UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) and Match Office have become the latest high-profile names to become partners with Lemon Studios.

UKT&I is the government organisation which helps British companies operate on an international level and works to attract foreign investment to the UK. Their choice to work with the Lemon Studios community is a logical and exciting one. And our new partnership will no doubt be set to benefit the forward-thinking and fast growing companies on our list of clients currently based in Clerkenwell, London – including Clickback, Taptu and Style Foundry.

Additionally, Match Office is a Danish firm who also specialize in serviced office spaces across Europe. The company is supported by the Danish Embassy, and in keeping with a growing trend which sees London as a viable city for investment from foreign companies, they are adding Lemon Studios as a key recommendation to both start-up and more developed businesses who are eager to expand to the UK capital.

These new partners come at a time when we are seeing continuing high demand for our unique and specialized workspaces. Enquiries have increased by 50% on last year and there is now a two-month waiting list for deskspace. Subsequently, Lemon Studios has doubled capacity with a long-term view to open further offices in Shoreditch, Old Street, Soho and Southbank – offering a total of 1,000 workstations across London.

In short, despite all of the digital marketing and communications channels now available to entrepreneurs, we’ve witnessed a real return to old fashioned networking. We organise regular networking sessions for our tenants but there is also plenty of ad-hoc collaboration in the office, including a tenants’ intranet, and socialising after work over a pint.

Since the establishment of the company in 2005, the need for expansion which has truly come to a head in 2010 has also been partly attributed to our flexibility and transparency – while in the past other such companies have been more keen to lock fledgling clients into long contracts with additional fees. Within our offices we have noticed a real openness and willingness to share ideas and know-how, and half of all tenants are currently undertaking business together.

Being chosen to partner up with UKTI and Match Office is testament to the fact that we are thinking differently about how 21st Century workspaces should be run.