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🎉 Coworking celebrations.
🎂 Piloto 151 turned 10!! #
Huge congrats, and thanks, to the Piloto 151 team for a decade of creating space, places and support for your communities in Puerto Rico.
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Coworking news & views.
✌️ Two flex brands land on Entrepreneur magazine’s 2024 Franchise 500 ranking #
Vast Coworking Group‘s brands Intelligent Office and Venture X made Entrepreneur magazine’s 2024 Franchise 500 ranking, recognizing outstanding performance in unit growth, financial strength and stability, and brand power.
Intelligent Office came in at #436 and Venture X at #463, with both brands having appeared on this prestigious ranking for multiple years. This year’s ranking was one of the most competitive assessments in the list’s 45-year history, according to those in the know.
Given the ranking is topped by firms like Taco Bell, Dunkin’ and Hampton by Hilton, this is a strong signal to the power of franchising in coworking.
📰 The next generation have a savvy playbook… #
… to be where people actually want to be. This piece by Fast Company, looks at how suburban coworking is growing, benefiting both workers and their neighborhoods.
The piece explores stories like Laetitia Gorra’s "micro-coworking space" called the Studio in New York’s Westchester County, Serendipity Labs‘ seeing of growing demand in suburban markets, TailoredSpace’s plans to double their suburban portfolio in Southern California, IWG‘s and Industrious‘ continuous suburban expansions, and the UK’s Patch launching spaces on main streets in suburban centers and small towns.
📼 Ad spot pokes fun at future of work “plans” #
HP’s latest ad spot titled "Navigate the Nonsense" pokes fund at how differing, and constantly confusing, workplace strategies are across different companies.
It’s fun and does highlight the frustration many employees must be feeling… but could someone at HP please turn off the whole ‘printer-as-a-subscrption’ business model thing now. That’d be great!
🦍 Gotta love a good IRL guerilla marketing campaign #
Jonny Rosenblatt shares spacemade‘s (eco-friendly) Work Near Home marketing campaign. The firm hung humorous and eye-catching little tags around their neighborhoods, leading whoever grabbed them to a free coffee in this South London workspaces.
I’m a sucker for a good guerilla marketing campaign, and hope this inspires others to give hyperlocal campaigns a try. Oh yea, the tags are biodegradable, made from recycled paper and even the elastic bands are natural and also biodegradable.
🏡 Thriving in Small Town Coworking with Megan from Locally Known #
Megan Cyphers opened Locally Known Cowork, the first coworking space in the small town of Sequim, Washington with a population just over 8,000 people. The team at Optix share lessons she’s learned in opening a rural hybrid coworking space and advertising agency. In summary? Lots of educating, repositioning from luxury to necessity, investing in the little things, sources of inspiration, and that coworking can exist anywhere.
🤗 Advice to landlords left holding suddenly-vacant WeWork space #
A post in Commercial Observer reminds landlords who may get left holding suddenly available ex-WeWork spaces, that flex space demand is still worth taking another look at. The piece looks at the over 1.5M sqft of vacant office space created by the flex space firm.
"Vincent Altieri, a partner in Citrin Cooperman’s Real Estate Industry Practice, highlights one conclusion to be taken from all of this – landlords who find themselves with suddenly available space due to WeWork’s bankruptcy can look into the option of leasing at least part of the space as flex space to capture some of the market share that WeWork is leaving behind."
The piece goes on to tell landlords, who are brave enough to run flex spaces themselves that there’s tech and a new Urban Land Institute-affiliated group dedicated to "advocating for and elevating the conversation around shared office/coworking space and the tenant experience". For all the other landlords, I personally know 3-4 amazing flex operators, some who even own buildings themselves, who would love to support you. Reach out and I’ll introduce you.
✅ Guide to crafting a coworking space brand #
An easy-to-follow six-part guide for coworking spaces exploring or embarking on their brand-building journey.
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💻 Coworking technology.
🤑 Operator sees an 850% increase in rev with dynamic pricing #
Werqwise recently ran a pilot program with Flexspace to try out dynamic pricing. The results are pretty interesting, with Ramsey Salah-Mars noting that they saw an 960% increase in the number of meeting room bookings, equating to an 850% increase in quarterly revenue.
Niiice!
📲 Another booking platform leans into day offices #
Hayri Demirçapa shares that FlowSpace have also added booking of private day offices to their platform.
This increasingly popular product type sits alongside ‘traditional’ flex space access, and next to on-demand bookings of things like meeting rooms and hot desks, and can be seen popping into more and more booking platforms.
💰 The platform acquisition spree continues! #
The Instant Group have acquired officespace(.com) to further expand its global marketplace for flexible workspace.
The announcement mentions that the acquired platform has 300,000 commercial listings that will be added to the Instant’s ‘global platform’, but still no news on how all these platforms will be merged, and how this will/may/could benefit operators listed on any/all of them.
Coworking data.
📑 Supply on rise, prices drop and HQ joins biggest operator list #
Researchers at CoworkingCafe leveraged their most recent proprietary data (from December) to break down the stock availability in the 25 largest markets, their size and distribution, as well as the leading coworking operators. They also compared the most recent numbers to those registered in the third quarter of 2023 to determine the evolution of coworking throughout the US.
In short: Average Virtual Office pricing came down to $119 from $125. Open workspaces remained steady at median of $149, dedicated desks came down to $322 from $329.
