Sep 15, 2010
LongerDays.com Opens Office Space in Michigan
At the end of every week, I usually say the same thing: “I need longer days.” A virtual assistant company is betting many of you say the same thing—and it’s expanding its horizons to Michigan to serve more clients.
LongerDays.com, a virtual assistant company that handles client requests in house in a traditional office setting, just opened a new office location in Muskegon, Michigan.
While many virtual assistants work from a virtual office, LongerDays.com is breaking the mold with its physical office location at 318 Houston Ave. The location looks like a serviced office space, which means overhead costs are significantly lower than traditional office space. It may even be a virtual office rental where the new branch merely has the liberty to meet with clients in person, if needed.
“Michigan’s manufacturing economy was hit hard over the past few years” says LongerDays.com branch owner Chad Lawie, “It feels really good to be bringing new technology based jobs to a place that really needs them.”
Headquartered in Charleston, S.C., LongerDays.com opened the main branch of it’s virtual assistant business in October 2007. The company claims it has since provided over 30,000 hours of assistance to companies all over the world. LongerDays specializes in offering small businesses part-time help on a variety of tasks.
“Even with unemployment high, it is difficult for business owners to find employees who are willing to take a job that only offers two or three hours of work a day,” says Lawie “By combining our skills, we form a sort of super office assistant that is proficient in a variety of areas including technical projects such as graphic design, FileMaker Pro databases, or web design, to simple tasks like travel planning, answering the phone, or gift shopping online for your wonderful wife or husband.”
I’m not sure if this puts LongerDays.com at an advantage because they get foot traffic, street visibility and a place to meet with clients, or if it puts the company at a disadvantage because they have to carry overhead costs that most virtual assistants don’t have.
Will LongerDays.com have to charge higher prices to pay for its office space? LongerDays.com is offering a 25 percent discount to the first five clients who walk in from the West Michigan area. That leads me to believe that the prices may be somewhat inflated in order to pay rent. Then again, maybe it’s really a virtual office space, in which case, this is brilliant.
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