Niche Coworking is a rising trend among newly-opened workspaces. These spaces cater to a specific market and include services and amenities geared toward their success as well as providing a space to build a community within that specific group. You may find a Niche Coworking space, for instance one for women, have entirely different activities within the open area such as spas and salons in place of ping pong tables and game rooms. Another occurrence could be having a Coworking space dedicated to creating a more artistic environment in contrast to one that is more suited to being a business center for providing lawyers and those in the medical field with office space. If you can find the correct niche and create an audience for it, you’ll gain a significant competitive advantage in being the space that caters to the targeted industry. Here a few tips to help you find a niche market for your Coworking space.
Get to Know Your City
The first step is in your feasibility research. The goal of feasibility is to determine whether or not there is a need for a Coworking space in your area. What you should do is look within the general demographics and see the lay of the land in terms of business development. To take it a step further, you may want to consider finding your economic development center or your city’s chamber of commerce. Once you figure out where the demand for space is within a certain group you can start to build your space towards catering to them. The other factor to consider is your location, which is still the biggest driver in where members choose to take their business. If you can locate your space in an advantageous part of the city, you will better position yourself for the targeted niche Coworking market.
Know Your Competition
Once you’ve learned the lay of the land, another step is to consider your competition and see what niche’s they are, and are not, doing a service to. For instance, if you notice a certain predominant group within your competitor’s workspaces, as well as a certain group or industry that is missing, your opportunity awaits. Especially if the Coworking spaces in your area are part of giant chain of spaces that tries to shoehorn a one-size-fits-all approach, you can hit them where they aren’t looking by finding an opening that wasn’t believed to be available.
Catering to the Community
Once you understand your demographics in terms of demand, feasibility, as well as your competition, you can see how you can meet their specific demands and create a space that caters to a specific community. This can be one with décor, having specific amenities and workspaces, as well as offering special membership packages for a specific community. Another plan is to collaborate with neighboring businesses who may have something to offer your niche community. These two actions create incentive for members of the community to come to your space. To drive more action and collaboration amongst your members you would like to consider using a Coworking software that has messaging and group features for the community as that will help deepen the connection between members and improve the overall experience.
There is great opportunity in niche Coworking. By catering to certain groups you can provide a small, yet growing, industry an environment through which they can thrive. To see how it can work, it’s best to make sure there is a demand within your area as well as a competitive advantage in offering something the neighboring spaces do not. For more information on how WUN can create new opportunities catering to niche communities, please click the button below.