Office Evolution Opens 50th Location

This June, Office Evolution reached a major milestone in its life as a franchise, opening its 50th shared office space location. The achievement is well-timed, arriving halfway through the brand’s 15^th year, one in which it is pursuing an aggressive development push across markets nationwide.

The Denver, Colorado-based franchise has rapidly expanded its footprint in recent years, introducing office spaces in a host of new markets including Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas among others. Just this spring, the franchise opened three new locations in the North Carolina markets of Raleigh, Greensboro and Charlotte.

According to Office Evolution’s founder and CEO, Mark Hemmeter, that expansive reach is the result of a deliberate growth strategy designed to grow the franchise at pace with the industry at large.

“In the past decade, the demand for co-working spaces has increased dramatically and consistent,” Hemmeter said. “It started with the Great Recession, when rising unemployment and a trend among companies to reduce office space led to more people working outside of traditional office spaces. Suddenly, huge numbers of people were looking for flexible yet professional alternatives to their traditional offices, homes and coffee shops.”

As the economy recovered, work-from-home models continued to show benefits for employers and employees alike, and the rise of the sharing economy — companies like Uber, Airbnb and Postmates popped up everywhere immediately after the Recession and show no signs of slowing down — encouraged consumers’ trust in shared spaces.

“The industry really picked up between 2011 and 2012,” Hemmeter said, and Office Evolution was determined to take advantage of their early lead in the space. The brand began franchising in 2013 and has remained a leader in the increasingly popular industry.

“We’ve seen more demand for our services every year since we started the business, and it’s been exciting to see the company grow with that demand,” Hemmeter said.

While Hemmeter says the franchise went into 2018 expecting to hit the 50-unit mark, the landmark is inspiring.

“Office Evolution has been around for 15 years, but we’ve only been franchising for five. I’m still blown away by our growth,” he said. “We entered the year with a number of new units in the pipeline, and we continue to see excitement in every market we enter, both from consumers and investors.”

Office Evolution’s development team has no plans to take its foot off the pedal in the second half of 2018, and Hemmeter says the franchise is on pace to open an additional 10–15 units before the end of the year.

“We’re working with some great new partners in a number of markets,” he said. “I think there’s a good chance we’ll open our 65^th unit before the end of the year.”

As Hemmeter considers Office Evolution’s future growth prospects, he’s careful to note that the franchise is not growing for growth’s sake alone.

“We’re meeting demand,” he said. “We’re not interested in opening a location that’s not going to have a strong customer base just so we can say we have another unit open. We’re looking very carefully at each market to see that there is a need for us and then finding the perfect location to maximize our impact. Fortunately, we’re seeing a growing and eager customer base in virtually every market we look at.”