Startup Garage 2020: Bagsort
Picture this: You’re going on vacation in another city and want to experience the city to its fullest. You decide to book a short-term rental from a local through AirBnB or a site of the like, with skyline views and a five-minute walk to the city center. You arrive bright-eyed and excited for your new adventure, but your flight came in at 7 in the morning, and your check-in time isn’t until 3pm. You want to explore, but you can’t just abandon your bags in a strange new city.
Enter Bagsort, a short-term luggage storage service that partners with over 100 businesses across Canada and has begun expansion into the United States. Bagsort’s partners will store luggage, bags, or other personal items for a small fee per day, and promise that your bag will be secure at any of their verified Bagsort partner locations.
Jean-Luc Martineau and Ashley Belleau-Dame first conceptualized Bagsort in February 2019. “I found myself in Toronto, and couldn’t check into my AirBnB,” Martineau explains. “I was stuck waiting hours at a coffee shop until I could check in.” That’s when it struck him: local businesses could offer to hold traveller’s bags while they wait for their check-in time. Martineau immediately called his now-business partner Belleau-Dame to propose Bagsort as their newest business venture, which they went on to launch in August 2019.
The Bagsort cofounders originally met through the small business community in Ottawa and quickly became close friends. Martineau and Belleau-Dame were both top franchisees in their own small businesses of window cleaning in Ottawa and lawn care in Gatineau, respectively. “We both have skills that complement each other very well,” Belleau-Dame explains when asked about the choice to work together, “and we’re best friends.”
“Going into business with anybody is like getting into a marriage,” says Martineau. “Once in a while there are disagreements but we have the same vision.”
Since their launch, Bagsort has grown to be in all major Canadian cities including but not limited to Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, as well as Los Angeles and Boston in the United States. They now have over 100 partner companies, including 12 AirBnB Management companies, which they initially recruited by going to businesses door to door in popular Canadian cities. Now, interested companies are able to reach out to Bagsort about potential partnership — there’s no need to wait for Bagsort to come knocking on the storefont’s door.
Bagsort is operated with three core values in mind: trust, commitment, and fun. Storing clients’ personal belongings requires a lot of trust, and they ensure the safety of the belongings with the use of security seals and insurance of up to $3000. Martineau and Belleau-Dame say that they know the pain it can be to store bags whilst travelling, and want to make sure it’s a pain no traveller has to feel again. Though storing personal property is serious business, the co-founders want to make sure all parties involved have fun whilst interacting with Bagsort — they say that all business ventures should be enjoyable, and that Bagsort meets these criteria.
When they look to the future, Martineau and Belleau-Dame say they want Bagsort to be the reference when it comes to luggage and bag storage worldwide. They hope to work with large companies that could refer them to clients, as well as major hotel chains, digital travel companies, and possibly one day even AirBnB. “We want to be the AirBnB of storage,” says Martineau. “Everywhere you are, we want you to have access to bag storage.”
*This feature was published as a part of the Startup Garage Company Series, 2020.
