Automated Parking

Got an email the other day criticizing me because we are canceling the seminar on automated parking at the PIE convention in Baltimore in September. It went something like "with all the problems the parking industry has with lighting, security, maintenance, and etc, shouldn’t it be looking at an alternative. "Yet, we continue to promote and build…the problems! Self-preservation, perhaps…?"

I am getting tired to the automated parking industry blaming their failure to grow and prosper on the parking industry and on me.

PT attempted to promote automated parking five plus years ago. We ran article after article,  held seminars, did promotions, helped found the Automated Parking Association, and the rest.

The result was nothing, nada, zip. The automated folks didn’t seem to understand that this is a marketing issue, and it’s not the responsibility of the market to cause things to happen.  Its their responsibility.

Automated Parking had an open field, a direction to take, and then fumbled the ball. It’s just that simple. They need to research the market, understand where their product fits, and then sell into that niche. This industry doesn’t need 5000 car mechanical behemoths. What it needs is small, slick automated garages that can fit where no other garage can go.

I was talking to one automated vendor the other day and they said that the perfect location for an automated garage would be a certain area of SF where row houses and apartment have no parking and street parking is difficult and there is very little open land.

I said "Why don’t you simply find a building there that’s for sale, tear it down and put up an automated garage in the style of the surrounding neighborhood then sell spaces like condos?’  The response: "That would be hard."

Its time for this part of our industry to get creative, think outside the box, and sell some systems. If not, you will continue to read about its demise in this blog and in the pages of Parking Today.

JVH