The Entrepreneurs

Intergenerational living gets a makeover at Hamburg’s new co-living and hospitality concept, The Embassies

“We are curating the biggest dinner party in town,” says Jan Garde, co-founder of The Embassies, referring to the ambience that he hopes to create at his new intergenerational-living facility-cum-private members’ club in Hamburg. On the ground floor is a café and a shop stocking products that range from magazines to Swiss-made skis by Timbaer. Upstairs is the Ambassador’s Club for both residential and non-residential members, which includes a sauna and a gym. Finally, there are 45 apartments for “resident ambassadors”.

Garde and his co-founder, Henning Weiss, are seeking to revitalise senior living by creating somewhere enticing for people of all ages to live and work. For residents, The Embassies provides sleekly designed assisted-living apartments. For everyone else, the Ambassador’s Club is a working environment.

Beyond the kitchen lie the workspace and dining table, as well as 44 desks, three boardrooms and soundproofed booths. “Once cocktail hour starts, laptops are confined to the workspace,” says Garde. The rest of the club floor was conceived by UK designer Ilse Crawford and StudioIlse, with the interior by architecture firm Monoplan. Sofas upholstered in heather-grey and dusty-pink fabrics sit alongside standout pieces (such as a pair of Eames chairs), while paper lampshades and Louis Poulsen lamps keep the lighting soft. Books are everywhere and their subjects are as varied as Japanese architecture, photographer Helmut Newton and malt whisky.

Membership for non-residents starts at about €300 a month, with a sign-on fee of €750. There is careful supervision of who makes it through the door. For Jürgen Alker, a strategic adviser to the sports and creative industries, The Embassies provides a soothing place to work. He likens it to an elegantly designed hotel lobby. “You feel people’s energy but you don’t need to interact with everyone,” he says. “Nobody’s watching me but there is an intimacy.”
embassies.com

Inside Goldsmiths’ Hall, the 700-year-old guild still hallmarking by hand

The City of London, the financial heart of the UK, is famed for its booms and busts. Tucked away on a narrow lane off one of its busiest streets is Goldsmiths’ Hall, home of The Goldsmiths’ Company, an institution that dates back to 1327. Bound by a royal charter, it is one of the largest livery companies in the City, with more than 1,600 members, and its craft still entices apprentices today, with about 10 qualifying every year.

Its work is overseen from the company’s heritage-listed headquarters, a place that appears more suited to banquets than workshops. In the lobby, a portrait of King Charles III keeps watch over the staircase, which has a marble handrail dotted with statues. The first floor is a succession of grand rooms, each more gilded than the next. “A lot of emphasis goes on the gold because it’s blingy,” says Annie Warburton, the guild’s CEO and clerk. “But our true treasure is our skill.” Goldsmithing, the ancient craft in which precious metals are used to create everything from jewellery to decorative objects, is, in Warburton’s words, an art requiring “the intelligence of the hand”.

In addition to training the next generation, philanthropy has always been a precious element of the guild’s activities. The Goldsmiths’ Company’s most important tradition, however, is one that still protects its members from imitation and ensures that consumers can trust their wares: hallmarking. On the third floor is the Goldsmiths’ Company Assay Office, which tests and certifies items made from precious metals. If the office (or one of its counterparts elsewhere in the country) doesn’t mark items with a series of symbols, verifying their authenticity and quality, they cannot be legally sold. “We go from 0.5mm as our smallest mark on an earring wire up to 6mm,” says director Will Evans, who explains that these markings are often hidden. Evans has worked at the Assay Office since he was 16, starting out as a lab assistant, testing metal. It’s work that used to be done by hand but is today often carried out by X-ray machines. In the office, workers wearing loupes are sitting at desks surrounded by gleaming objects. Once the items are tested to meet standards, they are marked, typically using a laser or a fly press – but it is still often done by hand.

