These days, Alan Mruvka, founder of the E! Entertainment Network, is in the self-storage business. His Jersey-based company, StorageBlue, is headed for a national expansion this year. But he hasn’t completely abandoned showbiz. “The Storage Pirates of New Jersey,” the debut series on the StorageBlueTV’s YouTube channel, features local junk mongers, who come with reality-TV nicknames like “The Gambler” and “The Cuban,” bidding against each other at auctions on abandoned self-storage units. “It’s like Storage Wars meets The Jersey Shore with the personal competition of The Real Housewives thrown in,” says Mruvka. “And the fact that these guys aren’t pretending to dislike each other? You couldn’t cast it better.”
From J.C. to L.A. and Back
The son of Polish immigrants, Mruvka was born and raised in the Bronx and headed to Jersey City after finishing an architecture degree from The University of Miami, “the only school that would take me,” he says. Obsessed with MTV, he dreamed of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter. But he got a hard dose of reality—reality TV, that is.
“My father was in the garment industry and looking for a warehouse, so I came to check out some properties in Jersey City. I stood on the waterfront and took one look at the view, and then looked at all this vast space and beautiful buildings, and I knew this place was something special.” He went on to buy 253 Palisade Ave. and later sell it to the city to become the City Hall Annex. He also bought a string of brownstones in Paulus Hook, a 50,000-square-foot warehouse on Coles Street, and waterfront property, including an old firehouse at 155 Morgan. Fun fact: He eventually sold it to Queen Latifah, who set up shop there with her film production company. (Queen Latifah sold it last spring for $2.2 million.)
One Vision Feeds Another
As a real-estate agent, Mruvka was ahead of the curve. No surprise, then, that at the same time, he was working on an idea that would completely change the entertainment industry. The idea for the E! Network came to him when, as a young, aspiring screenwriter and successful real-estate agent, he was flying back and forth from New York to L.A. to attend workshops on how to break into the business. He heard film company execs bemoan the cost of promoting movies and how limited the options were.
“These companies were spending $50 million to produce a movie,” he says. “Back then, the only way to advertise was in black-and-white local newspaper ads, a couple of weeks before your film premiered. There was no way to protect your investment.”
The lightbulb moment struck when he went home and clicked on MTV, the 24-hour channel of music videos, artist interviews, news, and profiles. “I realized that was the kind of mass platform I wanted to create for the movie industry,” he says. While it took years to sell his idea to potential investors, his early investment in Jersey City kept his dreams afloat. “The whole time I’m working on real estate, I’m trying to get my idea for E! off the ground,” Mruvka recalls. “I’m working here for a week, and flying to L.A. for three weeks trying to figure out how to break in. I was running out of money and realized that my warehouse was sitting empty. So we turned it into storage, and it kept me going until I got investors interested in E!” An audience hungry for details on celebrities, movies, and gossip soon followed, and E! was a breakout success.
In 1992, after 12 years, E! now had more than 1,000 employees and had been acknowledged as the fastest-growing cable network startup. Mruvka had become super-corporate, with little time for creative projects. “I just got really tired of living in a suit,” he says. He was ready to move on. Off came the suit, and a career as a successful TV and film producer followed. Among his credits are the 2000 David Mamet film State and Main and USA Networks’ Pacific Blue (1996-2000).
From Reel to Real
In 2001, Mruvka was restless again and took a clean break from the entertainment world to refocus on real estate and architecture. He spent more than 10 years overseeing major renovation and development projects in Riverside, Calif. Then a struggling enterprise brought him back to the East Coast. In 2012, American Self Storage, a joint business venture with 15 locations, was dissolving, and Mruvka walked away with four storage facilities in Jersey. With another lightbulb moment and the uprooting of another industry, he began building the StorageBlue brand.
“I created StorageBlue because I wanted to turn the self-storage industry on its head and completely disrupt it,” Mruvka says. “I really like the business, but it’s notorious for the worst customer service. And this is for customers who are mostly coming in from a negative situation. Maybe they’re getting divorced, or they’ve lost their job and are forced to downsize. And then they’ve got to pack up their stuff, get it into a truck, and then unload it all again. So we are going to take everything horrible about this experience and make it as painless as possible.” Services include free curbside pickup, the ability to view storage units online and custom-pick the size of the unit, flexible payment dates, and delivery assistance.
Mixing Business with Business
In today’s reality-TV world there’s a limitless connect between entertainment and the everyday. Who better to capitalize on this than Mruvka? At press time, “Flea Market Treasure Hunters” is the next show to premiere on StorageBlueTV. Future offerings include “Celebrity Closets” and “Red Carpet Storage,” in which celebrities on the carpet will be asked offbeat questions about their storage experiences.
But don’t be surprised if a Kardashian shows up. “I’m probably partly responsible for creating this aggressive paparazzi culture,” Mruvka says. “But I am not responsible for Kim Kardashian. When she came along, I was long gone.”—JCM