Working Side-By-Side No Longer Means the Same Thing As Co-Working

Working Side-By-Side No Longer Means the Same Thing As Co-Working By Becca, Owner of Sunday Girl

When conceptualizing Sunday Girl, maybe without even consciously realizing it, community was at the heart of everything. From the idea that experiencing coffee was meant to be done in a shared space and not in the privacy of your car, rushing to work; to the notion that selling and serving products made locally by small businesses could only promote a cycle of uplifting our next door entrepreneurs – a community-driven mindset was a common thread of my business plan from top to bottom. 

An uncertain part of my business plan was the coLAB, the coworking space that is now part and parcel to Sunday Girl. While I knew I’d love to have a coworking space inside Sunday Girl, you get what you get when it comes to turn-key commercial real estate. After 18 months of searching for SG’s home, where we landed did have a space I could call the coLAB – and thank goodness it did. That final touchpoint of community could be built: where people work together. 

Working together is more than just feeling the energetic buzz of creativity bounce off laptop screens or the occasional, passing comment and conversation. The coLAB was built as a “lab” designed for “collaboration” (get it? 😉). I wanted the space to feel intimate enough that it could evoke a third-space, home-like vibe for people who wanted to feel inspired outside their own four walls, but not feel like they were dumped into a corporate cubical farm, yet bright and engaging enough that extroverted creatives would feel inspired to share what they are working on to hopefully forge new ideas, businesses, brands, etc. with the folx around them. Or, at the very least, make new friends. As you can see, we come back to community, even in the sense – not despite – of working. 

It is no surprise that in a time such as now, when the world seems more divided than ever, that a city such as Philadelphia (and many others like-minded to it), are seeking ways to connect and come together. Work can feel isolating; hell – right now living can feel isolating. Coworking is a win-win for those of us in search of connection and community, outside of apps and screens, in ways that are thought-provoking, curious, and new. It’s coming to a place of productivity and leaving with a sense of accomplishment beyond your physical work. You are accomplished in finding true, uncertain, but still expected togetherness.

As business has grown over the past 18 months at SG, so has the coLAB space – as a workspace and beyond. It’s been a hub for small events (public and private) and has blossomed as a known space for networking, crafting, and creating. Mango Marketing has begun hosting monthly “Mango Monday Meetups” where the coLAB is free to use from 10am –  1pm. Natty Contrera, co-founder of Mango, sits with the group and everyone is welcome to talk, ask questions, and confer about their current businesses goals, struggles, and more. It’s become a known gathering of women who lean on and learn from one another all with the common goal of growth. We root for one another, encourage each other, and the idea of competition is nowhere to be found. This is the new face of co-working: it’s no longer about how many people you can cram into a updated airport hanger and tempt them with a beer keg; it’s about the quality of people you can find in a room genuinely caring about one another’s success, even if it means to step out of their own business’s needs for a moment, for the betterment of the whole. In a word – it’s community.