Selling Desks in a Room Full of Dust Sheets

We took the third floor of our Clerkenwell building in spring 2024. By then we’d been running the ground and first floors for five years. Ninety-odd members, a waiting list for private offices, and a kitchen so cramped people ate lunch standing up. The new floor was meant to sort all that out. Twelve offices, two meeting rooms, phone booths, and a kitchen with an actual table.

We went up with the keys and a bottle of cheap prosecco. What we found was bare concrete, ducting hanging everywhere, a heap of old carpet tiles and a pigeon. It had come in through a broken vent and looked more at home than we did.

We had about four months of fit-out ahead of us and a lease that started costing money from the first day. Every month those offices sat empty was a month of rent with nothing coming in. So the question was simple. How do you sell a private office to a small company when the office does not exist yet?

Why the floor plan was not enough

Our first attempt was a floor plan. I started with a floor plan, because that’s what you do. Our designer’s layout was lovely, numbered offices, square footage, the lot. I emailed it to the waiting list and said we were taking early reservations.

The response was polite and slow. A couple of people asked good questions. Nobody committed. Then a member who runs a tiny architecture practice put me straight over a flat white. A plan, she said, doesn’t tell a boss whether their people will be happy. Where’s the light? Glass walls or solid? Would you take a client into that meeting room, or say sorry about it on the way in?

Fair point. Annoyingly fair. I had been looking at that plan for weeks and I could picture the finished floor perfectly. Nobody else could.

Getting the floor drawn properly

Our designer suggested we commission a proper set of images before the fit-out started, and put me in touch with a studio that does office rendering for landlords and workspace operators. I was sceptical about the cost, because at that point every pound was going on partitions and electrics. Turned out the whole set cost less than a month’s rent on one office. Easy maths. My accountant, who questions every receipt I send him, didn’t even ask.

Along with the drawings and finishes I sent photos of our existing floors. I nearly didn’t bother, and I’m glad I did. Downstairs is all old beams and a bit of scruff, which members love, and I really didn’t want the new floor looking like a bank’s head office.

The first drafts came back in about ten days. Two rounds of revisions later we had eight images: the reception corner, three of the private offices from different angles, the larger meeting room, the phone booths, the kitchen and a wide view down the main corridor.

What the images did for us

I sent the same waiting list the images on a Tuesday morning. By Friday we had four reservations with deposits.

The difference, as far as I could tell from the conversations that followed, was that people could finally see themselves in the space. One founder told me the image of the four-person office, with a whiteboard wall and a window over the street, was the first time he had imagined his team somewhere other than their kitchen tables. Another chose her office specifically because the rendering showed the afternoon light falling across the desks. She had worked in a basement for two years and that picture was enough.

The kitchen image was the one I had not expected to matter. It showed the long table with people eating, laptops shut, someone laughing. It was the most shared image by far. Members forwarded it to friends. Two of our eventual tenants came from those forwards.

Changes we made because of the pictures

The images also caught problems. In the first round, the larger meeting room had solid walls on three sides, and the rendering made it look like a cupboard with a television. We changed one wall to glass and moved the screen to the opposite side, so the room looks out onto the corridor instead of into nothing.

The phone booths had been placed directly opposite the kitchen door. In the picture you could see at once that anyone on a call would have a view of people making toast and chatting. We moved them to the quieter end of the floor, which cost us nothing at that stage because the partitions had not been built yet.

And the reception corner was simply too empty. The studio added plants and a bench as placeholders, and we liked them so much that we bought almost exactly the same bench.

Opening day

The third floor opened in late August. Nine of the twelve offices were already let, and the remaining three went within six weeks. Our designer joked that the finished floor looked like a slightly messier version of the images, which I took as a compliment, and which I suspect is true of every office anyone has ever moved into. There are more cables, more coats on the hooks and a lot more coffee cups, but the light, the glass and the long kitchen table are exactly where the pictures said they would be.

Members still ask who took the photos for the old listing. Nobody did. The pigeon, I am pleased to report, did not renew.