Media Coverage
Recent Media Coverage of Your Office USA - Raleigh
When a home-business grows too big for the home, it’s office time. But renting typical office space is too big a step for many business owners looking to expand out of their home. They want a place to get work done and meet clients, but they don’t need a lot of space. They also don’t want a long-term lease because their business could quickly outgrow the space they’re leasing. And they don’t want to invest in costly office equipment, such as fax machines and copiers.
There is a solution for these business owners. They can lease what are known as "executive suites."
These offices – which are leased on a short term basis, typically anywhere from a month to a year – are usually small, but can be rather spacious. They’re located with other executive suites, and each tenant shares the same receptionists, equipment and amenities, such as break rooms and conference rooms. For a fee, the front-desk staff will perform tasks, such as sending out mail, typing and making copies.
Each office has its own phone line and mailbox. When people call the line assigned to a particular office, information about that business pops up on a computer screen, telling the receptionist how to answer the phone. Some business owners can actually still work out of their home, but use the mailbox, phone line and receptionist to create the illusion of having a real office.
"With the technology we employ today, we can keep you closer to home, cut your overhead and provide anybody with state of the art services and technology without any of the cost of the equipment," said Gregory Zmirak, vice president of sales for Your Office USA, a franchiser of executive-suite operations.
Executive suites are nothing new, and have long been popular in large metropolitan areas. In Cary, the Lawrence Building on Kildaire Farm Road and the 875 Walnut Street building have had executive suites for years.
But, as Cary has doubled its population over the past decade, the demand for executive suites has grown. The Lawrence Building, with about 60 offices, and the 875 Walnut Street building, with 17 offices, stay full. The story is the same in Raleigh, where occupancy rates in the city’s approximately 400 executive suites are close to 100 percent.
Ruth Drum – whose company, ExecuServ Unlimited, provides the front-desk services at the 975 Walnut Street building – said that each week she has to turn away two or three people looking for executive-suite space.
"The offices stay booked with a waiting list," she said. But more executive suites are being built to meet the demand.
Drum said she has been referring customers to a Your Office USA franchise that Cary resident Beth Rehbock opened three weeks ago in the new Atrium office building on Blue Ridge Road. Your Office USA is the American arm of an international franchiser of executive suites.
Rehbock’s Raleigh franchise – which has 31 offices available – is the third Your Office USA in North Carolina. There are less than 1- Your Office USA franchises in the nation, but more than 120 worldwide.
The national Your Office USA operation was recently purchased by the owner of the Charlotte franchise, Andrew King, who plans to move the national headquarters from San Diego to Charlotte. The company is now in the process of opening another nine franchises in North Carolina, Zmirak said. Within the next 10 years, the company expects to have 50 to 60 franchises in North Carolina, Zmirak said.
Your Office USA is now looking for a location in Cary to open a franchise, Zmirak said.
Zmirak said that Your Office USA will benefit from a rise in self-employed people, in large part because of "downsizing."
"We are actually stepping up to the plate when that segment of the business market is growing faster than at any time in history," he said.
Rehbock already has signed three tenants to office space and has tow "virtual" clients, who use the phone line, the mailbox and receptionist services. They also can pay to use Your Office USA’s state-of-the-art conference room, which is complete with teleconferencing facilities.
Virtual clients are where the money can be made, Zmirak said.
"The virtual money goes right to the bottom line," he said.
Rehbock – who trained in a busy Your Office USA in Charlotte – said she enjoys the environment of many small businesses located together. That environment also can be beneficial to the businesses, she said.
"I think there’s a big networking opportunity also for small companies," Rehbock said.
Cleve and Linda Folger, the owners of Cary-based Triangle Insurance, have 16 executive sites in an office building in Preston behind Jasper’s restaurant. Triangle Insurance is leasing out the first floor of the building, which the Folgers partially own. To give their company room to expand, the Folgers decided to lease more space than they needed. At first, they considered leasing only enough space to have four or five executive suites, but they decided to lease the entire first floor.
"If you evaluate it, it is more cost effective to provide the type of services we’re going to provide for a larger number of people," Linda Folder said. "To do that for four or five people would be pretty cost prohibitive."
The Folgers purposely tailored their executive suites, which are located next to the Preston golf course, toward people seeking and "upscale" image.
"Our situation is not for a start-up company that’s on a budget," Cleve Folger said. "Typically, the people we have are either professionals, or they are sales people, or people from big national companies, or they are a company that’s doing well."
Kathy Burns, a certified public accountant who is one of four existing tenants in the Folger’s recently opened executive suites, said she rented the space because it presented a high-class image. She said the space isn’t cheap, but that it’s worth it.
"It is expensive when you look at the square footage, but when you consider you don’t have to hire someone… to be the secretary, it’s not that bad," Burns said.
Burns, who moved into the executive suite from her home, plans to move to a permanent office eventually.
The executive suite "is just kind of a transition," she said.
Drum, whose company operates the front-desk operations for the executive suites that York Properties owns on Walnut Street and in Cameron Village, wants to own her own executive suites.
As it is now, Drum gets a flat rate for each office she serves, but depends on selling services to make her company successful. She’s now trying to encourage York to require tenants to use at least $150 of services each month – a requirement that’s in place at the Lawrence Building. "I guess the hardest thing in our business is we have to constantly sell our services." Drum said. Drum said the key to making executive suites work is having customer-friendly people to greet customers, answer phones and provide the services. "You have to have someone out front who’s very customer-oriented wand who can do a variety of tasks and get to know the tenants," she said. "it’s definitely a viable industry, but if you don’t have the support staff, it’s not going to work."
Epcor Business Centers also will operate 14,000-square-feet of executive-suite space in the Shannon Oaks building, which is under construction off Kildaire Farm Road near its intersection with Cary Parkway, Drum said.
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