There are three hand-markers and two apprentices at Goldsmiths’ Hall, forming an integral part of the company’s 140-strong staff across the hall, its library and the assaying teams. The set-up exemplifies the guild system at work: professionals at the height of their abilities, teaching and working in a physical hub. Before Monocle departs, one hand-marker, Terry, is preparing to mark a ring. He holds a thin steel punch to it and, with his other hand, grips a hammer. With one swift hit, the mark appears. “How did you know how hard to hit it?” asks Evans. Terry looks up. “Practice,” he says. “Practice.”
thegoldsmiths.co.uk

A race against time: The Horological Society of New York is on a mission to save watchmaking

In 1866, German émigrés George Schmidt and Frederick Ruoff sat in a New York tavern, discussing the need for an organisation that fostered the burgeoning watchmaking industry. The guild that they founded, the Horological Society of New York (HSNY), is still building on this original ambition. Much has changed in the intervening years – not least the emergence of the smartphone, which made wristwatches no longer a necessity. But watches remain highly coveted as a luxury good: the global market for new timepieces is now valued at €50.78bn, an all-time high. The number of active watchmakers, however, is decreasing. Miranda Marraccini, HSNY’s head librarian, says that the purpose of the society has evolved. “We’re trying to make the craft accessible and raise awareness of it,” she says. “We want to open it up to people of all levels of experience.”

The society, which has more than 2,000 members, is based in a 19th-century building in Midtown Manhattan. It provides scholarships for full-time watchmaking schools and is home to one of the world’s largest horological libraries, with an exhibition space and rooms for teaching. The Jost Bürgi Research Library is a bright, airy space, filled with more than 25,000 materials in dozens of languages. Thanks to a donation by Swiss clock enthusiast Fortunat Mueller-Maerki in 2021, its catalogue grew from a few hundred practical volumes to a broader collection celebrating the art and science of horology. “It’s an incredibly diverse library, all about watches, but also calendars, navigation, astronomy, physics, philosophy – and lots on sundials,” says Marraccini. The oldest book here is a beautifully illustrated tome about navigational instruments from 1573; newer manuals and coffee-table books from Rolex and Audemars Piguet also line the shelves.

On the day of Monocle’s visit, Luke Cox-Bien, a watchmaker for Rolex, is teaching a two-hour class about movement mechanics, in which students are introduced to the various functions and components of the ETA 6497, a mechanical, manual-wind pocket-watch movement made with 17 jewels. In the society’s well-appointed classroom, Cox-Bien instructs students on how to disassemble and reassemble it, taking out each of its miniature wheels one by one using precision screwdrivers and anti-magnetic tweezers. The purpose of such classes isn’t to train people to become watchmakers; instead, they’re designed to raise interest in the craft and make the public appreciate the delicacy of its practitioners’ work.

The society is one of this industry’s last bastions in the US. “We support working watchmakers but we’re also trying to increase opportunities for people who want to become one,” says Marraccini. That makes sense. The guild might have impressive halls and history – but if the institution has no one to pass these skills down to, the craft won’t stand the test of time.
hs-ny.org

Editor’s letter: Where to look for inspiration and how to act on it

People used to say that everyone had a book in them. Today there’s a creeping sense that every Jeff, Arianna and Elon is sitting on a business idea that can change the world – and not always for the better. But what makes a worthwhile business and what does it take to nudge people into starting one? Where and how does inspiration strike? And what do they learn along the way?

Metaphors only stretch so far but the publishing parallels run throughout this issue of The Entrepreneurs, Monocle’s handbook for budding business owners and anyone looking to pen the next section of their own story. So where to begin? Well, Jaime Daez of Fully Booked had little to no experience in retail when he began selling the architecture magazines that became the basis of his now thriving business, one of the Philippines’ leading bookshop chains. Good ideas can start small before growing in volume. Just look at Deezer, the Paris-based music-streaming service that pays artists fairly.

We also speak to career-switchers – one of whom traded his dreams of being a rock star to reinvent the toaster (he knows which side his bread’s buttered). We also solicit some advice from fashion firms on when to start, pivot and say a fond farewell. The business life cycle is celebrated too, from the ups and downs to the unexpected twists and turns.

Running your own concern takes graft but humbler company heads admit that there’s an element of being in the right place at the right time too. No, not in California: that moment has passed. Instead, we shine a light on Mexico, where entrepreneurs are rethinking everything from aviation to the art scene. We also visit Côte D’Ivoire to capture a moment of extraordinary optimism and opportunity in Francophone West Africa.

Elsewhere, we meet the CEO penning fresh lines at family-run firm Bic, which makes products that many people have but few feel they own, and the developers creating desirable new workspaces on Wall Street, where a fightback against remote working is in full swing.

