Crisis Management: Auburn people helping Auburn people. 

A startup business’ entrepreneurial spirit shows how the spirit of Auburn is always present when you need it the most.

There are moments, days, and seasons that mark our memories forever. For a recent high school graduate, there is nothing quite like seeing the Auburn city limit sign and the growing anticipation of pulling onto campus with a packed car on move-in day. You’ve planned all summer – shelves, cubbies, rugs, comforters, drapes, mirrors, art, flags, headboards, baskets – it seems the details are endless. You’ve planned all summer, but your parents have planned for 18 years.

It is a hard day, but a good one. It’s a rite of passage, and it’s emotional. Girl moms are exhausted and overjoyed with the decorating and boy moms are usually excited if they get to hang a flag. Dads have moved heavy items, been up and down ladders, and assembled as many items as on a Christmas Eve when their freshman was a toddler. Then, when the work is done, parents try to keep a smile on their face while students take their first deep breath of freedom as they watch their parents drive away. 

Yes, it is emotional for sure, but a special day and a day the Auburn community looks forward to every year.

In Auburn, we love our college kids and take them and their families into ours.  And while those who call the loveliest village home surely enjoy the slower summer days, by the end of July, the energy the students bring to town is not only welcome, but it has also been sorely missed. We wouldn’t trade it because to us, the college student is the very heartbeat of what makes our community special.

So, when a dorm closure threatened to sidetrack the move-in and first Auburn experience for 300+ incoming freshman, it was only natural for a young Auburn-based company, Room2Room Movers, to offer to help.  Led by a team of recent Auburn graduates and staffed by current Auburn students, the team was ready to serve.  That is the norm for Room2Room Movers.  They’ve built a company culture of service to others. 

“Honestly, saying yes isn’t always possible. In fact, we were sold out and our college moving services were fully booked when the Cambridge Dorm issue occurred. We had been managing moves for nearly 100 days in a row from early May to mid-August.  Our movers were exhausted and looking forward to starting classes and catching up with friends who had gone home for the summer,” said Brooks Fuller who is a recent graduate of Auburn and founder of Room2Room Movers. “But when we got the news that Cambridge may not be open for students on move-in day, and that those students would need help moving and storing their items until a new rental could be found, I simply asked our team, ‘who is in to help?’”

From there, the yes’s started to roll in.  Savanah Morgan, yes.  Hunter Weston, yes.  Mike Hayes, yes.  Merrell Bowden, yes.  And the many movers that would be required – Gage Palmer, Manning Smith, Trent Waldrop, Wyatt Raley, Cruz Godoy, Ryan Dearing, Lucas Schelhammer, Dell Sikes, Carter Gay, and Phillip Russell – yes, upon yes, upon yes. And the list goes on.

“Every member of the team said yes to doing whatever had to be done to take care of our incoming freshman students”, Fuller said. “In fact, the team actually got excited about it. We started calling them ‘the Cambridge Crew.’ It almost felt like they were stepping in to save the day for these displaced students and their families.  That’s what the Auburn family does.  We wanted to take care of them and make the best out of an unforeseen rocky start for our fellow students’ semester.” 

“I knew Room2Room was up for the task”, said Hunter Weston, Director of Operations. “We have the planning experience and logistically we knew what needed to be done.  It was simply an issue of recruiting enough student manpower to manage such a massive amount of property and acquire the additional warehouse space to store it within a very short window of time. Which we managed to execute faster than anybody really expected.” 

It was a great experience for Room2Room.  “As a young company, we were able to test ourselves”, said Fuller.  “In less than 48 hours, the Room2Room team created a plan to address the needs of students’ who would not be able to move into Cambridge Hall, presented it to the University, secured new warehouse space for storage, recruited, hired, and trained additional manpower, and prepared to make three moves, every 30 minutes, for nine straight hours over the course of the 4–5-day window afforded to the displaced students.  This volume of support -54 moves per day – was in addition to the moves already on the books for college move-in season.”

