Migrating to Optix with Den 1880

Four people run Den 1880. On their previous platform, most of their week went into managing the software instead of growing the business. Six months after switching platforms, Optix Automations runs 58 live workflows for Den 1880. That gives the team around twenty hours back every week, and they have spent that time opening a brand new wellness club, expanding the business rather than simply keeping up with it.

Their space holds more than twenty private suites, hot desks and day passes, a fitness and wellness floor, a library, a theatre, a podcast studio built inside an old bank vault, and an events venue that hosts weddings at the weekend. Every line of it generated admin, and almost all of that admin was manual.

People doing work that the software should do

• Almost every core process still ran on manual work.
• Growth work waited behind admin that never stopped.
• Coworking, private offices, events and weddings, all run by the same team of four.

Claire joined Den 1880 in November 2024, and the pattern she found is one any lean operator will recognise. The software absorbed the hours the business needed, the queue never emptied, and when the team needed help the answers were slow. Every onboarding email, every check-in, every report was someone’s afternoon.

Automations gave them their time back

• Onboarding arrives tailored to the exact membership someone bought, with nobody assembling it.
• Past meeting room bookers are followed up automatically, with nobody keeping a list.
• Every meeting room booking now sells catering, without anyone remembering to ask.
• 58 live Automations at one location, the volume we usually see from operators running five.

Automations were the reason the Den team were excited to switch to Optix, so they started building immediately, during the migration itself, rather than waiting for everything else to settle. A four-person team only builds at that pace when getting something wrong stops feeling dangerous, and the Optix Customer Support team is there to guide them and answer questions fast, every step of the way.

Claire built all of them herself, across lead nurturing, onboarding, member communications and re-engagement. Here are three examples of what that takes off their week.

1. Tailored onboarding built for the membership someone actually bought.

A new member at Den 1880 has more to take in than most. Before Optix, none of it could be tailored. Optix Automations now tailors every welcome to the membership behind it, down to whichever amenities come attached. Nobody assembles any of it. With the welcome handled, four people get their attention back for the hospitality that still needs a human.

2. Re-engagement that no longer waits for a spare afternoon

Before Optix, a meeting room booking was usually a one-off, because following up on every past booking was a job the team struggled to find the hours for consistently. Optix Automations now re-engages everyone who has booked a meeting room before. Every past booker hears from Den 1880 again, so a one-time room rental becomes repeat revenue without anyone manually chasing it.

3. Upselling that happens without anyone selling

This is the one that pays for itself. Catering only gets sold if somebody remembers to offer it, and on a four-person team that is the first thing to slip. Den 1880 already caters weddings and corporate events, so they always had the kitchen for it. What they did not always have was a system that made sure the opportunity was never missed. Optix Automations now does the asking, offering catering the moment a meeting room is reserved, whether the team is running a tour or away for the weekend. An upsell that used to depend on someone’s attention is now built into how a booking works.

A guided eight-week migration, with every detail covered

• 200 members and all invoicing moved across, with nothing lost.
• A dedicated Customer Success Manager from Optix worked alongside the team every step of the way.
• Eight weeks from signing to go-live, and the date never slipped.

Switching platforms is the step that keeps most operators exactly where they are. It is a real move and worth being straight about, which is why Den 1880 never had to make it on their own. A dedicated Customer Success Manager from Optix worked alongside the team from their first look at the platform through to go-live. Eight weeks after signing, they went live.

Growth that stopped competing for their time

• Optix Forms capture every inquiry, sign-up and drop-in booking straight from their website.
• 238 inquiries, 150 sign-ups and 61 drop-in bookings handled without anyone touching one.
• Optix Automations follows up on every drop-in booking, and 42.6% convert to membership.

For a lean team, growth and operations compete for the same hours, and operations usually wins. Optix Forms now sit across Den 1880’s website and member acquisition touchpoints, capturing every inquiry, sign-up and drop-in booking as it arrives. Optix Automations takes each one from there, nurturing new leads toward a membership without anyone having to chase.

Day passes used to be the awkward end of that. Tracking them meant working around the old platform rather than through it, and the workarounds produced numbers nobody could fully trust. Optix Forms now take the drop-in booking and Optix auto check-ins record the arrival, the moment a member connects to the WiFi, so the monitoring job is gone along with a large share of front-desk interruptions. Claire, who owns reporting, went from caveating her occupancy numbers to making decisions with them.

In under three months, Forms and Automations together processed 238 inquiries, 150 sign-ups and 61 drop-in bookings. Before Optix, every one of those would have landed on someone’s desk. Now the team steps in only when it needs to.

Two months in, they expanded their business

• The Performance Club opened two months after going live on Optix.
• Memberships, team opt-ins, resource access and the liability waiver were all built in Optix.
• Claire ran the build off-site while Optix kept the rest of the business running.

This is what the time actually bought. Two months after going live, Den 1880 opened The Performance Club on the lower floor: a fitness and wellness space with a sauna, cold plunge, hot tub, Peloton bikes and treads, nap pods and massage chairs. It extends what a Den 1880 membership can be rather than sitting apart from it, and it offers a new avenue for member acquisition.

All of it was built in Optix, down to the liability waiver members sign before they use the floor.

Claire took the project on alongside everything else. A coworking business does not usually expand its offering in its first months on a new platform. Den 1880 did it with the same four people, because Optix Automations made that vision possible.

Proud to power the Den 1880 team

What makes Den 1880 special is not what is in the building. It is that four people run all of it. That only became possible once Optix took the day-to-day off their plate, and the same shift is available to any operator currently spending their week managing software instead of growing the business.

Claire’s advice to operators weighing the same decision: “When you’re running a coworking space with a leaner team, you really have to look at your systems and analyze what kind of software supports the way you do business. Every coworking space is different. Ask whether your platform meets you where you are.”