Office space provider Glandore expands as competition contracts

"There’s no point in making people come into the office for the sake of it,” said Clare Kelly.

Glandore, which opened its doors in Cork five years ago through a €1m investment, is currently experiencing 90% occupancy. Picture: Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision

Clare Kelly and her family have witnessed a dramatic change in the flexible working space since her father Michael founded office provider Glandore in 2001.

Glandore is among the household names like WeWork and Iconic Offices that companies use for shared space in Ireland. However, some have had more success than others as working conditions change post-covid.

WeWork entered bankruptcy largely due to its own internal failings. Iconic Offices, which opened a location in Cork in September 2022, decided to shut those doors after less than a year. The company, which still operates in Dublin, said it experienced “a consistent market decline with occupancy levels remaining low”, according to a report in the Business Post earlier this year.

Glandore, which opened its doors in Cork five years ago through a €1m investment, is currently experiencing 90% occupancy.

Headquartered in Dublin, the company has seven flexible workspace venues in Dublin with 3,000 desks, two in Belfast supplying 900 desks and one in Cork providing 350 desks.

She attributed the success to a number of factors and said her father was an “early pioneer” and believes Glandore is more like “a hospitality business than a commercial property business”. They have worked with various sized companies, including luggage insurance tech company Blink Parametric and Dropbox, which opened their first European offices with space in Glandore.

The appeal, said Ms Kelly, is that these companies don’t have to include office management tasks into their operations and can focus solely on growing their business and attracting staff back into the office.

For example, Glandore contracts also provide member companies access to legal, financial, and HR services and have facility maintenance staff. “The challenge for companies now is how to bring their teams together,” said Ms Kelly.

“People need to want to come into the office. There’s no point in making people come into the office for the sake of it,” she added.

'Flexibility'

The business’s main offering has always been “flexibility in terms” when it comes to office space contracts, allowing customers to stay as long or leave whenever they want. However, Ms Kelly also said Glandore’s growing attraction is that it can be used as a conduit by employers to manage their employee numbers post-pandemic.

“Now post-covid, we’ve got companies where maybe they had grown to a certain size and they may have downsized slightly and they’re navigating a new hybrid-work model and trying to figure out how much space they need,” she said.

This may benefit Glandore but the overall commercial property market could be hit in the long-term. In recent years, Glandore said they have been receiving a number of inquiries from indigenous and foreign businesses seeking to downsize their property footprint in Dublin, Cork, and Belfast.

Ms Kelly has not always been interested in the area of flexible workspace. The occupational therapist turned Glandore Cork director returned from Australia and saw her sister growing the business with her father and decided to get involved.

“That often happens with a family business. Once you go in, you don’t leave,” she said.

Ms Kelly now runs Glandore with her two other sisters, Fiona and Rebecca.

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