Small bathrooms will be built separately from the house itself. For example, the first nest’s bathroom has been built in the backyard, and it was quite affordable to do as well. Anything related to the nest will require no entry to the house itself, as we want it to be a completely independent space.
When it comes to encouraging the home owner to repurpose their garage, a lot of it will have to do with how our first nest does. If I assume a 50% occupancy rate for our first nest which is open 12 hours a day (fairly conservative in my opinion), that would yield over $120 of revenue per square foot, which would more than pique people’s interest to do something with a garage that’s just collecting dust. I also plan on splitting the costs of the reservation with the home-owner (specific %s have not been figured out yet), and also sharing the revenue with them as well. The cost of renovating a garage is actually not as high as you would think because it’s not a functional living space (for example, the cement floor of a garage can be left as is); I predict the average cost of a renovation would be < $8k.
The current price point is at $20-25 hour for the space, which would make it the most affordable, private creative space you can currently find in Los Angeles (that is also inspiring and beautiful as well!).
(1) I chose residential garages for two reasons: (a) they represent a strong differentiator, and (b) their abundance and flexibility when repurposing the space. I do have certain criteria when it comes to location, but generally speaking, garage spaces are simpler to design and repurpose because they aren't meant to be living spaces. If you look at our first nest, the only substantial changes we made to it were building the wooden accent wall (costs less than $200 to do), built out the back window, added lighting and some furniture (we built the desks ourselves), and installed new doors. We learned that bathrooms cannot be built inside the garage itself due to regulatory concerns, so we had a nice one built in the backyard instead (it was quite affordable too). I think that garages are a vast, untapped resource that sits idly for many house owners, and this represents a great opportunity to maximize it and earn space owners some money in the process.
(2) CreatorsNest will not be an Airbnb type of marketplace. Since art-making is such an emotional, tailored endeavor, we want to be in direct control of the user experience and build spaces that fit an inspirational aesthetic that we want to maintain. If we open it up for anyone to list, the quality of these spaces will be highly questionable, especially since empty garages do not warrant a “creative space”. We are seeking each one out by submission (http://creatorsnest.com/build-a-nest.html) or referrals/suggestions from users, and either signing a rental agreement or using a revenue-sharing program for x number of months/years. I’ve calculated that if each nest can bring in about 240-250 recurring users with an average booking of 1.5 hours, then building that space would be worthwhile. It won’t take a critical mass of folks to make money off of each space.
(3) Great question. Our take on the space is for it to be used on an on-demand basis, and not as a creative studio that you are using day-in and day-out. Storage is a very craft-specific thing that a tailored studio would have to provide, as there is no real one-size-fits-all mechanism for all artforms. If you happen to be a painter that is using the space, the expectation is that you are in an awesome environment to work on your project for a given length of time, and to take that project back home with you after your reservation. I can see this potentially changing as more nests are opened up and each one becomes more specialized for certain artforms, but as of now, the spaces are meant to be more temporal in nature.
(4) My target market are folks that have never joined a studio, value privacy, but don’t know where to go when they want to escape the staleness of their home. From speaking with users, I’ve found that there is an abundance of these types of artists who can’t find an affordable solution to this problem. In Los Angeles, artist co-working spaces are flourishing, but there are two chief complaints: (1) they are over-crowded and often distracting, and (2) the monthly membership model is expensive, and they end up not going as much as they’d like to (a la gym membership). I think that in the process, we may end up bringing over some people that are already using studios, but CreatorsNest may have some limitations that they are not used to having (for example, the issue of storage space). I believe that going the on-demand route makes CreatorsNest a more accessible solution for the general, work-from-home artist.
If you have any other things you're curious about, please feel free to shoot them over!
The plan is to first focus on metropolitan areas, primarily in Los Angeles, where many artists and creatives tend to cluster. However, since we are focusing on residential garages as the physical venues to repurpose, we would be able to service different parts of the city quite effectively (since underutilized garages are fairly abundant wherever you go).
