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Interview: Giles Fuchs of Office Space in Town

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when someone mentions the term ‘serviced office space’?

Grey lines of endless ergonomic chairs? Coffee-flecked beechwood desks? Low-resolution monitors and crumb-laden keyboards? The dizzying, infinitely nauseating constellation of geometrically arrayed, calcium-sapping sodium lighting?

All of these features and many more blight the UK’s office space landscape, and are an all too common pain for British workers right across the land.

But Office Space in Town, a serviced office space provider, is setting out to change all that.

Founded in 2010 by brother and sister team Giles and Niki Fuchs, the London-headquartered firm specialises in high-quality, boutique serviced offices whose high-concept designs mark it out from the drab, identikit approach of many of the other players in the industry.

With luxury office spaces spread across the capital, including their Alice in Wonderland-themed space in Waterloo, they’re aiming to shake up what is traditionally a rather mundane sector.

“My role is strategy, business plans, raising money, structure and service. Effectively I’m the outward looking bit, while Nikki is the inward looking bit.”

On a late February afternoon, I spoke to Giles in a whirlwind of a chat that touched upon a wide range of different topics; from Office Space in Town’s beginnings to his family history and the current state of the economy.

A man with strong opinions on a whole range of subjects, I started by asking him about his background and the beginnings of Office Space in Town.

He explained: “My background was in business. I owned and ran with a friend a chain of estate agents. We sold that in 2000 and I joined my sister Niki after that.

“My role is strategy, business plans, raising money, structure and service. Effectively I’m the inward looking bit, while Niki is the outward looking bit.”

“The first substantial policies and procedures [relating to serviced offices] started life and were written by my sister and mother.”

Their unique family link stretches back long before Giles and Niki paired up in 2000, however. As he goes on to tell me, his family have been in the serviced office sector since the late-70s after his jet setting father, inspired by the ‘business centre’ concept in New York, opened the first serviced office in Northampton.

Opening in 1979, the ‘business centre’ was one of the first of its kind in the UK and, managed by his mother and father, proved to be a roaring success. Such a success, in fact, that the family proceeded to shape the UK serviced office sector as we know it.

Giles went on: “The first substantial policies and procedures [relating to serviced offices] started life and were written by my sister and mother. It was my mother’s business, which she joined in the early 80s before retiring in the mid-90s. My sister took over as managing director in 1997 and has been at it most of her career!”

“If you were in a serviced office people doubted you. Now everyone has a serviced office including big banks.”

In the early days, the ‘business centre’ concept was looked down upon in the business world as the preserve of travelling salesmen. However, this soon changed when people began realising that business centres were, as Giles describes it, ‘counter-cyclical’ and recession-defying.

It was at this point in our chat that the historical background of the serviced office space took a giant leap into the present-day, as Giles proceeded to touch upon some of the benefits that serviced offices represent over regular offices.

He explained: “In a recession it appeared that business centres were counter-cyclical. Capable executives get laid off and they start their businesses. It was very much looked down upon as an occupational strategy.

“If you were in a serviced office people doubted you. Now everyone has a serviced office including big banks.”

“If you went back 10 years, all you would’ve found would have been an office above a fish and chip shop.”

With entrepreneurial startups appearing on a daily basis, and technology firms valuing flexibility and agility over long leases and restricted desk spaces, serviced offices are ideally suited to the fluidity of today’s modern working arrangements.

They can also provide a step up quality for small businesses, as Giles expands: “It makes a lot of financial sense if you want to put 10 people in an office quickly. With the growth of quality, small, office spaces suddenly the lawyer in Leeds or in York or in Northampton can have a meaningful and quality office in the city.

“If you went back 10 years, all you would’ve found would have been an office above a fish and chip shop. Now they can have beautiful offices all over the place that are much more accessible. Across the whole of the UK and the whole of the world, businesses can have a proper office that is conveniently located.”

Office Space in Town has been ideally placed to capture this growing market for quality, flexible office space. As Giles mentions, the property firm has enjoyed rapid growth since its foundation in 2010, quickly growing its portfolio across the UK cities in such as Edinburgh and Cardiff.

It is in London, however, that Giles tells me the bulk of Office Space in Town’s business is concentrated. He adds: “In 2010 we were a startup. Beginning the brand of Office Space in Town, from £0 in 2010 to probably knocking on the door of £200m now. We own four buildings in London, and that is the huge majority of our portfolio at about £160m.”

“In recent years, a huge amount of office space got turned into residential. The fact that so much got changed into residential has put pressure on office spaces.”

Of course, being so focused on London carries its own problems. Already this year we’ve had warnings about spiralling rents and firms being forced to downsize due to inflation in the market. One of Office Space in Town’s biggest challenges has been finding affordable buildings at a sensible price in London.

However, these challenges are not just Office Space in Town’s alone, they pose a problem right across the commercial property sector, due to reasons that Giles is more than willing to go into: “In recent years, a huge amount of office space got turned into residential. The fact that so much got changed into residential has put pressure on office spaces.”

In light of this rental inflation, I ask him how he sees the office rental market developing in the next five years.

“The family made 35 years of mistakes, we’re hoping to make a lot less in the next 35 years.”

Predicting ‘big growth’, he believes some of the pressure will relieve as square footage of office space catches up and developers cast their eye across London’s outskirts and beyond.

He adds: “We’re going to see inflationary pressure on the rental market, but a lot of the pressure will be taken off as a lot of this new space is pre-let.

“WIth all this upward pressure, the tide is going out over the hinterlands and the suburbs of London. Croydon is now hot. Aldgate is hot. Shoreditch is hot.

“No doubt it is going to hit Reading and Milton Keynes. It’s benefitting the suburbs, and the launch of Crossrail is only going to boost them further.”

I ask him where he sees Office Space in Town heading in such a climate. In a common theme of our conversation, Giles mixes past and present when, with a wry eye looking backwards but his sights excitedly trained on the future, he concludes: “The family made 35 years of mistakes, we’re hoping to make a lot less in the next 35 years.”

And who would dare bet against the Fuchs family’s continued success?

You can take a look at some of Office Space in Town’s boutique serviced office range at www.theoffice-uk.co.uk.