Collabor8te, Glasgow Scotland

Results

• From 0-350+ members
• 10+ years retention for longest-standing members (vs. ~18 months industry average)
• 55% revenue drop during COVID – recovered to “best year yet”
• Using Nexudus since 2014 (one of the earliest customers)

The Accidental Coworking Space

Teresa Jackson moved to Glasgow and was running a CRM consultancy. She needed an office, but the idea of sitting alone in a small room wasn’t for her. So she found a great space and asked people from her networking circles if they’d share it. They all said yes. So, Teresa signed the lease.
Then nobody showed up.

“I never intended to open a coworking space,”  Teresa says. “When I took on the lease, I thought: how will I pay my bills?”

Her answer was simple: sell monthly memberships to strangers. That was twelve years ago. Today, Collabor8te has 350 members, some of whom have been with her for over a decade. This is an exceptional feat; the industry’s average retention is around 18 months.

A CRM consultant who didn’t want to build a CRM

Before founding Collabor8te, Teresa worked in travel, then sales, then CRM consultancy. When she needed software to run the space, her instinct was to hack something together from tools she already knew.

“I needed a system and was going to build it myself. Then I discovered Nexudus, so why reinvent the wheel?”

Getting involved with all the features

Ask Teresa what Nexudus features Collabor8te uses, and she doesn’t hesitate.

“We use everything. Pretty much everything.”

Memberships, bookings, automated onboarding emails, anti-money laundering compliance and reporting through Nexudus Explore. As far as apps go, we use NexIO and Passport for access and NexDelivery for mail.

NexDelivery is managed by Alena, who also built the Collabor8te website. When Nexudus released updates to NexDelivery’s label scanning, Alena’s reaction was, “You’ve done all the things I talked about.”

Very flexible success

Collabor8te doesn’t work like most coworking spaces. There are no dedicated desks to rent, and private offices aren’t the core product. Instead, members buy a block of hours each month and use them however they want across desks and rooms. One membership can cover up to three people from the same company, as long as they don’t all show up at once.

“We’ve always kept things super simple,” Teresa explains. “People get a number of hours, and can book anything they want.”

She introduced credit rollover a few years back, bundled with a price increase, and her members loved it. She was slightly concerned that this might mean too many people came in at once using their built-up hours but so far that didn’t happen.

There’s one other thing that members love: monitors. Almost every desk has one.

“People come here because they want a monitor and nobody else seems to offer them.”

It sounds trivial, but it really isn’t. Post-pandemic, everyone had built a better setup at home, so a shared desk with just a power socket wasn’t enough anymore. For Teresa, monitors became a selling point nobody planned.

Credits to the community

When COVID hit, Collabor8te lost roughly 55% of its revenue, but something unexpected happened, and members kept paying. While some downgraded their plans, others stayed on full memberships even when they couldn’t visit. Teresa offered credits for the lost time rather than refunds, betting that the community would hold together.

It did. The business survived. And now?

“We’re having our best year yet.”

Upcoming features

Teresa is waiting to get her hands on the Members Portal, with its new drag-and-drop editor, saying, “The ability to customise, the ability to make your portal more your own is incredibly exciting.”

With Alena’s HTML skills, they’re planning to go further than theme changes. And because Teresa runs a Nexudus consultancy called Next Level Coworking, she’ll apply the same approach for her clients.

Teresa’s best advice? Be Nice

Collabor8te has no niche or industry target. There’s no membership criteria beyond wanting somewhere to work.

“We’re just welcoming everybody,” Teresa says. “Just be nice.”

She calls the result a “melting pot of lovely people” with members who share, connect, and collaborate because the space was designed for exactly that. No assigned territories or private corners to hide in. Just a community that chooses to come back.

Some of them have been there since the beginning. Ten years of showing up to a space that was only ever meant to cover the rent.

About Teresa Jackson

Teresa runs Collabor8te and Next Level Coworking, a consultancy helping other operators get the most from Nexudus. She’s part of a consortium of independent UK coworking operators, including Dragon Coworking, Contingent Work, The Residence, and Freedom Works, who meet regularly to share ideas, and she speaks at industry events, including Coworking Europe.