About
A desk rental is a transaction. We are building the thing underneath it.
Ten months in, this is who we are, what we believe, and what has happened so far, including the slow bits.
The idea
Take a rent-a-desk office and turn it into an incubator, in the order it can be built: a floor that runs well, then a programme people would pay for on its own, then the relationships that take years and cannot be manufactured. Renting a desk is the on-ramp. The product is what happens to your business because you were in the building.
Who it is for
The garage graduate: someone with a working product and a house that has stopped being big enough, who needs a place to hold a client meeting, to lock in, and to leave the business at the office at six. People making physical products, things you can hold, ship and put on a shelf. Software founders are welcome, but they are not who this floor is designed around.
The vision, the mission, the model, the numbers and the risks are on one page, and they are updated monthly.
Our philosophy
Four things we will not compromise on.
Not gatekeeping
Nothing is hidden. The prices, the schedule, the curriculum, the business plan and the written notes from every session are public. Members and day-pass holders register first because a masterclass is capped at eighteen: a capacity limit, not a judgement about who deserves to know things.
Under-promise
We name the ambition once and name what is missing in the same breath. If you take the notes and never rent a desk, that is a fine outcome.
Made for makers
Physical products fail on landed cost, minimum order quantities, a lease nobody read properly, and inventory that ate the cash. Those are solvable problems with unglamorous answers, and almost nobody teaches them. We do, and we sign for the parcels.
People who make things too
A floor where the person at the next desk also has a pallet problem. Pastries & products has no name tags and Show & tell has a no-pitching rule, which is why people come back.
Which phase we are in
Three phases, and we will tell you which one we are in.
Each phase has a trigger written down on the plan page, and nothing is announced before its trigger is met.
- Now
A floor that works
Live. $16,531 and 3 of 6 doors as of October.
- Next
A programme worth showing up for
In progress. Season two opened 17 September.
- Later
The introductions
Not started.
Ten months
What happened, including the slow bits.
- Oct 2025
The floor plan
The owner, who runs the brokerage next door, walks the third floor with a phone and the building’s own plan: six offices and a big conference room left behind by a law firm, ten partitioned desk pods along the west windows and down the middle, a kitchen with a commons beside it, and a board room with a microphone at every seat. The big north-east room is a photographer’s, not ours. That plan is still the source of the floor plan on this site.
- 3 Nov 2025
Doors open
One office and six desks rented on the first day; two leather-goods makers take the first two window desks, side by side. The floor plan is taped to the wall with the desk ids written in by hand.
- Dec 2025
The slow month
One door and five desks let. The holiday Pastries & products becomes a small market in the commons and members sell to each other. We learn that people come for food and stay for each other.
- Feb 2026
Minus thirty-one
Twenty-six people come to Pastries & products anyway, and doors and desks go up, not down. Show & tell is born over lunch.
- Apr 2026
The photography corner
A member who shoots for retailers runs a product-photo workshop in the board room and strikes a deal with the photographer who sublets the north-east room: members book the studio by the hour at her rate. The first business account signs for four desks.
- May 2026
Rent covered
Three doors and eight desks, and the floor covers its rent for the first time. Supplier night puts a customs broker, a freight forwarder, a co-packer and a printer in the room with no pitches; members share a container from the Vancouver port.
- Jun–Aug 2026
Season one
Three masterclasses, fifty-three of fifty-four seats. Seven incorporations, eleven GST registrations, three plans in front of lenders, two approved.
- Oct 2026
Now
Forty-one members, three of six doors, nine of fourteen desks, one business account. Season two is under way. Three businesses have left: two for storefronts, one for Calgary. The owner is not yet paid; the plan page says exactly where the money stands and what a $30,000 month needs.
Who runs it
Three people, and the brokerage next door.
Owner · Zenith Commercial
The founder
Runs the brokerage next door and this floor. Built a place that tells you what is missing before you ask, because that is what a good landlord does.
Runs the day
Floor manager
The person who unlocks the door, knows every desk id and room number by heart, approves the board room, and has opinions about the coffee. Ask for the tour.
Masterclasses and events
Programme lead
Books the lawyers, the accountants and the suppliers, writes up every session for the blog, and enforces the no-slides rule at Show & tell.
Names and photographs go up when the team has signed off on them. The roles are real; the people answer the email.
Where we come from
This is a sister business to Zenith Commercial, an Edmonton commercial real estate brokerage, which also owns the building. That is why the lease on this floor is long and the rent is reviewed against the building’s own asking rate, why the storefront session is taught by people who negotiate those leases for a living, and why we are careful about what we claim: in this trade the tenant who was oversold remembers it for the length of the lease.
On whose land
This floor stands on Treaty 6 territory.
12230 106 Avenue NW is in amiskwacîwâskahikan, the place we call Edmonton. It is Treaty 6 territory, and a meeting ground, gathering place and travelling route for the nêhiyawak (Cree), Dene, Anishinaabe (Saulteaux), Nakota Sioux and Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) peoples. It is also the homeland of the Métis Nation, and home to a large Inuit community.
We make things, rent desks and run events on land that has been cared for since long before there was a building. We say so because it is true, and because it is easy to say and forget. Acknowledging the land is a starting point, not the whole of it.
If you are not sure you belong
You probably do. Come on a day pass and find out without talking to anyone.
Nobody on this floor will ask what your funding stage is. Someone might ask what your landed cost is. If it fits, you will know by lunch.
Come and stand in it.
Twenty minutes on the floor, no pitch, and you already know the price.