Authorized Montel Distributor spotlight: Brent of Storage Systems USA

Brent Atwood, owner and president of Storage Systems USA, is the kind of leader who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty. On any given day, it’s a coin toss whether he’s in a sales meeting or on the loading dock hauling in the latest shipment from Montel.

(If you knew Brent, you’d expect nothing less. He enjoys the outdoors—hunting, fishing, snowmobiling—and coaching his son and daughter at baseball and softball.)

Storage Systems became an Authorized Montel Distributor in 2010, around when Brent became the company’s vice president of sales. Four years later, he bought the company from the family friend and fishing buddy who hired him right out of college.

Up until that time, Brent and the Storage Systems team had worked with another big name in high-density storage, but out of a desire to expand their presence in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, they decided to weigh their alternatives. When they took a look at the catalog of Montel storage and racking innovations, they were blown away by the technology.

“Montel’s electronics in their mobile systems were worlds beyond what we saw in the industry,” Brent said. (And that was more than ten years ago!)

Montel has been by Storage Systems side ever since, like when Brent and his team wooed a persnickety high-end retailer in New York City. After countless mock-ups and a tour with the client through our factories in Canada, Storage Systems clinched this sizable project—which would only prepare them for the largest storage installation they’ve managed to date.

When a world leader in the aerospace industry sought to furnish their facility in Virginia with heavy-duty industrial powdered mobile storage, Storage Systems sent out their knowledgeable and experienced installation team to deliver on the contract. When they later moved their facility, it was the same Storage Systems team that packed it all up, brought it to the new space, and reassembled everything. Brent is looking forward to the completion date, which is set for late May, early June 2021.

“SAFERAK is my favorite Montel product,” Brent said. “It’s a true industrial system. There’s nothing like it on the market.”

With the $2.7 million project nearly under his belt, Brent is amazed at how far his team has come. His stewardship has helped lead the company into a future that many said would never exist.

“Fifteen years ago, they said paper was going away,” Brent said, reminiscing about a time when Storage Systems focused almost exclusively on file storage. “Our world was going to be turned upside down.”

So Storage Systems went all in on a plan to broaden their reach in other markets. If the world was digitizing, then they needed to go after industries and clientele that had more complicated storage and racking needs.

“Athletic equipment storage won’t go away,” Brent said. “That can’t go digital. Evidence in a police department, that can’t go digital. Artifacts in a museum can’t go digital.”

Montel’s diverse catalog of storage solutions gave Storage Systems the strength and flexibility to approach these new markets with great products and a reputation for excellence that can’t be beat. Because at the end of the day, Brent knows that even though what you store may change, businesses will always want to maximize the space they have. It’s just a matter of finding the right partnership and equipment for the job.

“Nobody knows they need storage,” Brent said. “Storage is never on top of an architect’s list of things to add to a facility. But whether the economy’s good or bad, storage is always there. It’s never going away.”