Partner Article

Expanding British businesses need to employ simple boxonomics to secure a bigger office space

As a business grows, a decision needs to be made about when to make the significant investment of moving to a bigger office, in order to generate additional space for everything from new employees to inventory storage or simply to have an area to meet with customers.

When it comes to growing your business and ensuring you are in the right position to succeed, bigger isn’t always best. Sometimes, a smarter use of your available space is a much better option.

We’ve called this ‘boxonomics’ - investing in storage-by-the-box can be significantly cheaper than upsizing to a larger office. This reduces the financial pressures often faced by businesses struggling to expand and achieve business growth.

For many businesses, the need for extra office space to accommodate a few extra employees is a crucial crossroad in their growth. Should they hang on to see how sustained their growth will be, or should they take the plunge and invest in additional space they don’t yet fully need in the hope that they will eventually grow into it?

The economics of pay-by-the-box storage mean that instead of investing in a larger office, a business could use the existing office space more efficiently. For example, a common situation is for a business to have a number of filing cabinets storing files and documents that are not required on a day-to-day basis.

Simply moving the contents of four standard-sized filing cabinets (roughly seven square feet each) into 20 pay-by-the-box storage boxes could create between 28-30 square feet of space; enough to fit two additional, productive members of staff. With an annual storage cost of just £468, it it significantly lower than the average annual rental increase of £1,200 were the business find an extra 30ft of space through an office move.

In the short term, this approach offers a business peace of mind whilst it understands how sustainable its level of growth is. Businesses located in central London can look at saving over £2,500 annually, which can be a significant figure for small start-ups.

Box delivery within 24 hours ensures an organisation’s important items can be returned quickly and easily accessed.

Additionally, making use of pay-by-the-box storage allows businesses to avoid bearing the increased operating costs of a larger office, or the additional one-off costs that need to be taken into account. Solicitor’s costs can range between £2,000 and £8,000 or even higher, depending on the size of the office and the structure of the lease term.

Dilapidations on an existing office could cost between £5-£20 per square foot of the net floor area – potentially more than £5,000 for an office of 1,070 square feet. Cost of removals for moving office equipment to the new office is likely to be anywhere from £500 upwards depending on the size of the business. Lost business should also be accounted for – office moves can often take up to a week, so business down time and lost revenue can often be substantial.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by LOVESPACE .