Annexx Brand Guidelines: A Toulouse Self-Storage Firm, Business Service & FEDESSA

An idea from the United States, built in Toulouse.

Annexx is a French self-storage company from Toulouse. Its co-founder Philippe Peyrot came across the idea in the United States, where he was living, Entreprises Occitanie reported in December 2012; the company’s own history page adds that he needed somewhere to keep belongings for a while, discovered self-storage and found the rental terms inflexible. Back in France he brought in his friends Vincent Leygonie and Jean-Charles Latieule, and his sister Sandrine Peyrot joined them, making four partners; the company says they came from property, law, finance and building.

Sources give two founding years. The company’s timeline marks 2002 as the birth of the concept and 2003 as the year Annexx was created, and the Toulouse business paper ToulÉco wrote in August 2008 that the brand was born in 2003 in Toulouse. La Dépêche du Midi, in October 2026, and an Annexx press release of September 2026 both say it was founded in 2002. Le Journal des Entreprises reported in 2011 that Leygonie, a childhood friend of Peyrot, had urged him in the early 2000s to come back and start the business.

The company began in the south-west. By October 2011, Le Journal des Entreprises reported, Annexx had four sites in Toulouse, three in Bordeaux and one each in Perpignan and Pau, and was preparing its tenth at Chassieu, near Lyon, in a building that could eventually offer 6,000 square metres of storage. In 2012 Peyrot described the model to Entreprises Occitanie: the company controlled the land, the construction and the running of its buildings, and offered twenty different box sizes to private and business customers. La Dépêche du Midi noted in 2026 that Peyrot holds an MBA from the University of Connecticut.

Paris, the Riviera and a network for business clients.

Expansion beyond the south-west followed. The company’s timeline puts its spread across France in 2015 and its arrival in Paris in 2017, with later openings at Saint-Herblain near Nantes in 2021, La Trinité near Nice in 2022 and Cannes in 2023. Its about page lists four centres in Toulouse, six in Paris, three in Bordeaux, two each in Nantes, Nice and Lyon, and single centres in cities including Marseille, Montpellier, Orléans and Saint-Étienne. La Dépêche du Midi put the total at 28 company-run centres in October 2026.

Business customers became a second line early. In 2011, the company says, it created Annexx Business Service, a division for professional clients that need storage in several cities under one contract, with a single contact and central billing. Through partner centres the division covers mainland France, Corsica and the overseas departments and territories: the company’s about page counts more than 600 partners, and La Dépêche du Midi gave the figure as 650 in 2026. As early as 2012, Entreprises Occitanie reported, the company offered business addresses, mail handling, meeting rooms, wifi and goods reception around its storage units, and its business arm now also rents offices and coworking space.

The founders remain visible. Peyrot is described as chairman and chief executive in 2026 coverage, and in September 2026 he was elected president of FEDESSA, the Federation of European Self Storage Associations, for a two-year term at its annual congress in Wiesbaden near Frankfurt, according to La Dépêche du Midi and the company. An Annexx release from the same month describes FEDESSA, founded in 2004, as representing more than 11,000 self-storage facilities in Europe. La Dépêche adds that Peyrot is a member of the French self-storage chamber, the CISS.

Design and documentation.

Self-storage is a property business that has to sell itself to people at a moment of change: a move, a renovation, a smaller home or a growing stock of inventory. The way operators present themselves follows from that. The building is the first advertisement, and cladding, roll-up doors and roadside signs can all carry a brand colour. Where a company publishes its building colours or signage system, this guide reports them as the company’s own description.

Online, the category has settled on a familiar set of tools. An operator’s website can lead with a store finder, a unit size guide that explains what fits in each space, a choice of unit types such as heated or drive-up storage, packing supplies and an account page for paying rent and booking. When one owner runs several regional brands, those sites can share a single template, with only the name, the city list and the colours changing, as StorageVault’s Access Storage and Sentinel Storage sites did in November 2026.

Campaigns and characters do the work the buildings cannot. Some operators use mascots, slogans or sports sponsorships to make a functional service memorable; StorageVault, for example, took stadium and broadcast signage with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2023, according to Inside Self Storage. When a guide mentions a mascot or campaign, it says where and when the company used it.

Behind the shop front sits a corporate layer. Some operators are listed companies or real estate investment trusts, or are owned by private-equity firms and family groups, and their investor pages explain store counts, rentable area, acquisitions and listings. Those figures are given here only as a dated source states them, and mergers or takeovers that have not closed are described as pending, with the date they were announced.

A short promise, a booking path and a brand platform under review.

The name usually travels with a short promise. The company calls itself “Annexx, mon box sécurisé” — roughly, Annexx, my secure box — and groups its service standards under a trademarked label, ACE. The home page leads with a centre finder, a box-size simulator and a four-step booking path (choose, book, sign remotely, move in), plus a virtual tour of a unit and an online shop for cartons, covers and bubble wrap with click-and-collect. Boxes run from one to 50 square metres, the company says, with access every day around the clock and a 15-day notice period. The site also points customers to a mobile app and to a referral scheme for friends and family.

The identity itself is being reworked. On 25 June 2026 the French marketing paper CB News reported that, after a pitch, Annexx had chosen the agency Flying Fish to overhaul its brand platform: the visual identity and the brand architecture, across media campaigns, digital channels, signage on the network of centres and the employer brand. The report announced the appointment and did not describe a finished design.

The company also speaks for its sector. In his statement on becoming FEDESSA president, Peyrot described self-storage as part of urban infrastructure, pointing to the housing crunch and the scarcity of city space for households, and to the flexibility it gives businesses without a commercial lease, La Dépêche du Midi reported.

For a design guide, Annexx shows a founder-run regional operator that grew into a national network and is now rebuilding its identity with an outside agency. Compare it with Homebox, the Paris-born network of the Rousselet family group, and with Safestore, whose French business trades as Une Pièce en Plus. For this guide we use a brick red, pale stone and slate palette with a grotesque sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Annexx’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.