CREATING UNIQUE SPACES
TBY talks to Gabriel Zamorano, CEO of Grupo Iredu, on 360 degrees project model, alternate sources of financing, and assisting multinationals to integrate in Mexico.
BIOGRAPHY
Gabriel Zamorano founded Grupo Iredu when he was 24 years old and has led the company ever since. He has a degree in Architecture from the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara.What type of companies do you target?
We have two main lines of business: offices and retail spaces. Our clients are large multinational companies. As for national companies, we only have large clients, such as Alsea, Grupo Nacional Provincial (GNP), as well as several banks. We do not have medium or small clients because we offer integral services. Multinationals typically are not sure how to organize their facilities to launch operations in Mexico; hence, we support them throughout the process. Mexico is a great country to do business. It offers the opportunity to generate large revenues, but companies have to surround themselves with the right people to achieve it.
How widely used is the 360 degrees project model in Mexico, and why do you prefer it over the design-build model?
There are several differences between design-build and a 360-degrees project. A design-build includes design and construction; however, a 360-degrees project has many additional elements such as real estate, which means finding the most appropriate location for the business. You also receive a customized business model, including office furniture, which sometimes causes budgets to exceed. In addition, we also determine how the operation is going to be carried out, for example, whether companies will operate through a third party or whether they have all the equipment to carry it out themselves. We want the client to have a general view of the problem, because the easiest part of the project is to build. Doing that comprehensive analysis and offering a 360-degrees project is our differentiating factor. We are the only ones providing this model for offices and retail businesses.
How are new trends in management reflecting on the design of the offices, changing your clients' needs and preferences?
Overall, we try to be cutting edge and push the clients to new schemes. An important aspect of working in different modalities is that we must have a space designed for that form of working. We design spaces that foster collaboration and effective work.
How do your designs contribute to staff satisfaction, productivity, and talent retention?
We must have open spaces, and different spaces for collaboration. Nowadays, objectives and projects are assigned to teams, not to individuals. Having an adequate space for those teams to meet allows us to develop and boost collaboration and creativity. We can have many different sizes of meetings rooms, varied furniture, screens, and boards. They can be outside, inside, or mixed spaces, which is amazing for companies.
What are your goals for 2018 and the strategies to achieve them?
We have been working for years to transform from a family company to an institutional company. In that process, we have been adding experienced staff to the company. We are filling out our areas of expertise to grow exponentially, which we have had for a long time. We want to double our growth this year, compared to the previous year. Over the next three to four years, we will focus on becoming one of the most important companies in our sector in Mexico.
Are you looking for alternate sources of financing, either from investors or the stock exchange market?
We are doing both. We acquire financing through the banks, which view us favorably. Banks are more concerned with housing building companies, but our clients are large and robust companies. In terms of the stock exchange, we are working on a project to achieve that. We already have a corporate governance program, and we have reached the revenue to be public. We will enter the third-party audit program soon. It is a plan for the next few years.
CREATING UNIQUE SPACES
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