An Industrious flexible office space.
Courtesy: Industrious
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One year ago, commercial real estate behemoth CBRE acquired Industrious, a flexible office company that opened its first space in 2013 and grew at an impressive pace in the aftermath of the pandemic.
At the time, CBRE said in a release that Industrious’ success was “the result of an ongoing investment into understanding what makes for a great workplace, paired with continuous operational improvement.”
And it was a fair bet. In 2025, Industrious increased its global footprint by 58% from 2024, now with more than 250 units open in over 100 cities, according to the company. It is projecting 100% growth in new signings in 2026.
Industrious currently ranks third in its sector, by number of spaces and total square footage, behind International Workplace Group (owner of Regus) and WeWork.
The global flexible office market is poised to grow from a value of $54.59 billion in 2025 to $147.2 billion by 2033, according to SkyQuest.
While the mainstream office sector is still slowly recovering from the pandemic and the new work-from-home culture, flexible office, which encompasses co-working spaces, is benefiting from that slow recovery. Large companies want people back in the office, but they are also increasingly focused on the workplace experience for those not working at headquarters.
“I would say the biggest thing of all that’s driving it is a focus on the part of companies to try to get their midsize and smaller offices up to the quality level of their headquarters city so people don’t leave for a competitor, and they need help with that,” said Jamie Hodari, founder and CEO of Industrious. “It’s really hard for even JPMorgan or Google to run a really beautiful, engaging office experience for 43 people.”
Hodari said there are large cities with too much office space, but there are also smaller cities and regions with too little space. That plays right into the flexible office model.
“You have all of these people who want to basically work near where they live. They want to bike to work. They want to walk to work. They want to drive 5 minutes to work,” said Hodari.
Of Industrious’ last 50 workspace openings, a disproportionate number are in neighborhoods, not in large central business districts.
There is also a drive by landlords of Class B office buildings, which still have high vacancies, to refurbish their properties in order to attract new tenants. Industrious can benefit from that simply through its business model, which differs from other flexible office companies.
Instead of renting entire buildings, Industrious acts more like a hotel management company. The company signs management agreements with landlords to run a portion of a building. Rather than paying a monthly rent to the landlord, it split the profits — and also the risk. This “asset-light” approach makes Industrious more resilient during economic downturns because it isn’t locked into massive, long-term lease payments.
Industrious specializes in a more hospitality-focused environment, building spaces that feel more like boutique hotels than traditional offices. It also attracts a more varied tenant.
“You just get a lot more people doing cool things into the building, and so we hear from landlords all the time, ‘Hey, I have this whole building, say it’s half leased, and I want to drive the rest of it. How do I make the lobby feel not like a no-man’s land?'” said Anna Squires Levine, president of Industrious.
Industrious is clearly building on better times in the office market right now, and Levine said it’s not seeing any pain from weaker employment reports. The risks to flex, however, can be outsized.
“It’s a sector that overperforms in good times and underperforms in bad times,” said Hodari. “So you’re going to do better than long-term leasing when the going’s good, and when you hit a recession or when something like Covid happens, long-term leasing might go down by 6% or 10% and flex might go down by 25%.”
