We’ve Moved!

Well, it’s taken rather longer than expected.

We have, finally, moved, into our new offices office at 145 Lichfield St, Christchurch. We started the journey back in January, so it’s officially taken just over nine months after we took the big step of signing up to a long term lease.

For the last four years we’ve been housed at the Canterbury Innovation Incubator. We didn’t expect to be there that long: two years was the initial plan. Moving on from an environment with great support services isn’t easy. But the time came when we simply couldn’t grow any more in the space available, so had to move on.

Many company owners know what their ideal office space would be like, and they know they don’t have it, or can’t have it. Most of the spaces I looked at had less than ideal fit-outs that simply didn’t ‘fit’ with the kind of culture I wanted to build. Well, it’s my company and wanted do something about it, so I did.

I probably pay more attention to my surroundings than the average bloke, and maybe I take it too seriously. But there are three reasons why I do take it so seriously:

1. Working in a great office environment can improve morale and productivity.
2. Having extremely funky office with profile makes it easier to recruit and retain fantastic people.
3. This place is where me and my team spend most of our days, so we need to feel happy to be there.

Working with architect Thom Craig, we set out to create an environment that has wow factor, matches our brand and company culture. The original design inspiration was at C4 Coffee, where we fell in love with the New York loft style with exposed brick, ducting and cable trays.

We wanted to achieve an office that would be a great place to ‘hang out’. A place where it feels good to spend time. If meeting friends after work you should want to meet at the office. I think we’ve achieved that.

Thom has done a great job at translating our ‘brief’ into an office space that really fits us. Not only did we get a spacious open plan ‘team’ space, we also got windowed private offices, a breakout area, and even a gorgeous roof garden. And most importantly, we got a fabulous new user experience lab, where we do our ‘guinea pig’ testing of web sites.

When it came to chairs and desks, again we wanted those to be special too: for me, it’s the most important part of our work environment. We looked at the Formway Life Chair and the Herman Miller Aeron, but went for the Life chair because it was half the price of the Aeron, had a much lower carbon footprint, and in my opinion was a superior chair. For the desks, we’ve spent the last four years with L-shaped desks, and found they take up lots of space and are not really conducive to the collaborative manner in which our team works. We usually work in pairs, so having tables side by side is better for us. We stole the idea for the trestle desks from the nice folks at The Plant, who let us come in and see how they’d made theirs. We got the desks made by our friendly neighbour at a fraction of the cost we were quoted by a carpentry company. Everyone who sees the desks comments on how great they look.

The key to getting the space right has been to involve the team at every step of the way. I recall a stage right at the beginning where we created a sort of mood board with snippets of other offices that we liked. Since then, our people have had their say on the plans and have regularly visited the space during the construction phase.

We’ve furnished the office with a funky kitchen area with coffee bar and awesome E61 Rocket espresso machine. We’re now planning our lounge area which will have sofas and a huge plasma screen with a Nintendo Wii.

The bottom line for me is that this is an investment in my people, now and future. We now have a great place to spend our working days, we’re a stone’s throw from the really cool Lichfield Lanes cultural precinct, and we have plenty of space to grow into.

For more photos of the move, check out our Flickr photostream.

Looking for space?

It just so happens that we have four 3m x 4m offices within our space available for rent. We’re looking for one or two person companies that are complementary. We are wanting to create a funky hub of synergistic people. If you are looking for space with extreme cool factor then feel free to contact me.

Highlights:

• Meeting room with conference phone
• Lounge
• Kitchen and coffee bar
• Showers
• Changing room
• Roof garden with great views and BBQ
• Cycle racks