Columnist

Behind the Business with Kim Carradice

Name: Kim Carradice

Position: Sales and Marketing Manager

Organisation: NPM Ltd operating as Collingwood Buildings

Expertise: An enthusiastic and passionate member of the serviced office/flexible workspace industry with a commitment to transparency and customer service excellence.

What does your organisation do?

We are an independent serviced office provider based in the city centre of Newcastle. We offer a one stop price for serviced and flexible office space. The goal is to service our in-house business community to a high standard, whilst retaining and building on this commitment with existing and new customer relations.

What has been the biggest achievement/challenge your company has recently experienced?

Our biggest achievement has to be seeing a small start up business expand in-house within our own private business community, over a long period of time and go on to gain wide industry approval and support/investment within their chosen field/industry. We build relationships with our in-house community and have the privilege of assisting them to greater heights through excellent service and support.

This brings its own pitfalls for us as a provider in the form of a double edge sword. With the success of the tenant comes a period of change and time for them to move on and create and face new exciting challenges. In short they out-grow us - and we suffer from a form of empty nest syndrome, but also as business we are an occupancy down with a gap to fill.

What is your most important focus for the coming year, and what do you hope to achieve?

The most important focus this coming year must be to diversify and change as this industry evolves further, with a focus on niche marketing ideas and presenting these to our new audience with innovative technology and our people first approach.

We hope to achieve higher occupancy as always, but also we’d love to build on our ever growing, happy, supported in-house business community.

What excites you most about your industry and business?

The fact that we are part of an evolving industry which is set, according to research, to grow substantially by 2025. Where once the serviced office was utilised by the one man band and SMEs, now the large corporations are seeing the advantage of co-working spaces and integrating their use into every day operations to benefit their businesses.

What do you wish you’d known when starting out?

That hustle and bustle and a variety of business sectors can live and work in the same building with in-house competitors. It’s nice that everyone can work together to create a networking environment on our doorstep.

What will be the “next big thing” in your industry?

Co-working and collaborative space/incubators/upping the ante and meeting the needs and expectations of Generation Y, “The Millennials” & Generation Z “The Digital Natives” - the business owners of the future.

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