Co-work LatAm is the latest entry to the shared space concept in Miami
By Amy Poliakoff
With 25 locations in Chile and offices in Bolivia, Colombia, Uruguay, and Mexico, Co-Work LatAm is the largest co-working real estate investor in Latin America. Now, they have begun expansion into the U.S. market, starting with Miami. And all it took was an earthquake and a complete mission overhaul for co-founder Horacio Justiniano.
Founded in 2011, Co-Work LatAm was born out of Justiniano’s original startup, a toy distribution company in Santiago, Chile. When the devastating 2010 earthquake hit, it forced Justiniano into a realization: collaboration with teammates is the key to success.
Traditional co-working companies like WeWork created a new kind of culture in the shared office landscape. Miami is now honeycombed by co-working companies, with more than a dozen operating Downtown and in the Brickell financial district, such as Quest, Regus, Pipeline, and MiamiShared, all offering flexible use of office space with shared meeting and service facilities. The concept allows for everything from low-cost start-up space for entrepreneurs to flexible floor plans for larger companies. It also encourages the interaction of small, innovative companies with each other.
But Co-Work LatAm has a new kind of vision. On the one hand, the Chilean company has taken space for the kind of shared working environment common to the industry, affording the kind of collaboration that Justiniano envisioned in his post-quake epiphany. But unlike other co-working firms that sublet to a variety of companies in an already-established co-working space, Co-Work LatAm also creates self-contained personalized workspaces for their clients.
The idea works like this: Once they take on the customer – typically a larger firm, such as Uber or Sony – they source a space specifically for what that client needs and negotiate the lease. Co-Work LatAm then curates a customized environment for their tenants, designing the interior and fitting it with furnishings. They also provide a suite of services, including hiring and interviewing staff. In effect, Co-Work LatAm provides turn-key office space that does not mix a client’s culture with other companies.
“Our main business is a new kind of service in the real estate industry,” Justiniano says. “We learned after the pandemic that culture is a main issue in terms of people getting back to the office. If you want to create culture in your business, you must have your own space. But it’s not easy to have culture in a co-working space, so we build these special offices for companies of all sizes.”
With just over 60 employees, Co-Work LatAm now provides space for about 5,000 workers worldwide. Their first American offices opened in Miami in December 2021 with three locations in Brickell and one in the innovative Wynwood district. New offices will open in Doral, Coral Gables, and Dadeland next year. Only one of the Miami offices is a co-working space however; the other three are personalized work offices. And while these are not the standard shared-office spaces typically provided by co-work landlords, they do offer one key ingredient in common: flexibility.
“We offer a unique service that no one else has in the office space,” Justiniano says. “When you rent a space, you’re tied to that space for the length of your contract. We [offer] a solution where you can reduce your space, bring in other companies, and get rid of that extra space you don’t need.”
With Co-Work LatAm entering the next phase of their global growth footprint, the company understands that flexibility for corporations is a necessity, not just a desire. Its added spin is to help larger clients manage construction, development, and design aspects of new offices, along with helping procure administrative and operational staff and resources.
