SmartStop Brand Guidelines: Strategic Storage Trust, an Extra Space Sale & a 2025 NYSE Listing

A trade name before it was a company.

SmartStop is the self-storage brand of SmartStop Self Storage REIT, a self-managed real estate investment trust headquartered in Ladera Ranch, California. The name began as a trade name rather than a company name. In September 2013 Inside Self-Storage reported that Strategic Storage Trust Inc., a publicly registered but non-traded REIT, had more than 100 facilities in 17 US states and Canada, all branded SmartStop Self Storage, and that a newly formed sister vehicle, Strategic Storage Trust II, would put the same trade name on whatever it bought. H. Michael Schwartz was president and chief executive of both.

The trade name became the company name soon after. In April 2015 Inside Self-Storage described SmartStop Self Storage Inc. as the former Strategic Storage Trust Inc., which had become self-managed through a self-administration and investment-management transaction in the autumn of 2014. It then ran 164 facilities in 20 states and Canada, the magazine reported, and it sponsored and managed two further non-traded REITs, Strategic Storage Trust II and Strategic Storage Growth Trust.

That first SmartStop company did not stay independent for long. In June 2015 the storage REIT Extra Space Storage agreed to buy it, and the deal completed on 1 October 2015, a day after SmartStop shareholders approved it, Inside Self-Storage reported. Extra Space took ownership of 122 SmartStop facilities and third-party management of 43 more, and a notice on the redirected SmartStop website said the acquired stores would be updated to the Extra Space look and feel.

The SmartStop name itself stayed with the management side. Immediately before the closing, SmartStop Asset Management LLC was sold to an entity controlled by Schwartz and carried on as sponsor of Strategic Storage Trust II and Strategic Storage Growth Trust, with the SmartStop executive team now employed there, according to the same report.

Canada, race cars and solar panels.

The present company took shape between 2019 and 2021. In January 2019 SmartStop Self Storage REIT completed a merger with Strategic Storage Growth Trust, and in June 2019 it acquired the self-storage advisory, asset-management and property-management businesses of its affiliate SmartStop Asset Management, which made the REIT self-managed, Inside Self-Storage reported in 2019 and 2020. In March 2021 it closed a merger with another REIT it sponsored, Strategic Storage Trust IV, whose properties were already branded SmartStop Self Storage.

In September 2020 Inside Self-Storage reported that SmartStop Asset Management, the affiliate that had run the brand until 2019, had settled a California Department of Insurance matter over tenant-insurance policies sold between October 2017 and July 2019 without a state licence. The company denied the allegations and settled without admitting liability, and said it had changed its procedures.

Canada is a distinct part of the story. Strategic Storage Trust was converting industrial buildings in Mississauga and Pickering, Ontario, into storage by 2013. In July 2018 SmartStop formed a joint venture with the Canadian REIT SmartCentres, under which SmartCentres builds multi-storey storage on its own sites, SmartStop manages the buildings under its brand and ownership is split equally, Inside Self-Storage reported. In its third-quarter 2026 results the company said it and its affiliates owned or managed 70 storage properties in five Canadian provinces.

The brand has also been marketed through sport. In 2015 the company sponsored a professional road-cycling team, Team SmartStop Pro Cycling. In October 2022 it became primary partner of the No. 6 car of the Arrow McLaren SP team in the NTT IndyCar Series, saying it had supported IndyCar for nearly five years; in October 2024 it agreed a multi-year extension that put its branding on four cars from 2025, Inside Self-Storage reported.

Other parts of the brand are operational. In December 2022 the company said the Solar Energy Industries Association’s “Solar Means Business 2022” report placed it in the top 1% of more than 5,000 businesses by number of solar installations and in the top 6% by capacity. In 2025 it bought the third-party manager Argus Professional Storage Management, and in September 2026 it renamed that platform SmartStop 3PM, saying the new name brought the business under the SmartStop brand.

How storage operators present themselves.

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 2025 listing after a 2022 filing.

Listing took two attempts. In April 2022 SmartStop Self Storage REIT filed a registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for an underwritten offering and said it intended to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SMST, Inside Self-Storage reported. The listing came three years later: the company launched its initial public offering in March 2025, its shares began trading on the NYSE on 2 April 2025 under the ticker SMA, and the offering closed the following day. In June 2025 it announced it would join the Russell 3000 index after that year’s annual rebalancing.

Growth since the listing has been quick by the company’s own figures. In March 2025 it owned or managed 218 self-storage facilities in 23 US states, plus 39 storage properties in Canada. In its third-quarter 2026 results, released in November 2026, it reported 475 facilities in 36 states with 36.7 million rentable square feet, plus the 70 Canadian properties, and same-store average physical occupancy of 92.2% for the quarter. Schwartz is chief executive and chairman.

For a design guide, SmartStop shows how a storage trade name can move between corporate owners: it covered more than 100 facilities of a non-traded REIT in 2013, stayed with the management company when its first operating company was sold to Extra Space in 2015, and now spans a listed REIT, a third-party management platform and race-car branding. Compare it with Extra Space, which bought the first SmartStop portfolio, and with Public Storage. For this guide we use a deep blue, an amber and a cool grey with a semi-condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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