We also profile three artisans crafting wares in the hearts of Florence, Tokyo and Stockholm in our visually appealing Expo – it’s about the businesses, of course, but also a meditation on what we all lose when cities become the exclusive remit of those with fat wallets, service jobs or white collars.

The idea of “making it”, of what success actually looks like, remains subjective. Most of the businesses featured across our pages, however, aim to give a little back. Perhaps they endeavour to include their neighbourhoods in their activities, improve the lives of their staff or solve problems without costing us the earth (figuratively or literally). So, whether you’re looking to start writing a fresh chapter or toss away the old manuscript and begin again with a blank sheet, we’ve got ideas aplenty and stories to share. Isn’t it time to turn the page?

Monocle’s Mexico Survey: the most exciting businesses and outposts of opportunity

Welcome to our sunny survey of smart thinking and innovative enterprise in Mexico. With a population of 130 million and a GDP of almost €1.53trn, the North American nation is a business powerhouse, with strong links to its US neighbour to the north – its largest trade partner – and the rest of Latin America to the south. A colourful country stretching from the windswept coastline of Baja California to the jungles of Chiapas, there are opportunities aplenty in diverse sectors for the savvy entrepreneur here.

While Mexico might have a solid backbone in heavy industry, agriculture and natural resources, in recent years it has made a name for itself for excellence in the worlds of gastronomy, hospitality and design. Indeed, there’s a lot more than meets the eye, from a booming film-production industry to architectural prowess. If you’re looking to make it here, you’ll quickly discover that lots of deals are made over a meal – meaning that, yes, in-person meetings trump virtual ones – and that knowing some Mexican Spanish slang can go a long way (it helps to know your chela from your chingón).

For our Mexico Survey, we dispatched our team of writers, editors and photographers to meet founders and learn about their projects all across the country, from San Miguel de Allende to Oaxaca City. Along the way, we found intrepid companies and individuals who aren’t afraid to go out on a limb to bring their passion projects to fruition, whether it’s a mission to make Mexico a regional e-mobility leader or producing a competitive jet plane to sell across the globe.

Taking flight
Oaxaca Aerospace is developing a “Made in Mexico” aeroplane in a land not known for making planes. Run by the Fernández family, the firm has built various prototypes for its Pegasus jet. The hope? To one day become a full-fledged international plane developer. To read more, click here.

High life
Amid Mexico City’s property boom, architect and developer Meir Lobatón Corona is rethinking the capital’s skyline. His Torre Gutenberg project isn’t about creating a temperature-controlled grey box. Instead, every floor has a large balcony with doors and windows that allow air and light to flood in. Click here to read more.

Star quality
Mexico is going from strength to strength in film. “There has been more growth in four years than in the past 15 or 20,” says Austrian Alexandra Ruths Braas, the enterprising co-founder of Romero & Braas, which makes original content and provides production services to international film crews. Read more about it here.

Happening hospitality
Oaxaca City is attracting an international audience. How are its businesses adapting to satisfy the needs of its modish visitors? Find out here.

Guadalajara’s art renaissance
Mexican creativity doesn’t stop in the country’s capital, as the artists leading this revival will attest. Discover your new favourites here.

Inside Mexico’s creative gold rush: four high-growth industries to watch

1.
Film production

“We came to Mexico and never left,” says Austrian Alexandra Ruths Braas, explaining how she ended up in the country alongside her business partner, Paul Krauskopf Romero, a German of Mexican heritage. The pair arrived in 2014 with a grant to make documentaries. More than 10 years later, Ruths Braas is still here, while Krauskopf Romero helms the Munich outpost of their company, Romero & Braas, which facilitates international film productions in Mexico, as well as making original content. “We help productions feel at home away from home,” says Ruths Braas. That means everything from location scouting to dealing with permits and sourcing technical providers. “There are people in Mexico who are used to an American way of working,” says Ruths Braas. “There’s amazing talent here.”

