Life Storage, Inc. is a fully integrated, self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust (REIT) that acquires and manages self-storage properties throughout the United States. Headquartered in Buffalo, New York, the company employs over 1,600 people and operates approximately 700 self-storage facilities encompassing over 45 million square feet in 28 states.

Life Storage was looking for a few critical solutions when it came to their marketing collateral platform service their 700 stores nationally. Since Life Storage has a wide variety of storage solutions, marketing wanted to make a wide variety of feature-based in-store marketing materials available to store managers, and also give them the ability to customize collateral within tight branding guidelines. Further, Life Storage wanted to simplify how they managed store marketing budgets without having to spend several administrative hours managing and tracking each store spend. In order to control costs, Life Storage needed their vendor to consolidate all orders received throughout the month, print and ship all monthly orders at one time and receive one itemized invoice monthly. Finally, print reproduction quality is of primary concern to ensure brand integrity and Life Storage needed a print partner that was able to produce all print items with stringent levels of quality assurance and control.

Chakra implemented OrderStream, a centralized marketing collateral platform from which Store Managers from over 700 stores nationally customize and order a multitude of in-store and mail marketing materials. Inherent to the store are annual spend budgets, products with variable data and credentials-based access to products. Further, Chakra consolidates all orders received throughout the month and applies variable printing, digital printing and sheet-fed offset printing technologies to ensure very high reproduction quality and on-time delivery. Life Storage receives one itemized invoice each month with store and product purchase detail.

With the implementation of OrderStream, Life Storage has been able to manage their aggressive acquisition and growth strategy and support their store managers with an effective and efficient marketing collateral order, production and distribution system. They have been able to simplify the management of diverse print collateral based on store capabilities through the platform. Additionally, consolidating the print production resulted in consistently high reproduction quality, stringent brand management and cost savings.