CASE STUDY George Store-Me Mary Higgins is a real estate agent in George. She started her career in 2012 with an established real estate agency, but in 2018 decided to start her own estate agency. This decision was not taken very lightly, because it involved some risks and a lot of administration that she was not really prepared for. However, she is a hard-working and dedicated person. Soon after her decision to start her own business, she started to experience success. She has now employed five real estate agents in her business and things are going well. In the course of her work of selling and rent- ing homes, she identified a need for storage space. She has done some homework and has identified a business specialising in storage: George Store-Me. Incidentally, the business is in the market. What sets George Store-Me apart from other storage companies - which usually have a small number of anchor tenants - is that it has tenants who each rent a few square meters of storage space. In fact, the average rental is just 10 m of floor space. The business has successfully developed, acquired and managed two self-storage properties for a decade. Rentals are renewed annually with an inflation-plus escalation clause, and this is achieved with an 80,5 per cent occupancy rate. In a time of severe electricity shortages, George Store-Me is in STRATEGY CHOICE 13 a sector that has low power needs, and the com- pany has successfully moved off the grid. Despite a South African economy that has performed dismal- ly, the company has grown its bottom-line income. George Store-Me has reasonable liquidity, with a daily turnover of some R5000 and costs of about R2800. Mary has a week to decide whether she is going to buy George Store-Me for R5 million. This is a fictitious case study. Case study questions 1. What is the main strategy that Mary will implement if she decides to buy George Store-Me? 2. If you were Mary, how would you have evaluated whether your investment would be sound and safe? 3. Buying a business in the same or a differ- ent industry will always put more pressure on a person in terms of management. This decision to diversify requires some serious questions. What are the important ques- tions that need to be considered? 4. Using the payback evaluation tool, what must be the term of her loan? www CORO