Increase in interest

[Mike Pihlman]

Just figured I'd give everyone an update.

We have definitely seen an increase in interest (yesterday I was busier
than I have been since I retired...correction, since about 5 years
before I retired!) and have signed 2 new members in the past month with
several others circling.

Only issue: Not one commuter or telecommuter. Everyone here is small
business, consultant, social media....

Mike


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Mike Pihlman
TracyVirtualOffice
"A Coworking Community"
95 W. 11th Street, Suite 203
Tracy, CA 95376
Mobile: 209-608-4340
Web: TracyVirtualOffice.com
Twitter: @TracyVirtOffice
Skype: tracyvirtualoffice1

[gerard]

> Only issue:  Not one commuter or telecommuter.  Everyone here is small
> business, consultant, social media....

My partner and I recently visited Qwirk and Sandbox in Columbus,
Ohio. Interestingly, both said that drop-in traffic was almost non-
existent. My observation was that most revenue was from full-time
membership, and most full-time members were small businesses (with
great diversity: screen-printing, photography, attorneys, engineers!),
as opposed to freelancers and telecommuters.

This was non-intuitive to me because originally I thought coworking
mostly appealed to individuals working from home. But I have now come
to believe that, while initial fanfare brings in a lot of traffic at
first, over time, people who work from home really don't mind working
from home.

So relying on drop-in traffic to sustain the space seems to be a
losing proposition, and the real "bread-and-butter" lies in small
businesses needing office space signing up for full-time memberships.

Have others found this to be the case?

Thanks for any input,
Gerard Sychay
http://cincycoworks.com

[Jerome Chang]

Once we account for conference room use, film shoots and events, our
walk-ins constitute a sizable chunk of revenue. If you only count for
single day "normal" usage of offices or desks then I agree, pretty
insignificant.

Jerome

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[Alex Hillman]

Quite the contrary here at IndyHall.

Almost exactly 25% of our membership is resident, while the rest is of the migrant nature, using IndyHall as a periodic "escape". Also, I still think non-small-businesses (independent, sole proprietorships, and remote workers) are the bulk of our membership. We have a few people that could be considered "start-up" as well, though for the most part the startup-culture isn't part of what we do.

Every day we have at least a few people dropping in, some members some not, but the turnover is absolutely an important (and lively) part of our culture.

We've done specific things to make it more welcoming for the migrant members, from designing desk clusters that are mixed full time and flex desks, to holding member lunches most fridays, to show and tells that are open to the public...even using basecamp and campfire for in-office communication lets people who aren't at IndyHall every day get involved in the action.

Our membership is now over 100 people, but only ~25% of those have permanent desks. I'd say 50% of our paying membership rarely uses desks at all, but continues membership due to all of the corollary benefits, events, etc.

I think that our current revenue split is something like 65% full time 35% part time & dropins, but ALL of our membership levels have shown increase over the last 6 months since moving into our new office.

Unfortunately, I don't have hard statistics from our first 12-18 months, but I'm fairly confident we started out building a strong full time presence, which became the primary attraction for all of the non-full time members.

Fact is, there ISN'T much reason to leave your house if all you're going to is a desk on the other side of town. That's boring. 

If there's guaranteed to be some smart, interesting, creative, talented, and motivated people at the desks next to you, though, now there's a benefit worth leaving your house (and paying) for!

Furthermore, I think the fact that the existing "anchor" tenants are businesses/pre-existing teams is another barrier for drop ins. It's much harder to socially integrate teams than it is individuals. You have to break down their clique behaviors, whereas a bunch of "loosely joined" individuals is much easier to approach.

This is the main reason that typically, we have discouraged and even said no to renting to pre-existing teams and small businesses. We've periodically made exceptions, but each time, the short-term benefit (more revenue) was met with marginal long-term benefit (stronger community).

That's us, though. We know what we've been best at, and continue to find ways to make that even better, and available to more kinds of people.

-Alex

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Alex Hillman
im always developing something
digital: al...@weknowhtml.com
helpful: www.unstick.me
visual: www.dangerouslyawesome.com
local: www.indyhall.org

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[Kelly Brown]

I would agree.
Drop-ins are few & far between at Office Space Coworking in Akron.
-kelly
http://www.officespacecoworking.com