Zeald's Change of Office

There have been quite a few rumours circulating about the reason for Zeald's move from its high profile large office on Albany Hill. Here is the actual story as told by commercial office-finder, Peter Scott:

 

New Deal for Zeald Turns Disaster into Opportunity

Situation

Fast growing web designers and e-commerce developers, Zeald had not long settled into a prime location at Albany near the northern motorway.
Zeald had naming rights to the building, and their logo stood out prominently.
Zeald’s landlord owned the building that Zeald leased. The site was a leasehold site, which meant the building owner paid ground rent to the land owner.
The building owners ran into financial difficulty and defaulted on the ground rent. The land owner took the building owner to court and had the ground lease cancelled.
This left Zeald with a lease from a landlord who had no building!

The new owner then turned up on the doorstep with a new lease containing less favourable terms than before. The new owner's attitude was, "You can either sign up now or vacate the premises in four weeks."
Zeald.com CEO David Kelly says the situation looked like a disaster...
"It was just before Christmas, and we are now a fairly large organisation. It looked like we didn't have any options."

Solution
Zeald had worked with Parallel Directions several times before to locate premises that would suit their fast growing and dynamic business, so David Kelly got in touch with Peter Scott and outlined the situation.
After running through Zeald's business strategy, Peter recommended calling the new owner's bluff and taking the challenging option to move out in four weeks.

David Kelly says Peter Scott opened his mind to the opportunities of moving the business to several locations, and separating out a front-of-house sales-focused office from another office that would serve as an operations facility, where the web development work itself would be carried out.

The separation of these functions would serve the future direction of the company that is increasingly focussing on work internationally. It was timely to start looking at sales offices in different locations, and keeping the operations as a separate function.

Outcome
The new approach for Zeald not to have all its activities under one roof was going to save the company a significant sum in rental as well. Peter and David estimate the savings on rental will be several hundred thousand dollars. That money has been poured back into the company, in terms of extra staff and R&D, instead of being spent on rent.

Footnote
One year after Zeald vacated the premises, their office floor is still vacant...............