Netflix recently announced an investment of more than $1bn (€850m) in Mexican films and TV series over the next four years. The deal cements the country’s status as a rising filmmaking nation, which can only bode well for the likes of Romero & Braas. “There has been more growth in the past four years than in the past 15 or 20,” says Ruths Braas.
romeroandbraas.com

2.
Graphic design

Mexico City-based studio owner Adolfo López-Serrano didn’t set out to build his own studio. What began as a solo consultancy evolved into Base Agency in 2018, which today works with brands such as Revolve and Wix. Base is one of many Mexican firms helping to redefine where the world turns to for design. “We have a dynamic creative ecosystem here and great talent,” says López-Serrano. As a bonus, operating costs are relatively low.

By the end of 2024, Mexico was home to more than 60,000 graphic designers. UK-born Andy Butler is the founder of Deduce Design, a Mexico City-based practice that has worked with everyone from Nike to Grupo Habita, the country’s leading hotelier. International perceptions, he says, are rapidly shifting. “Mexican designers are being sought out not just for value but for their creative vision.”

While Mexico City leads when it comes to the concentration of designers, some of the strongest work is coming from unexpected places, such as Cocay Branding in Quintana Roo and Prizma Studio in Sinaloa. Walk through any Mexican city and you’ll see the fruits of the nation’s design scene all around you – in street signs, protest posters and hand-drawn menus. This colourful visual culture is making Mexico a magnet for creative talent.

3.
Hospitality

Mexico’s F&B sector is expected to grow by 6 per cent in 2025, buoyed by a rise in food tourism (which received a boost when Michelin launched its first guide to Mexico City in 2024). Opportunities abound for those trying something new. Take the capital’s Baldío, the nation’s first zero-waste restaurant and one of eight places in the city to have been awarded a green star by Michelin. 

There are new openings across the country: in Mexico City, Masala y Maíz has a smart take on fusion, combining Mexican, African and Indian cuisines. In Guadalajara, Xokol has embraced the communal-table experience, while Mesa Temporal in Oaxaca offers a walking dinner in which patrons eat in different rooms, exploring specific ingredients in each. These risk takers are taking the country’s hospitality scene in fresh directions.

4.
Department stores

While US department stores such as Macy’s have been struggling, the picture couldn’t be rosier south of the border. Leading the pack is El Palacio de Hierro (The Iron Palace), a luxury player that has bet big on Latin American shoppers’ love of experiential shops, while also snapping up exclusive distribution deals with brands such as Loewe and Hermès. Last year its net profits were up by 23 per cent on 2023. How does it do it? First, it doesn’t skimp on costs. In 2015, for example, it spent almost $300m (€259m) on refurbishing its pyramid-like flagship in Mexico City. Second, it continues to branch out into new markets, with the most recent being in León in 2024.

El Palacio de Hierro isn’t the only department store that is demonstrating that multi-brand, in-person retail is a growth sector in Mexico. Take Liverpool, a group that dates back 175 years and operates 345 outposts across the country. Alongside a recently acquired 49.9 per cent stake in the US’s Nordstrom, it plans to open about 30 new shops in Mexico this year, many of which will be its smaller-format Liverpool Express stores. Meanwhile, another retailer, Coppel, has announced a $4.2bn (€ 3.6bn) investment in e-commerce and new shops. The skies are bright for Mexico’s department stores.
liverpool.com.mx; elpalaciodehierro.com

Images: Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg/Alamy Stock Photo, Anna Pla-Narbona, Alejandro Ramirez, Alejandra Velazquez

Read more from Monocle’s 2025 Mexico Survey:

• Three game-changing developments about to transform Mexico City
  
• Entrepreneurs to watch: the forward-thinkers making new paths in Mexican industries
  
• Eight ideas for Mexican businesses that are ripe for the taking
  
• Meet the self-starters behind the clever hospitality boom in Oaxaca City
  
• The entrepreneurial trailblazers revitalising Guadalajara’s art scene
  
• Oaxaca Aerospace’s Mexican-built plane has beaten the odds and is ready for takeoff

Three game-changing developments about to transform Mexico City

Mexico City is buzzing with energy, fuelled by a population that, over the past five years, has grown by about 700,000 to reach 22.5 million. Tourism is booming too, surpassing pre-pandemic peaks. This surge in residents and visitors has sent demand for housing, office space, restaurants and retail into overdrive, keeping developers and architects on their toes. Here we highlight three entrepreneurs who are doing things a little differently.