Room2Room Packers were onsite by hour 72 from first notice of the challenge.  They were already beginning to box and label each student’s belongings for care during the storage period. Brooks had also met with an Auburn Alum and local businessman who agreed to step in and assist with warehousing.  He provided Room2Room a short-term lease on a nearby warehouse with immediate occupancy.

“An area of importance for us is to always price our college services in a way that’s affordable to any college student,” said Mike Hayes, Chief Financial Officer, “Room2Room partnered with the University, and they were able to offer the moving and storage services as complementary to any Cambridge student affected by the crisis. That was huge!”

Room2Room’s goal was to say yes to all requests until each student affected was settled.  “We extended our workdays, hired additional movers and pulled in other staff to assist with the moves” said Savanah Morgan, Chief of Staff, “In less than 72-hours a plan was in place and Cambridge moving and storage services had begun. It was an all-hands-on deck exercise until the last student was moved into their new place.”

“The coolest part for me,” said Manning Smith, an Auburn native and current mover for Room2Room, “was to witness the relief on parent’s and student’s faces as we delivered their items back to their new apartments and houses. One parent told me ‘This was her last time coming to town for move-in. Room2Room can handle it from here’. To me, that’s a testament to the convenience and culture Brooks and his peers have built during their short tenure at Auburn.”

“Crises come, and unforeseen things happen,” Fuller said, “But I’m an Auburn man. My team grew up here, we went to school here, we were raised to know that when crises occur in Auburn, the Auburn family rallies around each other. That’s what we did here, no more, no less, and I was so happy to see our team, made up of majority college students and a lot of guys who grew up in Auburn like I did, rise to the occasion, and serve our community.”

Somewhat ironically, it was a dorm related crisis that led to the founding of Room2Room Movers.  In the spring of 2020, Brooks Fuller, his brother, Brady, and his mom, Lori, voluntarily retrieved students’ belongings trapped in dorms during the COVID-19 pandemic, packing and shipping them as far as California. They weren’t movers, they were just good Auburn people, doing what Auburn people do – looking for a way to help. (Read story HERE.)

One year later, Brooks, then a junior pitcher for the Auburn University baseball team began to get texts and phone calls asking for help moving students at the end of the Spring semester. He was a student-athlete, not a mover.  But as the calls continued to roll in, he thought, ‘maybe I can be a mover’, and from there his entrepreneurial spirit kicked in.  He added entrepreneurship studies to his finance major and began competing in business idea pitch competitions to raise startup capital. From there, he began to recruit fellow students to build out his company and his brand.  “Students moving students,” said Fuller. 

Not only was this new business venture a great way for student movers to earn money to help pay for school and extracurricular activities, but it was also a great way to ensure parents that the movers coming in and out of the daughter’s and son’s dorm rooms and apartments were people they could trust and feel safe with. 

Now three years later and thousands of moves behind them, this young team of Auburn students and recent graduates came through again by combining their entrepreneurial spirit with their love for Auburn to create a crisis management plan with the only goal being, “How can we help.”  That is who Brooks Fuller is and that is the way every member of the Room2Room team operates.

It is a certainty that even with the best laid out plans something unforeseen can happen.  The Cambridge case was a difficult situation for everyone involved, but once again, we were reassured that the Auburn spirit is alive and well, and that when such unforeseen circumstances occur, the Auburn Family will be ready to kick into high gear to make things happen.

In this crisis, Room2Room Movers combined their entrepreneurial spirit with the spirit that is Auburn and that culture resulted in an unselfish resolve to take care of fellow Auburn students. They stepped up to the plate and didn’t quit until the job was done. They simply did what Auburn people always do.

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To learn more about Room2Room Movers, click HERE.

Note: Room2Room Movers is a tenant at Auburn University’s New Venture Accelerator.  To learn more, visit www.nva.auburn.edu or contact Lou Bifano, Director, at loubifano@auburn.edu.