A public warehouse offers to rent space to businesses, often on a short-term basis. Your business can benefit from a number of advantages provided by public warehouses, such as infrastructure reduction, usage adaptability and reduced costs.

Reduces Your Need for Infrastructure

If you own a warehouse facility, you probably bought it out of pure necessity. The storage demands of your business outstripped the available space in your store or office. Every piece of additional infrastructure comes with numerous demands that range from extra staff to site security. Public warehouses eliminate the majority of those additional demands. Switching to or adopting a public warehouse resembles switching to or adopting cloud-based services, which Forbes says nearly 40 percent of small businesses have done, and for similar reasons. Your business enjoys all the benefits of access to infrastructure but none of the headaches.

Adapts To Your Needs

A warehouse you own costs you money and remains fixed in size regardless of its usage. Public warehouses can adapt to your changing needs. For example, a business that specializes in Christmas-themed items almost certainly experiences additional space demands during the last few months of the year but a smaller and fairly stable demand the rest of the year. With a public warehouse, the business gets to expand their total storage space for the high demand months and scale back the space it uses the rest of the year.

Less Costly

If you buy a warehouse, you choose one based on anticipated peak space usage. That means you end up buying more space than your business needs during non-peak periods, which drives the initial purchase costs up. The business also must pay for any utility, upkeep and property improvement costs, as well as property taxes. If you use a public warehouse, the warehouse owners take responsibility for those costs. Your costs remain confined to the agreed-on rate for the total space you use, which often proves less expensive over the long run. Because public warehouses operate all over the country, you stand to lower your shipping costs by selecting a centrally located facility or one near your main concentration of customers.

Leveraging Specialty

Businesses manage lots of moving parts, from marketing and payroll to human resources and placing orders with vendors. Frequently, businesses outsource much of this work to specialists. Efficient management of a warehouse facility requires a solid understanding of logistics. Employing a public warehouse lets you avoid the necessity of either developing that logistics knowledge or hiring a logistics specialist. A public warehouse already specializes in logistics and logistics systems to maximize the value of the warehouse’s business. You can use that specialization for your benefit.