1.
Best for: The high life
Meir Lobatón Corona

Glance at Mexico City’s skyline and you’ll see clusters of reflective buildings. “They don’t make sense in this temperature,” says architect and developer Meir Lobatón Corona. Mirrored buildings might work in cities such as New York but not here, where the temperature is relatively mild.

Monocle is visiting Torre Gutenberg, a recently completed 13-floor office tower in Anzures, two blocks away from Chapultepec Park, designed as a flexible structure. When tenants take occupancy of a floor, they move into a cement-and-glass shell that’s designed to be transformed over time and can be repurposed as an apartment or hotel room. “We thought, ‘Since we’re going to build it, let’s make it last’,” says Lobatón Corona. “The only way to do this was by building it as a structure, not as an office tower.”

From inside Torre Gutenberg, where the look is softened by travertine floors and oak panels, you can see the entire city unfolding before you. “It’s completely transparent,” says Lobatón Corona. Unlike many contemporary office towers, these spaces aren’t temperature-controlled grey boxes. Every floor has a large balcony with big glass doors and windows that allow air and light to flood in.

Torre Gutenberg is a well-ventilated, bright space that will hopefully be as relevant in 50 years’ time as it is today. “We’re starting to understand that we don’t have to innovate just for the sake of doing something new,” says its designer.

2.
Best for: Rethinking the office
Andrés Martínez, Iterativa

When Andrés Martínez, a co-founder of Iterativa, discovered an office building on Reforma Avenue that had stood empty during the pandemic, he decided to bring it back to life. Iterativa partnered with an investment fund, which took over the lease, and then set about redeveloping it. Today it houses offices and a restaurant and nightclub, as well as co-working space Público.

Iterativa doesn’t completely own the buildings that it works on. “We find the opportunity, execute the project and operate it,” says Martínez. Alongside co-working spaces, the company is rolling out hotels and serviced apartments to meet the demand for housing and accommodation in Mexico City. When Monocle meets him in the Reforma 333 building, he shows us around the businesses that now occupy the former office block.

Público, which has big grey couches and glass windows that look out at the city’s Angel of Independence, was designed to be a hub where creatives could collaborate. “Instead of following the WeWork recipe of creating a huge common area and little spaces, we spread out the communal areas in different parts of the building,” says Martínez. Despite it being a towering office block, he was adamant about giving it personality. “We wanted to design the building [like a] house, to create something much more natural where people can meet.”

3.
Best for: Adaptive reuse
Rodrigo Rivero Borrell, Reurbano

Developer Reurbano has a well-earned reputation for breathing new life into Mexico City’s historic buildings through adaptive reuse and urban regeneration. And in a city that’s peppered with architectural gems awaiting restoration, there has been no shortage of structures for the firm to work with.

When Monocle meets Rodrigo Rivero Borrell, founder and CEO of Reurbano, on the edge of the leafy Condesa neighbourhood, he whizzes us around the ground level of Zamora 15, a mixed-use space that, when completed, will also have 20 apartments. When he purchased the 80-year-old buildings in 2014, they had been abandoned for more than 25 years. Today Zamora 15 houses not only his brick-clad office but also an array of tenants who are all young entrepreneurs.

For Rivero Borrell, the choice of renters is integral. If there isn’t enough variety, “you lose a lot of the value,” he says. At a building that he developed in Roma, Reurbano welcomed tenants such as Eno, a restaurant chain popular with local residents, but also kept a grocer who had been in the building for years.

“The grocer is very important to the community,” says Rivero Borrell. “When you see what these people who belong to a community contribute to their area, you realise just how much good you can do by keeping them there.”

And while fostering a sense of locality and belonging is good for residents, the grocer’s presence also makes sense financially. “You cannot imagine how much a well-selected commercial space on the ground floor increases the value of the properties,” says Rivero Borrell.

Read more from Monocle’s 2025 Mexico Survey:

• Inside Mexico’s creative gold rush: four high-growth industries to watch
  
• Entrepreneurs to watch: the forward-thinkers making new paths in Mexican industries
  
• Eight ideas for Mexican businesses that are ripe for the taking
  
• Meet the self-starters behind the clever hospitality boom in Oaxaca City
  
• The entrepreneurial trailblazers revitalising Guadalajara’s art scene
  
• Oaxaca Aerospace’s Mexican-built plane has beaten the odds and is ready for takeoff

Return-to-office mandates won’t keep workers in their cubicles – but a lavish workspace can

At first glance, 100 Pearl Street seems like a case study of the crisis facing downtown New York. Entire floors of this 1980s brick tower in Manhattan’s Financial District are empty – a problem that many of the building’s neighbours also face. A quarter of the office space around Wall Street is vacant after an industry-wide exodus to the home office. 

