Instead of living comfortably in a city, Justin Chen, CEO of Arcc Spaces, spent his early years helping his parents at a factory in Mali, Africa and experiencing life from the perspective of a minority. He eventually followed them to different parts of the world, immersing in diverse cultures and appreciating the wonders of design.
From designing office and retail spaces to building co-working spaces, Justin’s vision for Arcc Spaces was influenced by his cultural experiences as a child, perspectives as an architect, and learning points as a leader. We had the opportunity to chat with him (over zoom) to understand his story of launching Arcc Spaces and overcoming challenges during COVID-19 times.
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Experiencing A Culturally Diverse Childhood
Growing up, Justin followed his parents to many countries for business ventures – including Canada, Africa, Hong Kong and Singapore – which exposed him to diverse cultures at a young age. Despite their entrepreneurial roots, his family started from very humble beginnings. His early years were spent helping his parents out at an enamelware factory in Mali, Africa where they led a frugal life and navigated the nuances of living as a Chinese minority.
With frequent international travel over the years, he witnessed how cultural influences intertwined with design and developed an inquisitiveness towards architecture. This motivated him to study architecture at University of California, Berkeley, which he considered to be a defining phase of his growth as it reframed his perspectives towards problem solving.
Embarking On A Career In Interior Architecture
His first career post-college revolved around designing retail and office spaces, where he had the opportunity to follow through multiple projects, and draw synergy between business and design. “Every retail space is designed for a purpose”. Citing Apple as an example, he highlighted how the technology giant could deliver defined retail experiences by designing its physical stores to suit the unique demographics in each city.
With his newfound appreciation towards design, he carried his passion back to his family, who was running a traditional real estate business in Singapore by then, with an ambition to transform the real estate experience.
The Early Days of Starting Arcc Spaces
His first shot at designing shared workspaces started in 2009, before co-working became a buzzword in Asia Pacific. His task was to revamp their office building located at 75 High Street. He collaborated with Colin Seah, a renowned Singapore-based architect, to design a first-of-its-kind shared workspace with unique features like open concept layout and breakout rooms to facilitate engagement between employees and tenants.
In 2013, he noticed a rising trend of shared workspaces fuelled by the tech sector and repositioned the office workspace into a community-based workspace. Resonating with the challenges of SME owners, he saw a gap between traditional SMEs that were exploring new means to enhance their tech capabilities and fast-growing tech startups that wanted access to new capital. Through the process of bridging the gap, the office workspace morphed into a collaborative hub that fostered a close-knitted community of business owners – some of whom he still keep in touch with till today.
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Differentiation In The Face of Competition
In recent years – even prior to covid-19 – the global economy had seen a paradigm shift in the way people work and interact. Technological advancement; changing work culture led by the millennial generation; and growing entrepreneurship along other socio-economic factors contributed to the prevalence of co-working, which in turn gave rise to an exponential surge in co-working spaces. This phenomenon, as Justin put it, was a double-edged sword.
The challenges of building Arcc Spaces in the early days revolved around educating traditional companies – mostly bootstrapped – about the value of co-working spaces since it was a fairly new concept in the non-tech sectors. Though there was a need for constant experimentation of the shared workspaces, communities were formed very organically.
However, as co-working became more commonplace, people drifted away from the intimacy of community building and focused more on the commercial aspects. The market eventually became much more saturated with bigger players monopolising the space. As part of his continuous strategy to differentiate Arcc Spaces from the masses, Justin shifted his focus from being product-driven to people-driven by injecting innovative design elements to cater to defined audiences across different geographies.
Working Through The Test of Covid-19
Covid-19 proved to be a stringent test for both Arcc Spaces, as an organisation, and Justin, as a leader.
Like most business owners, he regards culture building and people management as his greatest challenges of being a leader, especially with the team growing in scale. As Arcc Spaces develops into an international company with employees distributed across different offices in Asia Pacific, and him based in Shanghai, there are inherently less opportunities to deepen interpersonal relationships through face-to-face interactions.
The pandemic further hindered the organisation in engaging the employees as team bonding activities grounded to a halt due to travel restrictions. To make matters worse, the frontliners had to respond to pandemic regulations proactively and manage disruptions to daily operations in the local context. At the organisational level, the management team also had to think ahead of current times and re-strategise the business for a post-COVID world, despite many uncertainties.
Drawing Leadership Lessons from Covid-19
Drawing lessons from the pandemic, he doubled up his efforts on reinforcing shared values of the organisation – grit, resilience, ownership – and empowering employees to be autonomous decision makers and crisis managers. Compared to the past where he saw himself as more of a creative visionary, he now spends a bulk of his time communicating and aligning internal stakeholders with the direction of the organisation. “For all employees regardless of their designation, it is important to convey the purpose of their work and articulate how their role relates to the whole organizational narrative.”
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On a brighter note, the pandemic also validated what the organisation had done well. Being creative and design-led enabled them to capitalise on new trends and translate threats into opportunities. Focusing on people over products in their approach had helped to deepen bonds with their employees across cities – with many of them having stayed on for over a decade and riding through COVID-19 with the organisation.
An unintended benefit of the operational slowdown was that it provided an opportunity for Justin to reflect on how the organisation could adopt new policies to improve internal processes and drive innovation to better facilitate cross-border collaboration and redefine the value of co-working spaces.
Adapting Arcc Spaces For The Post-COVID Future
As part of adapting to the new normal, Justin will be focusing on strengthening the organisation’s internal capabilities and business offerings. Some of the key aspects he has highlighted include recalibrating the value proposition of co-working spaces, identifying core audiences, and upskilling employees to be more solution-driven. He believes that Arcc Spaces can continue to leverage on its unique advantage of relating to entrepreneurs, SMEs, and landlords by tailoring solutions in a more collaborative and consultative manner.
From his perspective, co-working spaces will undergo a similar trajectory as the hospitality industry post-COVID – more diversification in services and more personalisation of experiences. With this in mind, he will concentrate his efforts in streamlining the multiple businesses and drawing best practices that could be applied across the organisation. More importantly, he wants to formulate a holistic brand story about what Arcc truly is.
Learning Points For Aspiring Entrepreneurs
On hindsight, Justin recognises that people are the foundation of any organisation. Any entrepreneur or business owner should strive to foster the right culture in their company as early as possible, and invest more time in developing people and building teams.
“Empower managers to be accountable to their staff, and provide feedback channels for employees to share their honest views on what’s happening on ground so that you (and the organisation) can improve.”
Last but not least, he believes that entrepreneurship is a journey-in-progress. Never stop being curious about things, experimenting with new ideas, learning from the people around you, and being open to different perspectives towards problem solving.
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