Our new office in Richmond and river walks

Well, we moved into our new office in Richmond last Wednesday (26 October 2011).  I say “we” – I had a really important “Meet Magento” conference to attend in central London with another, so that meant I would’ve loved to have bundled everything into cars and driven a few times between the old and new office and setup in the new location, but I had to be somewhere else.  Sorry guys.

We’re in, and it’s lovely. A real hive of activity that’s moved us to a new level of productivity. All of us can sit and talk in one open space, we can have breakout sessions, meetings with clients in proper meeting rooms with coffee or breakfast/food served, and our central telephone line is now answered for us on-site, rather than using an external phone answering company (yep, we used one for about a year, and it got us over a really great period of expansion at the previous place where we were all itching to move and didn’t want to invest in a PBX or receptionist, etc, etc).

Walks into Richmond

So why am I writing this post?  Well, I’ve lived in the area now for 13 years, but always been based in Twickenham for living and working … up until now.  Nearly every weekend or during the week, Karolina and myself would venture down to Richmond by walking 20 minutes on the river (the river is a 4 minute from our house in Twickenham).  It’s where we’ve taken friends and family to walk into Richmond for drinks, dinner and so on. It’s where we’ve often walked on cold autumn and winter mornings to take breakfast at Med Kitchen, Moomba, Giraffe, Tootsies (that’s no longer here) and some other places on Sundays.  And it’s also where we walked regularly during Karolina’s maternity period, and now, with Oscar in his pram.

For some reason, I never saw Richmond as the place for us to have our office.  I guess I felt it was out of reach to us.  And I also didn’t see us moving down yet to central London – Soho, the City, or anywhere else.  I’ve spent many years down there and the whole reason to be based out of Twickenham was to service clients in a much better way and not have me and all my staff have to commute on the run into London.

Broadband outage is the fate card dealt for our future

So around 2.5 months ago, we had a broadband outage in the old office. Two of us had been working all weekend for a Magento ecommerce client.  We had finished our work and were ready to deploy on Monday with the client’s approval … and we lost our connection.  Contacted the ISP, and were told it would be out until after 6pm.  Nightmare.  I called around my close business friends and none of them were around on that day.  I spoke to one of our clients who is based really local to our old office and he was around.  I went over to his place … and within 30 minutes of arriving, he also lost connection – I didn’t realise he was with the same ISP and suffered the same local point failure.

So I hired an office for the rest of the day down in Richmond.  The way the guys at the office went about sourcing a room and understanding the urgency had me assured we were being well taken care of.  And the office itself was fantastic.  The seed was planted – we can get the city vibe, superb local shops, amazing commutes for all, but not have to be down in the centre of London.  So we spent the next few weeks looking for offices around Richmond … but in the end, we have taken an office in the building that provided our temporary space for the day two months previous.  And it’s fantastic.

How many?

Most days there’s 6 of us in here all the time.  Some days we go up to 9 when other staff come in (such as our business strategist who is in tomorrow as I write this).  On Monday, there were 11 of us, and for good reason – we had to go and enjoy the new location.  We had to start with some drinks in the office (thank you Ian), and then had drinks and dinner at One Kew Road – which is right next door.

A perfect example of how great this location is – none of us normally take standard lunch breaks, but instead just pop out, grab a sandwich, and head back to the office to eat while working or researching … but yesterday I thought it would be nice to show the local area, so we took a walk.

Delighted

I’m delighted we’ve made the move to Richmond.  Our new office location can be seen on the contact us page, but we’re based at Parkshot House, 5 Kew Road, Richmond TW9 2PR.

We’re just down the road from PayPal and EBay – we are there for meetings today with them.  Gumtree are on the same floor of our building.  And Starbucks is right next door.  And there’s three pubs either side.  Oh, and the train and tube station is right opposite the building.

The time to move, the new location and the staff here to LogicSpot are all perfect.  There’s good times ahead … and great times right now.

About Mark

Mark is the CEO of LogicSpot and loves his job. He still gets up every day and is happy to be in a career that he loves. From a young age he wasn't sure whether to go down the route of IT and software development, or art and design - both being his flair through schooling along with music. He chose the embodiment of both - designing beautiful websites and applications with his team that deliver beyond client expectations with finesse and grace

November 2nd, 2011 / Tags: magento richmond, meet magento, richmond office, richmond web design agency / Comments: