Idea: Remote working home office packages for businesses
Idea: There is consensus that the current pandemic will speed up the transition towards remote working across many industries. For businesses that want to build fully remote teams they need to ensure their employees have productive and healthy workspaces in their homes, but they don't want the burden of owning desks and monitors and transporting desks across the country. They can use Peak Space to rent home office packages for their remote employees as and when they need them.
Landing Page: peakspace.co
(I'm leveraging my experience from a similar business I started Monty Space
Any feedback on whether you would want this as a remote employee or whether you think it would be useful for businesses, please do let me know. Many thanks!
Cool concept! I would def use it as a remote worker if it's covered by an employer
Good luck :)
Great to hear you would use it Akhil. Thanks!
Very interesting @sambob :)
Would be great to see other remote working / office equipment tools as well. How many regions are you planning to cover?
I'm also twisting from idea, keen to know your feedback!
I think conceptually this is cool, and was particularly was impressed by the price points. Definitely something I can, as a decision-maker, imagine offering new hires as a WFH benefit/perk. But when I take a minute to think from a remote worker standpoint, when considering my own setup, not sure if I want or need a company to supply me unless it's vastly superior quality.
Not sure if that helps, was some thoughts that ran through my mind as I looked at your page.
Hi Jahn, thanks for the feedback, really appreciated. I agree with you - I don't think this solution will be for every remote worker - some may have invested in their own ergonomic and productive work set up. I need to do some research to identify how many remote workers this could appeal to. It might be a good tool for "first time" remote workers - where their employer asks them to work remotely to support social distancing measures in the Q3 and Q4 in office spaces.
Hey,
I'm pretty sure an ex-colleague of mine spent some time validating this concept for a large corporate. From memory, it tested well, but the company didn't go ahead with it as they felt it was too far away from their current strategic base.
Sure they'd be happy to chat to you, so chuck me an email if you'd like to connect and I'll see what I can do.
Cheers,
Rob
Hi Sambob,
There is certainly an opportunity here. However, why wouldn't companies want to own desks and monitors? Let's say it costs $2000 to set up an employee at home. That is not a lot of money compared to owning a physical location. And, they'd have to purchase that equipment if the employee worked onsite anyway. Why would they want to rent? I don't think that is a big pain point.
I think the bigger opportunity is with training and recommending online tools. Getting set up is easy. Staying productive is hard.
John
Thanks John. I agree that it won't be for all businesses but I think there could be specific pain points that rental/ subscription could solve for some businesses. For instance, if the business spends $2k on a workstation for a new joiner who doesn't pass probation, or leaves after 1 year, they don't want the hassle of collecting that furniture, storing, and sending to another new joiner. Equally they don't want to write off that $2k in capital expenditure and gift it to the employee. Rental allows them the flexibility to turn the capital expenditure into an operating cost for their employee.
I'm going to try and speak to some businesses in varying sectors and of varying sizes to get some feedback and understand if it could be a pain point.
Do you have the option to purchase at the end of your subscription and what is the condition of the items? i.e are they new?
Yes I have been thinking of adding the option to purchase at the end of the subscription. However, as the intention is for the business to subscribe on behalf of their employee (as a perk) I need to think about how the pricing would work for it to be purchased by the employee.
The items are all brand new atm but in time an increasingly important part of the business will be to ensure desks are refurbished to an "as new" standard in between rentals. The intention is for it to be as circular as possible so we re-use as many components as possible.
Interesting idea. High margins in the furniture business and solving a pain point many companies might now unexpectedly and suddenly have.
Do you deliver yourself? To London only or throughout the UK?
Can employers use this as a tax-optimized perk for their employees (as they can use the furniture for private purpose outside of work)? If so, maybe that should be mentioned as well.
Thanks for the feedback. I've managed to partner with an existing office furniture delivery provider for delivery and could facilitate delivery through the UK.
Very good point about tax-optimized perk - I hadn't considered that. I think that could be a great addition to the value proposition.