An office when and where you want it
By Shawna Richter, GlobeandMail.com
June 30, 2010
Remember when veryone with their own business wanted to work from home? The benefits seemed endless – making calls in your pyjamas, meeting clients at Starbucks, free coffee in your own kitchen. The setup had its pluses and plenty of converts. But there were drawbacks.
Downsides included working in your pyjamas and meeting clients at Starbucks. In other words, isolation and a loss of professionalism and structure.
But technology usually catches up to problems, and in March, 2009, Toronto entrepreneur Gratuz Devanesan jumped on a trend he sensed was about to take off – the virtual office, or as he likes to call it, “the office cloud.”
Mr. Devanesan, who had previous experience working out of his own apartment, knew the drawbacks first-hand. And he was encountering people with small, startup businesses who were struggling to work at home, or just lacked the capital to set up a large, professional office of their own. He wanted to offer a solution.
“We were looking at how we could improve people’s office expenses and experiences by providing a professional service at a substantially lower cost,” he says.
“A lot of people with a business don’t actually need a permanent, elaborate space. They just need a professional space they are comfortable working in – a place to meet with clients and present things. We realize that small companies, when they get off the ground, just really need an address, and a meeting space, not a long lease and a lot of expense. That’s when we realized the idea of a virtual office had potential.”
On that premise, in March, 2009, he started Officeexec. Today the company has 120 virtual clients and 45 permanent office clients and will open its fifth location in Mississauga by the end of the year. The offices are in prime Toronto locations – Bay and Bloor streets, the heart of the financial district on Bay Street, Yonge and Sheppard, and Bloor Street West near High Park.
The smallest office space available is 60 square feet, the largest, 400 square feet. There is no long-term lease – clients rent what they need by the month. Officeexec also offers spaces that can be rented by the day, or on an as-needed basis.
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