Commercial Flex Space | 3 Advantages and When to Lease It

Not every business fits neatly into a single commercial real estate niche.  While some businesses need front office space for customer interaction and administration, they may also need industrial square footage for their actual operations. 

For these sorts of businesses, commercial flex space can be the perfect solution.  

In this article, we’ll provide an overview of commercial flex space and some of its advantages to help you determine if your business should pursue a flex space strategy.  Specifically, we’ll dive into the following topics:

●      Commercial Flex Space Overview

●      Flex Space Advantage 1: Consolidation

●      Flex Space Advantage 2: Employee Interactions

●      Flex Space Advantage 3: Customer Interaction

●      When Should My Business Lease Flex Space?

Commercial Flex Space Overview

Put simply, commercial flex space constitutes any building with a combination of both warehouse/industrial space and office/retail space.  Hence, businesses using these spaces have the ability to “flex” between different types of operations while under the same roof. 

Typically one-story buildings located in the suburbs, a common flex space layout includes offices in the front and loading docks and industrial space in the back.

However, due to their inherently variable nature, flex spaces prove attractive to a variety of businesses.  From manufacturers to pharmaceutical companies to auto shops to brewers (and many more), flex space can meet the needs of an eclectic set of industries. 

Ultimately, if you need both office space and industrial space, flex space offers a hybrid solution.  And, pricing-wise, these sorts of buildings generally rent for less than normal offices but more than a typical industrial space, further supporting their middle-ground approach to business needs.

Local commercial real estate professionals can help you determine if a flex space approach fits your business needs - need help finding reliable ones in your area? Drop us a note!

Flex Space Advantage 1: Consolidation

For most small businesses, rent constitutes one of the largest line items in the budget, so minimizing this expense proves critical to maximizing profits.  As such, it often doesn’t make fiscal sense for a company to rent both retail space and industrial/warehouse space.

Commercial flex space allows businesses to manufacture and store goods in a warehouse, run necessary administrative and back-office support, and sell goods in a retail space - all under the same roof and same lease. 

In addition to the direct lease-related savings of such an approach, flex space offers the secondary savings of significantly minimizing shipping expenses, as businesses no longer need to pay to move finished goods from a warehouse to an off-site retail space.  

Leasing commercial flex space can be a great tool for businesses wanting to consolidate operations, so please drop us a note for help developing a flex space strategy.

Flex Space Avantage 2: Employee Interactions

When small businesses start expanding, a common inquiry commercial real estate professionals receive involves employee interactions.  Specifically:

Now that we’re growing, how can we continue to have the same level of “small business creativity” that has made us successful so far?

In other words, for businesses that began with everyone working together - from operations to admin and everything in between - a genuine concern exists that expanding operations will inherently separate these personnel, cutting off those interpersonal exchanges so critical for growth, problem-solving, and creativity. 

A commercial flex space approach solves this problem.  While all of a business’s functions have their own space, all of that space remains under the same roof, allowing everyone across a company access to everyone else. 

Flex Space Advantage 3: Customer Interaction

Lastly, a tremendous customer-related benefit exists to using commercial flex space.  Consumers today - far more than in the past - demand understanding of a business’s operations.  There’s a reason why essentially all breweries in the United States offer tours:

Customer loyalty increases when people “see behind the curtain” of a business’s operations.

If you have retail space selling high-end furniture, flex space allows sales staff to talk to customers about a specific piece and then actually show them how it was made.  While this may seem like an ancillary benefit, customers more and more demand this level of understanding, and flex space offers businesses the ability to build such demonstrations into their customer relations. 

When Should My Business Lease Flex Space?

For any businesses requiring both office and industrial space - especially if you’re approaching the end of a lease - exploring a commercial flex space option is an absolute must. 

In addition to the above major advantages, by its very nature, flex space also offers businesses tremendous build-out flexibility.  While inherently limited with options when pursuing a purely office or purely industrial property, flex space allows businesses the creative leeway to design an interior directly aligned with needs and vision. 

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We recognize that, even after outlining the above information, tackling the challenges of commercial flex space considerations can seem daunting.   

That’s why we’re here to help.  The Pocket Broker team lives and breathes commercial real estate, so drop us a note to see how we can help you achieve your unique objectives!