SOHO 3Q

SOHO 3Q

Formation	February 2015
Founders	Zhang Xin, Pan Shiyi
Headquarters	Beijing, China
Parent organization	SOHO China
Website	www.soho3q.com

SOHO 3Q is a prime community-focused, shared office space in China managed by SOHO China, the country’s largest prime-office real estate company co-founded by tycoon couple, Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi. It is headquartered at Chaowai SOHO in Beijing, China. As of July 2016, the coworking space had 12 spaces in China, five in Beijing and seven in Shanghai.

3Q is a new project developed by the real estate company SOHO China. Although the company was founded in 1995, it underwent a fundamental paradigm shift in 2012 from a build-to-sell to a build-to-hold business strategy. This change was partly in response to the changing situation of the real estate market in China and there were calls within the company to consider new projects to remain competitive. According to the CEO, the company first contemplated the idea of a co-working space in August 2014 in line with other companies part of the sharing economy landscape such as Airbnb and Uber.

After detailed research on 30 internet companies, real estate tycoon and company chairman, Pan Shiyi announced the 3Q project in January 2015. Considered to be "Act 3" for the company, the initiative is meant to also cater to a large number of small- and medium-sized companies that no longer rent long-term office space and instead prefer to rent for a week, a month or half a year. The first two spaces - Wangjing 3Q in Beijing and Fuxing 3Q in Shanghai opened on February 1, 2016. At that time, 3Q become the largest coworking space in China with about 1500 seats and spurred the subsequent growth of a range of local coworking spaces and options.

In April 2016, Guanghualu II 3Q opened in CBD Beijing with more than 3000 seats and Guanghualu II is the largest space of 3Q as the brand’s flagship store.

3Q was launched in February 2015 and rapidly expanded across China from two locations and 1,500 desks to more than 10,000 desks in 11 locations in Beijing and Shanghai. The first tenants of 3Q were two girls doing movie production, and now it hosts a wide range of Chinese firms with hundreds of staff members such as LeTV and Meituan, as well as large international companies like Uber which are rapidly expanding in China. The company maintains that demand for such flexible office spaces will remain strong due to China’s culture of technological innovation and entrepreneurship, and “the waves of Western-educated young Chinese students returning to China to make the most of the economy's booming opportunities and start their own businesses.”