Kat Lau, senior director for shared office operator Industrious, may only be 29 years old, but her experience in the real estate world has led the company to have a keen eye for coworking operations.
When seeking out certain real estate for Industrious, Lau said that they look for spaces that will meet their customer and physical asset demand. Specifically, they rely on real estate metrics that cover vacancies, absorption, rent price fluctuation, demographics and psychographics.
Additionally, Industrious works through landlord partnerships rather than traditional lease models. For example, Industrious has a retail space location within Scottsdale Fashion Square where it partnered with prominent landlord Macerich.
“It feels like in some cases that these landlords are outsourcing the flexible workspace and amenity management because landlords have a certain expertise, in investing in real estate, in property management, facilities management, asset management, financing and all those things,” said Lau. “And our expertise is on the operations side so it just makes sense that this is happening.”
In reference to potential economic downturn, Lau said that the company tries to stay conservative and strongly evaluate each project in order to ensure that in any recession scenario, each location will have enough revenue to buffer any losses.
Now, Industrious has plans to expand internationally through either the UK, Canada, or Mexico which could open in 2020, according to Lau.