The number of US spaces (on their platforms) went up 1.28% to 6,251 from 6,172 in Q3. LA surpassed Manhattan on number of locations (268 and 267 respectfully), whilst New Jersey saw the biggest increase of 9% from 137 to 150 in Q4.
Total squarefootage increased by 3% to 120.85M sqft. Premier Workspace was surpassed by HQ in the list of the largest 5 operators, by location size amongst top 25 US markets.
💺 54% of employees say they’d go into office more if it was closer to home #
New research from workspace provider beyond reveals what’s keeping employees from going into the office more regularly, including the shock data that three in ten employees say their boss being in the office makes them avoid coming in. Other reasons employees avoid the office include the rising cost of travel, living and office locations.
54% of those surveyed agreed that they would go in more if their office had a better location that was either closer to their home or to their liking. Whilst 38% wished their workspaces were up to a better standard.
🥧 Popular leasing structures, tech platforms and expansion plans #
Caroline Hecht shared that Preferred Office Network have shared their most recent annual State of Flex Survey Report, following a survey of 230 brands operating 940+ locations in 15 countries.
81% of operators are leveraging traditional leases (7% use management agreements, 7% have some form of rev share and 5% own their buildings). Interestingly, almost 100% of operators have some form of meeting room booking management tech, but less than 80% use a CRM, and about 40% use Mail Management platforms.
As for market stability, survey respondents have been in business for an average of 17 years, with 44% being in business for over 20 years. Looking forward, 39% plan to expand this year.
🤷♀️ What do employers and their teams want from their office space? #
ID created an InfoBrief, sponsored by essensys, outlining a framework for what employers and their employees want from their office space – and what providers of these spaces need to do to deliver it.
The 14ish page report looks at the building blocks for creating a best-in-class workspace, providing consistent experiences across buildings, the different task-driven office designs employees would like, seamless journeys across an ecosystem of work and other spaces, plus a dive into service delivery and real-time monitoring which may be interesting to flex space operators and landlords alike.
Coworking market moves.
🗽 Developer launching $1B fund to buy distressed NY offices #
Scott Rechler shares that RXR are raising a significant fund to take advantage of the opportunity they see in the current dislocation within the office market. The firm, along with their partners at Ares Management, are planning to acquire a few office buildings (in "the upper quartile of that middle, class-A part of the market") around the city that are still appealing but may need fresh capital to remain competitive. or to restructure their debts given current realities.
The FT piece doesn’t mention flex or coworking space, but given it’s increasing prominence, and the firms’ experiences around 2008s financial crises – I’d be very VERY surprised if flex (done internally, whitelabelled, or through a partnership) isn’t a part of their plan to reactivate these buildings and drive in new footfall.
Scott, Craig Snyder, or any of the teams involved… I know a pretty decent newsletter through which to find who’s making moves in and around flex. Want any intros? Hit me up.
🇬🇧 Orega announce 7th London location #
Zach Douglas shares that their newest London location, a 600 workstation center, will be in the West End at 80 Strand.
🇬🇧 UK operator announces their 3rd location #
Impact Working are launching a new location in London. The space, set to open in spring 2024, will be the networks’ third following their existing locations in Bristol and Reading.
🇪🇸 Cloudworks sees 24% jump in annual revenue #
The Catalan flexible workspace operator led by Marta Gracia reported an annual turnover of €10.3M in 2023, up 24% from 2022. They’re estimating around €12.3M in revenue, continuing with expansion and consolidation plans already underway, moving towards 30k sqm (approx 323k sqft) of space across Barcelona and Madrid.
👋 OG founder steps away from Common Desk #
Nick Clark shared that after 4,316 days (11 years, 10 months) leading Common Desk, he’d be departing to work on what’s next in a lovely post summarizing the impact of the brand that now occupies almost 1M sqft and sharing gratitude to their members, landlords, staff, WeWork and family.
Nick, let us know what’s next up will ya?
🇬🇧 Huckletree launches 11th hub. #
Sophie Turnbull shares that Huckletree will open their 11th location on April 2nd at 199 Bishopsgate, London spanning 3 floors, including a ground floor cafe.
🇨🇦 The Village Hive opening 2nd location in Markham #
The location, opening in Feb 5th, will be the network’s 4th location.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Cliff Ho chats with Liz Elam on the GCUC Podcast about his origin story, mistakes made along the way, and how The Commons came out of the pandemic flying and fighting to grow.
Cat Johnson shares what the co in coworking means to her, and how she’s a product of coworking on the Coworking Out Loud podcast.
Google Product Expert Amy Toman dives into real-world SEO strategies, the challenges of business listings, and the power of authentic visuals in the digital arena with Jamie Russo on the Everything Coworking podcast
Philippe Houdard joins Jamie and Gio on the Flex Uncensored podcast to talk about Pipeline Workspaces, navigating business challenges, cautious growth, and picking human kills over resumes.
📆 Coworking events.
🎊 Convo #50: Celebrating the Co in Coworking #
Jan 26: Cat Johnson invites you to join by Anne Kirby from The Candy Factory, Liz Elam from GCUC, Carlito Smith from Hunt Street Station, Rebecca Pan from Trellis, Odeen Domingo from CO+HOOTS, Iris Kavanagh from Women Who Cowork as we celebrate Coworking Convo number 50!