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Coworking news & views.
😲 A quick summary of what went down at The Summit. #
Last week community leaders from established and emerging coworking alliances gathered online. This video highlights 5 of the 9 topics that were discussed during the Coworking Alliance Summit.
It was so inspiring to listen to, and learn from, all these amazing community leaders. Already excited for the next one!
👉 Read this.
🥺 Why landlords keep expanding into flex space. #
Ben Munn from JLL shares an article by Alexander Colpaert that explains why more and more landlords keep investing into or launching their own flex brands.
In short? Ever-increasing occupier and corporation demand.
👉 Read this.
🐭 Co-living… and coworking… by Disney?! #
Vulture shares the news that Disney is returning to the business of building whole neighborhoods.
Returning? Yeap. Today I learned that EPCOT actually stands for "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow". They also built a whole town called Celebration in Florida. So yea.
The media conglomerate have announced that they’re building a "Storyliving by Disney community" in California.
So… if there’s going to be magical homes and amenities like a clubhouse, beachfront and a shopping district… surely they’ll need somewhere to work from. Right?
👉 Read this.
💡 The neon sign that sparked a whole debate. #
Thilo Utke from Cobot shared a photo on LinkedIn of a neon-sign in the Mindspace location they were working from. It sparked over 27 comments from across the coworking world, including some charming responses from some social media teams.
So what did the sign say? "too many humans"
👉 Read this.
✅ Preparing for a surge in demand. #
The GCUC team share 6 things operators need to prepare for the coming surge in demand. The short list has some great reminders for operators to think about, especially with regards to not stretching too thin, or missing opportunities (and revenues).
👉 Read this.
🏢 Some landlords are circumventing flex operators. #
Melanie Jones shares a link from bizjournals (that’s paywalled unfortunately), but did pull out a insightful quote from RJ Zurak from CBRE that mentioned that landlords who’ve got idle space sitting on the market would be "getting into the game themselves", by leaning toward spending their tenant improvement allowances to integrate spec suites.
👉 Read this.
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💻 Coworking technology.
🔗 Management platform and aggregator celebrate integration #
OfficeRnD & Liquidspace announced a new integration this week, celebrating that it’ll become easier for spaces powered by the management platform to list their resources on the booking aggregator.
This follows news from back in week 21 of 2021 of an integration that makes OfficeRnD easily "syncable" with a growing number of other platforms and services via Syncaroo.
It can no longer be denied that aggregator and inventory databases need to be kept in sync.
👉 Read this.
💸 17 property firms create £116M proptech fund. #
Daryl Lipman shares that Knight Frank and 16 other property firms including Fifth Wall, BNP Paribas and DAMAC Properties are investing in a new £116M (~$157M) European-focussed property technology fund. The fund will have a London HQ and be led by Roelof Opperman and Miguel Nigorra Esteban and focus on post-seed startups (ie raising Series A and beyond).
Interesting note that the European proptech market represents 20% of all global proptech activity in 2021, including €3.8B of VC investments across some 200 deals.
👉 Read this.
Coworking data.
📦 Just how many packages do coworking spaces process? #
The PackageX team share a data-driven look at the how the meteoric rise in both shipments and hybrid work are impacting how coworking spaces manage their mailrooms. The data comes from the 1.6M packages processed by their platform across 40 countries, where about 1M of those were delivered to coworking mailrooms.
It’s a fascinating data set for any space running or considering running a mail offering for full time and virtual members. Here’s some numbers that caught my attention: the average member received 41 packages in 2021, on average around 30% of packages are picked up on the same day they’re received
The average notification-to-pickup time for packages in coworking mailrooms grew from ~45 hours in Jan to ~136 hours (5.5 days) in September before dropping to ~63 hours by December.
👉 Read this.
📊 Workers are choosing home over office, but lack connection. #
Pew Research Center recently expanded on the results of their recent survey. Whilst most media focussed on the fact that 61% of respondents who are working remotely said they chose not to work from the office in Jan ’22 (in comparison to 64% who said they had no choice due to office closures in Oct ’20).
However I think two other numbers paint a different picture.
First, 61% of workers who do head into the office attribute the decision to feeling more productive. And secondly whilst working from home has made it easier for 64% of workers who’ve switched to remote to balance work and personal life, a whopping 60% noted that WFH had made them feel less connected to coworkers.
That’s the whole benefit of near-home coworking hubs, in two stats. Run with it.
👉 Read this.
💰 How much does it cost to run a coworking space? #
The Skiff’s membership income over the last 7 years was £1,151,793.02 — you might be wondering where it all goes. Jonathan Markwell shares charts and numbers, whose primary source of income for the last 15 years has been working on software businesses.
Surprisingly the highest cost for software businesses is usually people; but that’s not the case for coworking spaces like The Skiff. How does this compare to your expenditures?
👉 Read this.
🚀 Two thirds of coworking spaces reported membership growth. #
The results of the Coworking Trends Survey have been released by Deskmag.
A few notable numbers: 79% of spaces described their current situation as good or satisfactory, and in Europe that number is up 2x from the previous year. ‘Fear of the coronavirus’ topped the global list of major economic constraints (by far).
On profitability, there were more spaces making losses than profits in 2021 with small chains (2-4 locations) faring better than single-location or larger chains. The average occupancy was around 60% across the map, but Europe had more capacity blocked by pandemic regulations than North America (9% and 2% respectively).
👉 Read this.
Coworking market moves.
🚀 The Riveter is reborn with two co-CEOs. #
GeekWire shares the news that Amy Sterner Nelson and Heather Carter will co-lead The Riveter, as it returns to the coworking business.
Some details incase you missed them: Amy recently helped launch SaksWorks after being the founder of Riveter. Heather was a VP at Riveter, but left in 2021 to launch Coterie Works to open coworking locations in hotels. Riveter will acquire Coterie as the base of their new approach to building a network of "Riveter Spaces" in high-end hotels.
👉 Read this.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Jamie Russo discusses a bunch of interesting questions from the Everything Coworking Facebook group, including join ventures for running a cafe, managing family memberships and social media accounts to follow on the group’s eponymous podcast.
Bernie Mitchell chats with Sonia Thompson about how inclusivity impacts marketing, how it is the future of marketing, and how cultural intelligence/awareness contributes to the impact of a brand.
📆 Coworking events.
👋 Discuss this newsletter. #
Feb 25: Join other TWIC readers in discussing this week’s newsletter, the stories shared and the trends they may represent.
👉 Read this.
🍳 London Coworking Assembly March Breakfast #
Mar 8: Flow are supporting the March London Coworking Assembly @ Town Square Old Street. Join in to discuss: Connecting with your local community; The affordable workspace program (W.T.F. is that?); Are any of the ‘desk booking apps’ good for getting local people to your space?; How to attract employees from companies to your space; What helps your local community AND grows your business? and The March Coworking I.D.E.A. Project hosted by Kate Usher
👉 Read this.
