Introducing Spark’s New Office
We’re growing bigger and better in the heart of Vancouver.
You may have heard that Spark started off the year in a brand new office!
We’re still located right in the heart of Yaletown, Vancouver, but you might say we’ve made some upgrades. With the growth that we’ve been seeing over the past few years—not only in terms of team members, but our clientele too—we needed a new home base to set the foundation as we continue to shake up the new development world.
Spark’s groundbreaking software brings together real estate and technology in one of the first all-in-one platforms designed for the industry. We’re accelerating our growth, pushing forward in the cities where we can get the most traction and maintain momentum.
Compared to our previous place, the new office is about 3x bigger. Designed by Carly Norris of Figura Design, our beautiful new space gives us serious room to accommodate for additional hires, office get togethers, clients, and puppers.
Keep reading for a quick virtual tour!
One of the most important considerations for the team as we started the hunt for a new office was the question of light. We knew we wanted lots of natural light, and lots of lighting options for the interior spaces where windows aren’t possible.
The new office spans the whole top floor of a heritage building, with exposed and white-painted brick throughout. We added a few partition structures to help split up the areas, but otherwise left the space almost entirely open. This ensures that the sunlight from our North and South facing windows can essentially penetrate the entire length of the office! Dimmable LED lights that hang from the ceiling provide plenty of light on rainy Vancouver days.
And of course, our new Spark logo is in the place of honour right at the top of the stairs.
The main boardroom takes up about half the north side of the office. The table (it’s even wider in real life!) is made of wood and has plenty of seating. It’s where our official product meetings take place, and we also host clients, investors, and board members here.
The boardroom was a major aspect of the renovations for our new space. Last year, Spark signed on several big clients, and knew that we would need additional places to accommodate our clientele—for product demonstrations, meetings to go over contracts, and both in-person and screen-share training.
As we increase our presence (currently Spark is in 80 cities!), we’re looking ahead and planning to build some more meeting rooms. But for now, if you’re coming to our office for a visit, this will be your first stop.
Since moving into the office, we’ve already had a couple of shifts—originally, our CEO’s office was on the North side. He’s since swapped spaces with our CSM team, allowing our Customer Success Managers a bit more space and quiet to take client calls, while being able to get more hands-on with the sales team.
Behind the Spark logo wall, we’ve cleverly placed a soundproofed bench nook and a few bean bag chairs. When you walk by on a quiet afternoon, you can usually see one of our software developers or customer success huddled up with their laptops! Quiet seating areas like this give our employees the perfect place to retreat when they need a little time to themselves, or to focus on a project.
Just beyond that, you can see the software development area — and the Sales/Marketing section behind that.
The CEO and Sales/Marketing office splits out the main sales floor from our software developers—an important bit of soundproofing, since sales tends to get a little bit noisy between calls and celebrating new wins!
The offices themselves have additional soundproofing panels and half walls to keep them feeling private, while the glass helps keep the space open.
For our new space, we wanted to pay careful consideration to common vs desk areas, providing plenty of places to work as well as socialize or take a moment to relax and refocus.
Our new office is split lengthwise by some load-bearing walls, which works out perfectly — with the majority of desks on one side, that leaves a lot of common areas where we can host events, hold impromptu meetings, and gather to share food and play. Plus, these areas can be easily re-oriented to accommodate more team members as we grow.
Our new kitchen is on the far side of the office, right next to our massive TV screen (just off-camera to the left of the photo). Around noon, you can usually find groups of people gathered around the kitchen table, sharing food and chatting over lunch! The inclusion of these common areas have given our team a space where they can socialize and refocus.
We also have our bi-weekly ‘all-hands’ meetings in the lounge area. It’s a great way to make them more informal and comfortable, giving people the opportunity to share upcoming projects and accomplishments from their departments.
Our new office also has a spacious common area. A local gallery has generously loaned us some art, both canvases and interactive sculptures, which make the space more lively. As another of our community initiatives, Spark also lends out the space for local business events.
Company friend and local business partner, Megan Dalton, uses our space to host the Future Women: Inspired Series. Megan is the founder and CEO of Meda, a technology recruitment company. Their FW Series invites innovators to share stories on what it takes to be successful in the technology space, and is open to anyone interested in growth, technology, and elevating women in business — all topics that Spark wants to support!
Our kitchen and common areas have also provided a great place for our company socials. Since we moved into the space in late 2018, we’ve hosted our Christmas party here, held special events for holidays like Valentines Day and Pancake Tuesday, and are introducing monthly birthday get-togethers as well as a ‘take-out night’ at the end of the month. All of these initiatives are made possible because of the growth and changes Spark has experienced in the past year.
As the company takes on new employees, new tasks, and new challenges, the space that we work in is important. New clientele in new cities means increased pressure on our team to excel. And while we’re confident we will rise to the occasion, we want to make sure we have space to grow, space to work together and apart, and to get to know one another.
The Spark platform was built by our close-knit team of organized and diverse experts, and we’re pleased to carry on that tradition in our new office!
Want to learn more about Spark?
Visit our website https://spark.re, or come by in person to see our awesome office for yourself! Just get in touch at hello@spark.re.
What do you think of our new office? Leave us some 👏👏👏 or comment to let us know!
