This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.
The war has begun and nobody wants to give up a single square meter. Faced with the unstoppable progress of flexible work spaces, and with a shortage of prime office space, the giants of the sector assemble their battalions to position themselves in the market and eat, before their rivals, all the cake. From international groups such as IWG or WeWork, to venues such as Aticco, including brands promoted by socimis such as Merlin or Colonial. Who are the coworking titans in the Spanish market?
IWG, the pioneer IWG is the largest group in the sector in the world, with thirty years of experience. The company operates with five brands, and two of them, Regus and Spaces, have a presence in Spain. The first is the most expanded in the Spanish market, with more than seventy workspaces, while Spaces operates at the moment with four assets, one in Barcelona and three in Madrid.
In the short term, the chain's objective is to rely on franchises to boost its expansion and gain capillarity in the country. The company has just launched a new center in calle María de Molina, in Madrid and will soon open another one at number 41 on José Abascal Street, a property owned by Saint Croix in the Chamberí neighborhood. In Bilbao, the group has sealed the rent in the Axa Building, at number 12 of Buenos Aires Street, to start up its first center in the city.
WeWork, the 'rock star' In just a decade of trajectory, WeWork has become one of the great phenomena of flexible office spaces. The group has 341 centers in 65 cities around the world, including Madrid and Barcelona.
The group, which is on track to become the largest tenant of New York offices, has diversified in recent years, leveraging technology and opening a new business path with data marketing.
The group has five spaces in Madrid and two more in Barcelona, to which it will soon add three more in the former headquarters of Banco Popular in Paseo de Gracia; in calle Pallars (in 22 @), and in Diagonal, where last year he rented the old Cuatrecasas headquarters from Emesa.
In Madrid, for its part, WeWork operates with five spaces.
The last one is the number 106 of Francisco Silvela Street, property of the American fund AEW, which the group has rented in full.
In parallel, the company is studying to introduce in Spain a new business model with which it would compete face to face with the big consultancies: an advisory service in the search and management of office for large companies.
Impact Hub, the king of franchises Founded in 2005, Impact Hub is another of the giants of flexible spaces in Europe. The company, based in Vienna (Austria), has 92 centers and eight under development in 81 cities around the world.
The company, which has promoted its expansion supported by the formula of franchises, is already present in Spain in locations such as Madrid, Vigo, San Sebastian and Zaragoza.
Only last year, Impact Hub launched two new coworkings in Madrid, which now totals four centers in the capital, and sealed the rental of a fifth in the Picasso Tower, where it will occupy 9,000 square meters.
The company goes beyond marketing the workspace and also offers support services to start ups, its main client. On a global scale, however, the group has also taken steps back, with the closure earlier this year of its network of centers in New York.
Talent Garden, space for 'techies' In Europe, one of the largest groups in the sector is Talent Garden, which has a network of 23 centers in eight European cities and specializes in technology companies.
The company puts the focus on services beyond coworking, with courses, training and events, and has among its customers Google, Mini, MyTaxi or Deliveroo. In the Spanish market, the group operates with two centers, one in Madrid, located in Atocha and which has 4,700 square meters of surface, and another in Barcelona, in the neighborhood of Sarrià-Sant Gervasi.
The company raised twelve million euros in a round of financing with the aim of boosting its expansion in the European market, with Spain in its sights. In the round Endeavor Catalyst participated, supported by the founder of Linkedin, Reid Hoffman; the Incubator 500 Startups and the Italian fund Tamburi Investment Partners.
One of Spain's staple coworking space providers is Aticco. The company, which started in precisely one of these spaces in 2016, opened its first center at number 52 in Ronda Sant Pere in Barcelona and today has four open spaces, all of them in the Catalan city. The group was launched by Gabriel Espín and Franz Pallarés with an investment of 300,000 euros, and their short-term plans are to land in new places such as Madrid.
Between his last operations is the rent of the headquarters of the PdeCat, in the street Provença of Barcelona, and the one of the old offices of King, in the number 108 of the Pallars street, in the district of the 22 @, with which it will add six spaces in Barcelona. In 2017, the group launched a spin-off, Aticco Plug & Play, with which it also provides an integral office service.
OneCoWork, from zero to one hundred in three years. OneCoWork is another of the coworking phenomena born in the Spanish market. The company, founded in 2016, currently has three spaces in Barcelona and plans to invest 150 million to open forty new centers until 2023 and make the jump abroad.
The company has spaces for different profiles and also maintains an alliance with Harbor Spaces University, a study center with programs aimed at the professions of the future.
Monday and Cinc are other operators based in Barcelona that are in full expansion outside the Catalan territory, while in Madrid operate chains such as Lexington, Ibercenter or Negocenter.
The big real estate companies are launching into 'coworking' The phenomenon of coworking has also attracted unskilled operators, who have launched their own brands or absorbed specialized firms to address this type of alternative assets as a defensive strategy. This is the case, for example, of Colonial, which already has more than a dozen coworking spaces under its Utopicus brand, from which it acquired a majority stake in 2017.
The company currently has five centers in Barcelona and seven more in Madrid. Driven by Rafa de Ramón, Utopicus is also aimed at the entrepreneurial fabric and has its own business incubator.
Merlin, for its part, operates in the sector with brands. The company, owned by 31% by the real estate giant, plans to launch a dozen new spaces this year in Merlin properties. The identified assets are located in Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, Alicante or Valencia.
Currently, the chain manages three centers in Madrid and completes the opening of another two more in the Salamanca district and on Eucalipto street, north of Madrid. At the beginning of this year, the company finally sealed its entry into 22 @, in Barcelona, where it rented two floors in Torre Glòries.
The real estate giant Cbre is another player that has joined the coworking boom with the launch last year of Hana, a new division that builds and operates flexible office spaces in partnership with large property owners on a global scale. The project, which currently operates only in the United States, plans to reach 25 major cities this year.
The Andalusian real estate Insur has also made the leap to this segment, with the launch in 2017 of ISspaces, which for now operates with a single business center of 1,800 square meters in Seville that houses both offices and meeting rooms and rental training.
Finally, Excem Real Estate opted for coworking last year in the hands of WeWork, with whom it sealed an agreement for the development of the US chain in the Spanish market.
The giants that come from abroad. More beyond the Spanish borders there are also other coworking groups that, although they have not landed yet in national territory, have a wide penetration in their local markets and in areas of influence.
This is the case of the Chinese Ucommune, which has grown in size due to purchases in recent years. Only last year, the group closed seven acquisitions of other local players such as Woo Spaces, which has 23 centers in the country; Fountown, with 26 centers in Shanghai and Beijing, New Space, Wedo and Workingdom, in addition to the interior design operator Daga Architects and the Huojian Technology.
The company has an intense battle against WeWork, for which it even had to change the name of UrWork to Ucommune after long legal disputes with the US giant.
China is one of the markets with the greatest growth potential for coworking. It is estimated that by the end of 2019 there will be more than 51 million square meters of coworking in the country and that, in 2030, this type of assets accounts for 30% of the total office space in the Asian giant, boosted in part by the rapid rise of the collaborative economy.
This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.
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