Three days. 707 delegates. One full unit build at Stand 6.
From 22 to 24 September 2026 the European self-storage industry met in Wiesbaden for the FEDESSA Conference & Trade Show, known as BoxtoberFest. S4S Nordic took part as Gold Sponsor and exhibitor.
FEDESSA is the Federation of European Self Storage Associations. Its annual conference brings operators, investors, developers and suppliers together in one place. This year over 700 registered delegates from 300 companies came to the RheinMain Congress Center. 70 companies exhibited.
We design, manufacture and install self-storage systems. One partner from design to installation. BoxtoberFest is where we meet the people who run these facilities every day.
BoxtoberFest opened on Tuesday 22 September. In the afternoon delegates joined a guided tour of MyPlace and Shurgard facilities with product and technology presentations on site. Walking through live facilities gives every later conversation a shared reference. We also had a stop at one of the country’s most popular wine tasting destination, Schloss Henkel.
In the evening the group moved to Kloster Eberbach in the Rheingau for the welcome dinner. Cistercian monks founded the monastery in 1136 and it sits among Riesling vineyards. It also served as a filming location for The Name of the Rose. Good food and fine wine made it an easy place to start talking.
Wednesday opened with the big picture. Jörg Rocholl gave an independent read on where the economy is heading in a period of growing uncertainty across Europe. Growth. Inflation. Interest rates. Jobs. Consumer confidence. His aim was to cut through the noise and show what the next 12 months may hold for strategic, operational and investment decisions.
Then the industry held up a mirror. The annual industry report was launched, looking back at the past year and ahead at the market. Callum Paddock of CBRE, Craig Mason of PITHOS, Jorinne De Bruyn of Storo, Paola Barraza of FEDESSA and Simon Forrester of SSA UK took the audience through it.
Next came one person’s story. Nine years after she last sat in a FEDESSA audience in Germany, Janine Krakow of storemore stood on the stage. Her story started with three small sites and no funding. It ran through risk and resilience and a habit of asking bold questions. She ended with her view on where the German market goes from here.
Then the view widened to four continents. Four operators. Four very different routes to the top of their markets. Federico Rölz built Mr.[B] Self Storage across five Latin American countries from the ground up. Sam Kennard spoke for Kennards Self Storage. Chris Oosthuizen of Stor-Age Property REIT brought the listed-REIT perspective from South Africa and the UK. John McGlynn of Scottish Capital, which owns Storage Vault, Lockup and Covault, has taken his business beyond storage into flexible and micro workspace. Together they compared growth strategies and capital models and asked what comes next.
After that the focus turned forward. Ollie Saunders asked how self-storage can stay a resilient asset class while digitisation, new formats and new operators reshape the sector and institutional investors look for scale. The session drew on the Savills database, which maps supply against ten demand metrics across major European cities. The numbers behind the question: more than 30 new stores in the pipeline in London alone and several cities where supply is set to grow by more than 20%. Can the market absorb all that space?
Then came regulation. The first US self-service storage act passed in the late 1970s. Today a version of it applies in 49 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. It defines the relationship between owner and occupant and sharply limits operators’ liability. In an interview format the session looked at how the US Self Storage Association built this through proactive advocacy and what may be heading across the Atlantic to Europe.
Alongside the sessions the trade show ran in the exhibition hall.
The S4S truck was one of the most distinctive features of the exhibition area. Its futuristic design and unconventional format drew attention throughout the event and made it a natural meeting point for customers, partners and industry colleagues.
It also served as a compact showcase of selected components from the S4S self-storage system, giving visitors a closer look at the materials, details and solutions behind our installations. The focus was on the latest addition to our range: the Secure+ door, developed for greater security and durability.
Beyond the products, the truck offered an informal setting to reconnect with familiar faces and build new relationships.
Chosen components:
One product on the stand carried extra weight this year. Our Smart Soffit System is a finalist for the FEDESSA Innovation Award 2026.
Being named a finalist is recognition from the industry itself. We will find out in due course whether it goes further.
After a full day on the show floor we co-hosted Lagerfest at the Ratskeller in Wiesbaden. Our partners Digital First, Kinnovis, sedisto and STREPPEL hosted it with us.
The tagline says it all: Where Lager meets Lager. Food, drink and music in a relaxed setting. Doors opened at 7pm and guests collected their wristbands at our booths during the day. Local German cuisine was on the menu. Guests in full lederhosen or dirndl were in the running for a best-dressed prize.
Thank you to our co-hosts and to everyone who came.
Ken Hughes returned to the FEDESSA stage after his keynote in Berlin. His message: self-storage is rarely about square metres. It is about life in motion.
People come to a storage operator at moments of change. A move. A downsizing. A growing business. A divorce. A new baby. A loss. None of these is a neutral transaction. In a digital-first market where booking is easy and comparing is instant, the unit only gets you into the game. The experience decides who wins.
Hughes explored how operators can move beyond the transactional rental toward what he calls Customer Intimacy. That means customer journeys that offer more than safety and security and create a sense of community and belonging. People forget the unit size. They remember how they were treated.
For a supplier like us that lands too. Walls, doors and locks set the stage. The experience is what fills it.
The FEDESSA European Self Storage Awards 2026 brought the industry together for the awards dinner. S4S Nordic sponsored the Marketing Campaign of the Year award. It went to storemore for “Space is not a Product, Space is a Solution”. Janine Krakow had told the company’s story on the conference stage. Congratulations to the whole storemore team.
Thank you to FEDESSA for organising the event. Thank you to our partners and to everyone who stopped by Stand 6.
S4S Nordic is a Nordic-based manufacturer and supplier of durable, high-quality self-storage systems, trusted by operators and developers across Europe. Our range covers fully customizable self-storage systems, electronic-lock-ready doors, LED lighting and fire-rated mezzanines (R30, R60), complemented by design, installation and lifecycle support. Every solution is backed by a 10-year product warranty and made from sustainable materials sourced primarily from trusted EU suppliers.
For everything that runs on top of the system, we work with a network of specialists:
Electronic locks and access control: Keynexis, sedisto, Sensorberg, PTI and KISS.
Facility management and booking software: Kinnovis, Stora and Sharefox.
Installation: our own site teams, supported by our installation partner ADROL.
Several of these companies were in Wiesbaden with us, on stage, in the exhibition hall and at Lagerfest. One partner for the build. A trusted network for everything that runs on top of it.
The next FEDESSA conference takes place in Rome in 2027. Until then we are only a message away. Planning a new facility or upgrading an existing one? Get in touch via s4snordic.com or start with our configurator at s4snordic.com/configurator.
Shape the future of self-storage with us.
