At the age of 29, Charlie Green needed surgery to fix a problem with his heart. Although Green now 43 recovered fully, his brush with death changed his outlook on life. He decided to quit his job as a chartered surveyor, helping firms to value commercial property deals, and set up on his own.
In 2003, he and ex-colleague Olly Olsen thrashed out a business plan targeting the market for short-term office space. Existing options were too expensive and too corporate: "we wanted to design more creative work spaces".
They saw a need for high-end, creatively designed offices on short-term lets among London's bustling tech and design sectors. They also planned unlike many rivals to buy the buildings outright, rather than simply leasing them. "It meant we'd gain from capital appreciation and not just rental income."
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The two had worked on different sides of the business, so their skills complemented one another well. "We agreed that I'd work on the finance side, we'd work on the building together, and he'd find the clients to fill it."
But finding the £1m or so they needed to get The Office Group started wasn't as easy as Green had hoped. "A lot of people had lost money with the bursting of the dotcom bubble." Potential investors also balked at the capital-intensive nature of Green's plan to buy offices outright.
Eventually he found a private-equity firm that "really got what we wanted to do". The pair bought their first building in Angel, north London. They redesigned the interior. "The look of the whole building is very important. The entrance must look great, [and] the kitchen should be somewhere that people can get away from their desks and relax." Clients loved the new approach and soon Olsen had filled the various offices.
With both the bank and their investors convinced by this early success, the pair were given more cash to go out and repeat it. However, "they were generally very cautious, forcing us to fill each building before we could get another".
The Office Group carried on in this manner, steadily adding to its portfolio, until the financial crisis. "In the early part of 2009 we started getting calls from companies telling us that they couldn't make the rent. Our revenue dropped by 15% and we started to get nervous." Fortunately, they were able to ride out the storm "we tried to work out who was genuine and who was trying it on" and business eventually picked up.
Since 2010 the firm has changed. The private-equity backer has been replaced by a high-net-worth individual prepared to fund more aggressive expansion. "We can't always find the buildings we want for the right price, so we are now prepared to get them on long-term leases instead."
The Office Group, which turned over £20m last year and has a property portfolio valued at £100m, has also signed a deal with Network Rail, which will allow the firm to use the infrastructure giant's spare office space. Green has no fear that his firm will be able to fill the space.
"Work patterns are changing. Freelancers, small companies and self-employed workers all engage with each other in a much more fluid way and that means that there is more demand for flexible workspace providers like us."
