Profile: Mark Dixon, CEO Regus
June 15th, 2008 | by Simon Rattray
Regus are the largest serviced office operator on the planet with 950 business centres in over 70 countries.
Since their inception in 1989 they have experienced phenomenal growth, even taking into account the troubles the company faced after the dot com bubble ‘burst’.
But who is the man behind this colossus? Those inside the industry will be well accustomed to his name. Today, Choregus plots the meteoric rise of a man who used to sell sandwiches from his first venture, Dial-a-Snack, who then went on to become the CEO of the biggest serviced office company in the world.
The question you have to ask yourself is how many people who start off selling sandwiches go on to such global success. Well it is quite clear that you would need unrelenting ambition and self determination to arrive where Dixon finds himself today. He himself admits that “I’m a driven, restless person.”
He doesn’t seem to be dwelling on any saturation point for his business either. On the contrary, he recently stated at the MIPIM meeting that “We’re not really thinking about the end at the moment, we’re thinking we’re still close to the beginning.”
Dixon got the idea of creating Regus from by seeing a lack of available office space for himself, leaving him often working out of hotels. With this he opened his first business centre in Brussels in 1989. From there the company has gone from one business centre to over 950 and counting.
Recently the company has opened offices in locations and remote as Kenya and Algeria. It seems the Regus ethic of making property a fast moving and easy to acquire commodity has been popular the world over. But serviced office space around the globe is still only a minor percentage of overall office space which is why there appears to be plenty of room for expansion and growth.
Dixon’s appetite for growth can be traced back to his early days of selling fast food in Chelmsford. Although a meagre venture compared to Regus, we found that he actually employed over 100 staff. The fact that he used to work in this area is often scoffed at by business people STILL with less than 100 employees. However after five years Dixon moved on and sold the business for £800,000. The rest, as they say, is history…..
What next for Dixon and Regus? The company is poised nicely and will benefit from a general promotion of the serviced office industry, lack of liquidity for companies to purchase property and an increase in demand for flexible working / workspace. There is also, we at Choregus predict, a raft of new bolt-on services to come from Regus, using their strong position in the market. It should be a few interesting years ahead for Dixon, Regus and the serviced office industry.
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