other retail stores get from Point A to Point B. As far as most of us are concerned, we walk into the store, choose the items that we need, pay, and leave. However, most of these items have traveled a considerable distance to make it onto the shelves of the stores we frequent and have passed through hundreds of hands. Over 160,000 people work in the storage and warehouse leasing industry — in the United States alone! As more and more industries have become global, the scale of people who make our standard of living possible has also increased. One area that’s crucial to the whole process is the area of commercial warehousing. Commercial warehousing is crucial to business owners and managers who are responsible for the inventory and distribution of goods.
With The Rise of Online Shopping Is Commercial Warehousing Still Needed?
Absolutely! In fact, the demand for commercial warehousing space has grown significantly in the last few years. It’s already an industry that’s worth around $26 billion and from the looks of things, that number is only expected to increase in the next few years. For example, between 1990 and 2003, around four billion square feet of warehousing space was built. Yet the demand for storage space has been growing at an annual rate of over 7%. Warehouse development is growing in demand, as has speculative building. Over 60% of the almost 60 million square feet that was being built in 2013 was being created without the sure possibility of tenants.
And since 2000, the number of distribution and warehouse space that is currently occupied has grown by over 85%! In part, this is due to the rapid rise of e-commerce, which is expected to continue to grow at a 10% rate over the next five years. In turn, this will open doors for people who own and develop warehouse and distribution space to possibly expand or lease out more of their available space. Over the next five years, it’s projected that retailers (both online and offline) will require around 25 million more square meters of extra space to adequately store and deal with everything they’re selling.
What’s Accomplished Within a Commercial Warehouse?
At its most basic, an industrial warehouse space allows companies to store their goods until they can be moved to the various locations where they’ll be sold all across the company. For food or other temperature sensitive items, these warehouses can also be temperature controlled, extending the life of the product they’re trying to sell. Without temperature controlled warehouses, many of the perishable items we see in grocery stores wouldn’t make it from their destination points. These warehouses are also kept up to food-grade sanitation, to ensure that products are ready for human consumption upon arrival.
Inventory and stock control also happens here, as well as tracking the inventory. Barcoding and other packaging can also go on here. The goods get packaged into individual orders for various stores or chains across the company and are packed up into those categories. It’s from these warehouses that delivery trucks pick up their wares and head out across the country to deliver.
Why Should Business Owners Consider Finding a Warehouse to Rent?
Renting a warehouse can be a major step for business owners. It allows them more space to expand and store their goods — important if their demand is increasing — and gives them a more sophisticated space to do inventory and track their product. By leasing a warehouse, they’re also not committed to that warehouse space should they need to find a larger space later on down the road or should they require less space. It’s certainly a sign of success for them, that they have enough demand to justify leasing a warehouse space!
Warehouse and distribution spaces are incredibly important to everyday lives, even if we may not recognize it. Business owners rely on the efficiency and helpfulness of these spaces every day to help get the goods they produce out into the world.