Case Study: Rosie Labs

How Rosie Labs leveraged flexibility to save money and recruit top talent

Customer

Rosie Labs

Funding

$11.9 Million (Series A)

Industry

Digital Agency

Employees

13

Rosie Labs is a New York-based boutique marketing agency who delivers cross functional marketing, advertising, branding, media, business planning, creative, social, digital, and analytics services. Over the years, CEO David Song’s team has become distributed across the world, giving him a need for a workspace solution for his distributed workforce.

Challenges

For Song, this change in his workforce has left him with three main challenges:

  1. Song needed to expand the Rosie Labs, but found himself limited in part by high overhead office costs. His agency was paying more than $8,000 a month for an office in New York City that was being underutilized because employees today don’t need a permanent desk and a phone.
  2. While based in New York, Rosie Labs has employees in Dallas, London, Singapore and other major cities. Though his New York office was underutilized, going completely virtual did not work. He still needed to provide employees meeting space and desks on occasion.
  3. Song has found hiring remote workers gives him access to the best talent, which is vital to his business. But many potential recruits balked at having no physical location.

He explored shared workspace solutions, but they were expensive and did not scale to meet their needs. He wanted a solution that would save him money and still give his employees the option of a place to work and meet.

Solution / How Upflex helped

Rosie Labs chose Upflex as its workspace solution. They gave employees the Upflex app in order to access desks and meeting rooms with minimal effort at more than 4,000 locations around the world. Because Upflex provides a balance between having a permanent space and no space at all, Song was able to replace his New York City office with Upflex.

Employees in New York City were able to open up their Upflex app and find workspaces to collaborate on the days they needed to meet up in person. They liked being able to set aside a day or two each week to work together in person, and work independently on other days. For a New Yorker, convenience is key, and being able to book a desk with Upflex just minutes before they needed to use it was vital.

Those employees in other cities around the world could use the Upflex app to book a workspace near their home since they did not have a permanent office location. These employees like having a regular place to work on the days they want to go into an office, and the freedom to work in other locations when it’s more convenient.

Lastly, when he was recruiting new talent, Song was able to stay attractive to those who would otherwise not consider a job that did not offer a physical office location. This kept quality talent in the applicant pool he would otherwise not be able to access. The agency presents Upflex during the interview process to attract key talent who can work anywhere.

Song sees Upflex as a necessity for him and a company benefit for employees. They have the flexibility to structure their workspace to fit their needs. “If people want to go the office, they can,” Song said. “People who want to work from home can as well.”

Results & ROI

With Upflex, Rosie Labs has able to leverage flexibility to grow the business. The two main ROIs are:

1. Savings
2. Recruiting

Rosie Labs has been able to reduce its office costs and recruit highly-skilled new employees. Since adopting Upflex, Rosie Labs has grown its employees from 18 to 30. They were also able to save about $7,000 a month in office costs. With this lower overhead, the Song could hire more employees as well as offer higher salaries to attract world-class talent.

“We were able actually to save money on rent and pay people more,” he said.

Now, employees can use workspaces only when they need, and Rosie Labs is not spending money on desks when no one is using them. Employees can use a single app to search and book, and don’t have to submit an expense report and then wait for reimbursement.

The CEO values knowing he has convenient access to professional meeting spaces for employees and for clients.
“It gives me peace of mind to know that space is available whenever I need it,” he said.

  • From day one, the customer service has been on point, which makes me happy. Also, my team loves how easy the app is to use, and Upflex offers excellent coverage and a fantastic variety of spaces my team can access whenever they need.

    David Song
    David Song CEO, Rosie Labs

Interested in Upflex for your company? Contact us at [email protected]