Year-end peak: Black Friday and Christmas without a warehouse

Do you sell online, run a shop in the narrow streets of Petit Bayonne or sew your own designs in a workshop in Anglet? Come late October, the same story plays out. Supplier orders almost all land in the same week, Black Friday empties a good part of the shelves in a single weekend, and Christmas keeps things going right up to the evening of the 24th. Meanwhile, the boxes take over the living room, the hallway, sometimes even the boot of the car. Then January comes and everything drops off at once. Signing up for a warehouse to get through a single quarter is rarely a good deal. A self-storage unit in Bayonne, taken for the season and then downsized or handed back, fits that up-and-down rhythm far better.

Three months of boxes, and a home bursting at the seams

You expect the volume. What people underestimate is everything else it throws off balance. Here is what shopkeepers and online sellers from across the BAB area (Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz) tell us when they come through our door at this time of year.

• The stock arrives before the customers do. To avoid running out on 15 December, you order early, often as soon as October. Then you spend weeks on end living among stock you haven't sold yet.
• The back room is the size of a cupboard. On the shopping streets of central Bayonne, stockrooms are rarely generous. Squeezing in the surplus, the Christmas displays and the rolls of wrapping paper turns into a game of Tetris.
• The kitchen becomes a shipping station. Tape on the table, labels on the sofa, a pile of parcels against the front door: after three weeks, nobody at home can stand it any more.
• A commercial lease ties you in for years. Signing a standard French 3-6-9 commercial lease for a three-month peak means paying for premises that sit idle the rest of the year.
• Damp is unforgiving. Textiles, stationery, candles, cosmetics, kraft packaging: at the back of a cellar or a poorly ventilated garage, a Basque winter leaves its mark. And a stained box no longer sells.

At Les Pontots, a stockroom you open in November and close in January

The idea fits in one sentence: the surplus leaves your home or shop, and you only keep at hand what is going out that week. As a seasonal stockroom, our Bayonne Les Pontots storage facility has a real advantage. It sits on the edge of town, close to the main roads rather than the narrow lanes of the centre: you park right outside the building, load the car and off you go.

• No commercial lease. The contract runs for one month minimum, then month to month. You start it in the autumn and hand the unit back once things calm down, giving 15 days' notice.
• A storage unit that keeps pace with your sales. Moving to a bigger or smaller unit during your rental is free. So you can go large in November and scale down in January.
• Hours that suit shopkeepers. At Les Pontots, the units are accessible from 6am to 10pm every day, Sundays included. Plenty of time to restock before opening, or to get the parcel drop-off ready after closing.
• Your stock, and nobody else's. Each unit is a private space in a clean, ventilated building, with CCTV, a fire alarm, electronic locks and a personal access code.
• Heavy lifting without breaking your back. Trolleys and hand trucks are free to use, and the goods lift is self-service.
• Nothing complicated on the accounting side. For a company, the VAT on the rental can be reclaimed. And if you need an address for your business, company domiciliation is available at Les Pontots.

To open an account in a company's name, bring the director's ID, a K-bis (the French company registration extract) and your bank details (RIB).

Laure, Basque linen and evening parcels

Laure sells table linen and Basque canvas bags through her online shop, from a flat in the Saint-Esprit district. Last year, by All Saints' Day, rolls of fabric and shipping boxes had swallowed up the spare room. She took a storage unit at Les Pontots for the season, put up two sets of shelves and goes there three evenings a week to pack orders before heading to the parcel pick-up point. In mid-January she switched to a smaller unit, just enough to keep unsold items and packaging until spring.

Inside the unit: organise it to ship fast

A badly organised unit is one you end up rummaging through. In the week of 20 December, moving three boxes to reach the fourth costs you late orders. A few habits are all it takes to avoid that.

• Three zones, no more. At the back, the reserve you rarely touch. In the middle, the lines that sell. By the door, a packing corner with tape, labels and empty boxes: you walk in, pick, pack.
• Use the height. Units at Les Pontots offer 2.5 m of ceiling height. Metal shelving makes the most of that space without stacking boxes until the bottom ones get crushed. Keep heavy items low: paper, glass and books add up fast, and stored weight is limited to 300 kg per m³.
• Lidded crates rather than open boxes. Stackable, they keep the dust out and can be moved with one hand. One crate per product, or per product family if your range is wide.
• A label you can read from the aisle. Product name, size or colour, date received, written large on the visible side. You find things without lifting anything.
• First in, first sold. New batches go behind the older ones, especially for candles or cosmetics. Perishable goods, on the other hand, have no place in a storage unit: chocolates and fresh products stay in the shop.
• Visits at set times. Two or three slots a week, lined up with your shipping days, save you improvised back-and-forth trips.

And once the holidays are over? Take stock of what's left. If the unsold items, displays and spare packaging fit into less space, ask for a smaller unit. If everything can go back to the shop, let the team know 15 days before the date you hand the unit back.

October, the right time to book

The peak gives no warning, but you can get ahead of it. A booking made online gives you access to your unit within 15 days at most, the length of the cooling-off period. Signed on site, it gives you access straight away. Either way, it pays to get organised before the big supplier deliveries: during October, early November at the latest. Online booking needs no bank card. Not sure about the size? Call the team: they will help you turn your number of boxes into square metres.

A word on insurance: it is compulsory, with cover of at least €5,000. If your business policy already covers goods stored away from your premises, that may be enough, so check with your insurer. Otherwise, we take it out for you, with cover set to match the value of your stock at the height of the season.

Further reading

• Small businesses: 5 signs it's time to rent a storage unit
• Selling on Vinted or Leboncoin: where to store your stock in the meantime
• Work out the right storage unit size for your volume of goods

• A storage unit taken for the holiday season, with no commercial lease: one month minimum, then month to month.
• Access at Les Pontots from 6am to 10pm every day, with parking right outside the building.
• Three zones in the unit: reserve, fast-moving lines, parcel packing.
• Shelving, lidded crates and visible labels to find every product.
• In January: a smaller unit at no extra cost, or 15 days' notice to hand it back.
• Reclaimable VAT and company domiciliation available at Les Pontots.

Are the Christmas boxes starting to eat into your living room? Book your storage unit at Les Pontots before the big deliveries arrive, or call our team in Bayonne: we'll help you pick the right size to get through the holidays without living among the boxes.