Making room for Bizspace

Making room for BizspaceKeywords:Work centre, Office layout, Offices

We've got used to "business centres" with plush, serviced offices– they're very useful if you want to set up a fully-functioning office in quick time, or if you want to concentrate on your core business while someone else takes care of all that boring servicing like cleaning, heating, decoration,etc.

Well, you now have to get used to an interesting variation on the theme. Bizspace workcentres are hard to miss. The brash purple and orange signs are part of the marketing and brand awareness strategy, and the office accommodation and workspace is similarly straightforward. Little is spent on fancy trimmings and there is none of the glass and marble found in that previous generation of serviced accommodation.

The 54-unit Brixton centre, for example, is a converted grain warehouse in a non-fashionable part of London. It is not, nor wishes to claim to be, stylish.

Bizspace owns ten similarly down-to-earth centres – Camberwell, Newport and Durham are some of the other locations – offering small businesses flexible and value for money accommodation at a fraction of the cost of an upmarket location.

Tenants do not sign up for a long lease – they sign a simple licence agreement. This means that they are not tied to a long-term commitment. Naturally, the fee (rent and service charge) is based on the space occupied. The additional service lies in existence of a centre manager (paid by Bizspace),responsible for managing maintenance, security and cleaning of the common parts.

So far, the serviced workspace sector has had a growing demand but curiously little competition. Bizspace changes that – both by its very existence, and by its variation on the theme which is bound to draw in new entrants to the market in so far under-exploited areas.