Location, location, location – The importance of having the right address
Applying Kirstie and Phil’s logic to the business world
By Stephen Finnegan, Managing Director at Targetspace
A 2013 poll conducted by The Guardian newspaper found that 78% of respondents believed location was important to their business and stated they had to think carefully about where they would be located before starting up. (https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/poll/2013/may/22/starting-up-business-location) This was off the back of research by GrowthAccelorator, which found Birmingham was the top location for business growth, just behind Westminster and other boroughs of London (London was split into its constituent boroughs, otherwise it would have dominated the list!).
This isn’t necessarily ground breaking research – anyone that has studied business or marketing will be able to tell you that ‘Place’ is a crucial element of the ‘Five P’s of Marketing’ – and yet many businesses still struggle to get themselves positioned at the right address.
On the one hand, this is quite understandable. Taking an office in the heart of the City of London, or any city for that matter, is a huge decision, and often not a cheap one. So how do start-ups that want to be in the heart of the action go about getting a foot on the ladder?
One solution, of course, is taking space in a serviced office in the right location. Serviced office providers spend a lot of time ensuring they have buildings in the locations that matter and provide ‘off the shelf’ offices and services for any number of workstations, depending on availability. So if you’re a one man band, set on world domination but needing a prime address to launch from, a serviced office could be your solution. Equally if you are part of a twenty strong team and want to be in the same neighbourhood as your competitors, it wouldn’t hurt to see what serviced office space is around. A serviced office gives the flexibility of choosing the right address without huge financial commitment and initial capital outlay, helping fledgling companies off to a good start.
If budget really is a sticking point, then a prime address can still be acquired through a virtual office. This will have the address, the telephone numbers and the receptionist service of an office, providing a low-risk, cost effective option.
Clearly there is a benefit with associating a business with an address in a location that is booming, such as we are currently seeing with the technological, media and telecoms (TMT) sector across London. Who’s to say that in ten years’ time you won’t be purchasing your very own skyscrapers and office blocks, but for starters businesses need a realistic approach to getting themselves in the right place for their business to grow.