Buchanan Street has long been the most prestigious address in central Glasgow. Flanked by the city centre’s two main shopping malls – St Enoch and Buchanan Galleries – and sporting two Subway stations and the city’s jewellery quarter, it’s a half-mile highlights reel. And among its crowning glories is G75 Media’s head office – a second-floor eyrie in an elegant Victorian corner building, looking down Buchanan Street towards St Enoch Square.
I never intended my business to be based in the centre of Glasgow. The company name was inspired by the East Kilbride postcode of my family home, intended to attract local clients and distinguish G75 Media from London-based competitors. However, this registered head office address was sold in 2021 when we moved to Carlisle, prompting a relocation to a Georgian terrace on Bath Street – and then a second move to our current premises in the heart of Glasgow last year.
We’re not really here
The strange thing is that I never visited the office on Bath Street, and I haven’t set foot in the West George Street premises, either. These are the domains of business premises providers – companies who, in exchange for a modest fee, provide entrepreneurs and sole traders with a registered head office address. You might be able to work in one of these venues, or you might not. You may be able to call in and collect post, or you may not. You could share workspace with other creatives, or you could be denied that option.
Regardless of the additional services they offer, these registered head office address providers give microbusinesses, startups and limited companies of modest stature a legal base of operations in circumstances where it may be impractical or inadvisable to use a home address. There are many reasons why this might be the case:
- You’ve relocated from one part of the UK to another. G75 Media was founded in Scotland and legally has to have a registered head office address north of the Border for the entirety of its existence, yet I now live in England. Even if I wanted to, I can’t use my current home address as my business one.
- You want a stable address while yours is changing. The challenges of postal redirection and mail sent to a former address will be familiar to students, tenants, contract workers, cohabiting couples, divorcees and many others. A dedicated business address represents a beacon of consistency.
- You don’t want to publicise your home address. Perhaps there are safeguarding issues around a family member. Maybe you’ve been stalked in the past. Or it could simply be you want to keep the distinctive combination of an unusual surname and your home address off the internet.
- You want to delineate work and home. A separate address for paperwork and admin helps to maintain a distance between home life and the business activities which often bleed into your free time anyway. It also means work and personal mail doesn’t get mixed up on the doormat.
- You split your time between multiple addresses. If you’re lucky enough to have a holiday home, or unfortunate enough to be birdnesting, you might not always be at one address to receive mail. A registered head office address provider can open, scan and email post to you, wherever you are.
After the ability to put down a permanent base of operations (that’s not your personal home), postal management is often the most valuable element offered by registered head office address providers. Some centres additionally offer virtual assistant services such as inbound call management, while we’ve already touched on the hot desking services some providers offer. Being able to sit in a room full of other freelancers or entrepreneurs could diminish the loneliness many people feel when working for (and by) themselves, and it also presents networking and brainstorming opportunities which are lacking at your local Costa.
If you’re setting up a small business, trying to find the right words for a new venture or struggling under the pressures of running your own company, outsourcing key aspects of your workload could be transformative. And when it comes to content production, marketing or advertising copy, report writing and bid or tender production, G75 Media is ideally placed to help. Get in touch with us to discuss our award-winning copywriting, journalism and editing services.