Contact: Erin King, Executive Director
Phone: (949)783-4130
E-mail: erinking.cssa@gmail.com
Like a Fine Wine, CSSA’s Napa Gathering a Big Hit
NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA — May 31, 2013 — If you want to put on a successful gathering for self storage owner/operators, you might want to do it the way the California Self Storage Association did in early May. First, find a compelling location – Napa Valley is about as good as it gets. Second, have a strong program. Third, make it fun – a bocce ball tournament to raise money for Kure It Cancer Research is a great way to go.
So it was from May 1-3 that the CSSA hosted the 2013 West Coast Self Storage Owners Conference at the Westin Verasa in Napa California. The event was a sellout, with 200 people attending the three-day event (75 per cent of which were owners). The keynote speaker was Hugh Horne, president and CEO of Horne Developments, Inc. Topics of the conference included: transitioning your family business from one generation to the next, Affordable Care Act information, post consumer mindsets and employment law updates.
"I believe the success of our event has two major components – location and content,” said Erin King, executive director of the California Self Storage Association. "We worked hard this year to ensure all our events content was timely and relevant. With presentations on the Affordable Care Act, employment laws and the challenges of transitioning your family business to the next generation, we created an agenda that many operators didn't want to miss or felt they couldn't miss.”
Karen Jones, the director of Kure It Cancer Research was equally thrilled with the gathering.
"We are grateful to the CSSA and its members for their enthusiastic participation in the first ever Bocce for a Kure tournament,” Jones said. "Everyone from the bocce players to the event sponsors contributed to make it a fun networking opportunity that raised over $5,000 for underfunded cancer research.
"We are very close to reaching the $2 million milestone in funds raised through Kure It, and the CSSA event brought us that much closer. With the success of this inaugural tournament, we look forward to making this an annual event.”
In fact, the post-conference survey of individuals who attended included quotes like "great hotel & reception area, excellent location and well organized -- great for networking” from one attendee and "First-class event, wonderful job, Erin! Would like to see it back in Napa again next year” from another. The survey also indicated that future CSSA gatherings should focus even more on owners with 10 or less facilities.
King was pleased with the way the event went, especially considering that it was a chance for Northern Californians to gather for a few days of networking, learning and having fun.
"This was the first multi-day event in Northern California that the CSSA has hosted in over six years,” King concluded. "The conference was well received by local members and many of our Southern California-based members made the trip too.”
For more information about the CSSA and its efforts, please visit www.californiaselfstorage.org.
About The California Self-Storage Association
Founded in 2002, the California Self Storage Association (CSSA) is the state not-for-profit trade organization dedicated to serving the California Self-Storage industry including owner-operators, facility managers and industry vendors. The CSSA represents some 450 direct member companies that own and operate over 1,200 facilities in California. CSSA direct members range from individual facility owner-operators to multiple-facility operations, to the industry's largest publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).
About Kure It
Kure It is a non-profit organization whose mission is to raise money for research specialists conducting innovative projects to better treat and ultimately cure kidney cancer and other cancers. Founded by self-storage industry veteran Barry Hoeven after his kidney cancer diagnosis, Kure It has raised over $1 million for research since 2007. www.kureit.org
