Upstarts: Offices-to-Go

An overview of Laptop Lane, a Seattle-based start-up providing by-the-minute office space and computer hook-ups in airports. Plus: a travel expert rates various airports for business travel.

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Snagging workers on the fly

Start-up rents computer hookups and quiet space by the minute to road warriors between flights

As the hard-traveling CEO of a consumer-products company, Bruce Merrell often found himself consigned to his own special circle of hell: the crowded concourses and lounges of U.S. airports. On one such trip he witnessed the ultimate frequent-flier indignity: a man in a three-piece suit had dropped down on all fours to grope for an electrical outlet to plug his laptop into. Merrell recalls exchanging glances with his business partner, Mark McNeely. "Whoa," they both thought. "Why don't we do this?"

"This" became Laptop Lane Ltd., the Seattle-based company that Merrell, McNeely, Grant Sharp, and J'Amy Owens cofounded in May 1996. Laptop Lane rents office space equipped with all the latest techno bells and whistles to business travelers between flights. After its debut, at the Cincinnati airport last May, the company plunged into Seattle a month later. Since then another 6 branches have opened for business, at Chicago's O'Hare and in Atlanta and Denver, and there are plans to open 10 more sites by year's end, at New York's LaGuardia and Los Angeles's LAX and in Philadelphia and Phoenix.

Laptop Lane is part of a crop of start-up companies attempting to exploit several related trends: the proliferation of laptop computers; increased business travel; and the transformation of work into a mobile, round-the-clock phenomenon. To serve businesspeople on the go, such companies rent out office space for short periods of time (Laptop Lane rents by the minute) in places like hotels, convention centers, office buildings, and airports, or offer related services, like newsletters and Web sites, to business nomads. These telework-related start-ups are helping "to fundamentally change how we live and work," says Gail Martin, executive director of the International Telework Association & Council, a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C.

At Laptop Lane locations a "cyberconcierge" greets customers and hands them a magnetic key to a private office. Each six-by-six-foot office comes with, among other things, two large desks, a desktop computer with Internet connections, a laser printer, a fax machine, and storage space. A multiline phone allows simultaneous telephoning, faxing, and Web surfing. The cost: $2 for the first five minutes; 38¢ for each additional minute.

"This is set up very well, and it's very quiet. It's something airports have needed for a long time," says Robert Stewart, the national network manager for a health-care company and a recent Laptop Lane customer at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. Without Laptop Lane's electrical hookup, Stewart would have run down his laptop's battery halfway through his two-hour layover and "lost all my productivity," he notes.

But it may take more than electrical outlets and quiet office space to attract large numbers of business travelers to Laptop Lane, skeptics say.

Mark Wiatrowski, founder of Executive Office Club Inc., based in Washington, D.C., which rents temporary offices on demand, says Laptop Lane's Achilles' heel may prove to be personnel. "It will be hard for them to find and keep good 'concierges' because good candidates have to have both good people skills and good technology skills," he says. "Laptop Lane won't be able to pay them enough."

Merrell faces other risks as well. Although he has raised $2.5 million in private-placement funds, he says that he needs more capital to expand operations and build his company to the break-even point. So far, no better-capitalized competitor--such as Hyatt, Marriott, or a major airline--is challenging Laptop Lane, but success could draw formidable rivals into the market. And Merrell is ultimately at the mercy of the airports in which he does business; they could raise his rent, threatening his profit margin.

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