It’s like WeWork for warehouses.
A startup in the growing co-warehousing market is expanding to the Austin metro area.
Los Angeles-based ReadySpaces is putting the finishing touches on its first location in Round Rock, a 119,000-square-foot industrial facility at 2700 Louis Henna Blvd.
The leased space is the company’s third co-warehousing venture in Texas. The other two, in downtown Houston and The Heights in Houston, were completed in 2018 and 2021, respectively, and span about 116,000 and 127,000 square feet.
ReadySpaces provides small and medium businesses with manufacturing or warehouse space that would otherwise be difficult to obtain for companies their size.
Co-warehouses are designed as a network of warehouses that partition smaller spaces for businesses and provide shared amenities like forklifts, loading docks and conference rooms, said Kevin Petrovic, ReadySpaces partner and co-owner.
“We operate a network of 26 of these locations throughout the country,” he told The Real Deal.
The company leases to e-commerce companies, moving companies, building contractors and businesses that need storage or use various types of equipment.
It also has co-warehouse locations in Boston, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area and markets where cheap industrial space is limited.
Trends suggest that, as supply chain headwinds and costs become more uncertain and long-term investments riskier, the need for temporary, short-term spaces to store resources and have work space will rise.
This will be the case especially for small businesses, which are driving up demand for co-warehousing in markets like Austin, Petrovic said.
“The cost of industrial real estate in Austin has been kind of going up quite a lot, so it’s raised that barrier to entry, it’s made it more expensive,” he said.
“If you’re a new startup business, you don’t have that financial history, so it’s a little bit harder to get your foot in the door.”
Petrovic says that although the shell building is complete, the company still needs city approval before being able to divide it up and add amenities.
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