Five to Watch: Jacob Wedderburn and Anthony Collias, Stasher

Jacob Wedderburn, 24 and Anthony Collias, 23
Company: Stasher
Web: www.stasher.com

Ok, you’ve checked out of your Airbnb and have a few hours to kill before you have to go to the airport. What do you do with that hulking great bag that’s carrying all your worldly goods?

It’s a headache that most of us will be familiar with, as we recall the pain of lugging that baggage around for hours with passers-by looking on in pity and contempt. Some of us might have bitten the bullet and stored our bags in train station lockers – but those who did this will have paid a small fortune for the privilege.

This is where Stasher comes in.

Developed by Jacob Wedderburn and Anthony Collias, it is an online platform that connects people looking to store their bags with businesses that have space to hold them. The company maintains a network of ‘StashPoints’, typically located in hotels, shops and newsagents.

Users are charged only £6 to store their baggage for 24 hours, an extremely competitive price point given the competition, and hosts receive 50% of every booking fee. Collias and Wedderburn say their hosts can earn up to £3,000 a month, as well as gaining countless opportunities to up-sell their products.

The founders proudly reveal that they have established over 600 StashPoints across the UK and Europe in just three years, and have helped store over 100,000 bags so far. They  secured $1.1m in seed funding in January, and are now scaling at a rate of three new cities per month.

By the end of 2018, Collias and Wedderburn says they will have a foothold in all major European cities, and are also expanding into the enormous US market. There are even plans to expand into bag delivery, which would allow customers to drop their bag in one place and collect in another.

Now if someone could somehow invent a service which enables you to jump the queue at the airport taxi rank….