Yet on 100 Pearl Street’s 28th floor, the lift doors slide open to reveal part of the pristine headquarters of asset management firm Alger, a hushed, double-height space with soaring windows and Jean Prouvé-designed lobby chairs. Inside, sharply dressed analysts dart between their desks and sparkly new boardrooms. “It’s a mark of success for any business to get to build your headquarters from scratch,” says Daniel C Chung, Alger’s CEO, sitting in a lounge chair in his corner office. “Our decision to invest was the result of a combination of terrific space, the views and a good deal.”

Amid a glut of unwanted commercial real estate in New York, some companies are taking advantage of reduced rents to secure bigger and better headquarters. Alger, which has a relatively modest $28bn (€23.7bn) in assets under management, signed up for its new office in 2020 and moved in two years ago. Its three floors – of which the upper two are newly built – feature felt-lined conference rooms and custom-made wooden workstations for a staff of 170 stock traders, wealth managers and analysts. The team was previously based in a cramped, open-plan office in Midtown.

There’s a heated competition emerging at the upper echelons of Manhattan’s commercial property market. To lure staff back to the office, canny firms are spending lavishly on amenities, furnishings and location, all in a bid to outdo each other in terms of digs. Alger’s trophy HQ is just one example of many. 

Rising above skyscrapers built by Gilded Age industrial tycoons, the latest addition to New York’s silhouette is a 423-metre-tall bronze skyscraper that will house the new headquarters of multinational finance corporation JPMorgan Chase. Designed by UK-based practice Foster 1 Partners, it is expected to be completed later this year. Any old class-B office space simply won’t do and the battleground includes everything from in-house gyms and on-site doctors to plunge pools and the size of the fish tank on the executive floor.

But it’s not all about the frills. The property race among New York’s high-flying firms is about projecting an aspirational, even somewhat cinematic image after years of dour pronouncements about the death of the workplace. “The office has turned from a mere nine-to-five place into a cultural destination,” says Jonathan Olivares, the design director at Knoll, a firm that has furnished corporate America since the 1950s. 

This new crop of trophy offices often evokes some of the glamour of Madison Avenue’s mid-century heyday (and there’s more than a nod to the sets of 1960s-set TV drama Mad Men in one or two corner suites that Monocle visits). For many workers, it’s no longer necessary to be physically present to complete their tasks, so bosses are realising the importance of creating spaces that both look the part and make staff feel part of something exciting.

“I couldn’t really justify [Alger’s investment in its HQ] beyond the fact that it’s inspirational to employees,” says Chung. “The dream of coming to New York is associated with the city’s glamour, its nightlife and the idea of successfully making a career in one of the world’s most competitive markets.” He gestures around the C-suite, with its views of Manhattan and Brooklyn. “I tried to make our office a place where a young person might come in and say, ‘I want to be here.’”

Before the lease was signed, Chung had already chosen the interior designers for Alger’s new base: Brittney Hart and Justin Capuco, the founders of New York-based studio Husband Wife, best known for elegant residences. The pair spent three years on the $15m (€13.2m) project, tailoring their work to the wishes of Alger employees. “We booked a conference room for a day and spoke to every senior member of staff and most junior ones,” says Capuco. “It was clear that nobody wanted their workplace to feel like an old-fashioned cubicle farm.”

For the layout, Hart and Capuco drew inspiration from the glass-pavilion homes of early Californian modernism, creating “floating” offices with metal blinds for privacy. The meeting rooms come in hues of blue – Alger’s company colour – with carpeting and felt walls, scalloped ceilings, curving eucalyptus-wood desks and presentation screens inspired by science-fiction films. In the open-plan workspaces, where some type of cubicle was unavoidable, they designed roomy nooks crafted from stained oak, with fabric panelling for optimal acoustics. Seating, all in black leather, comes courtesy of mid-century power-office designers Marcel Breuer, the Eameses and Mies van der Rohe.

“We are seeing a complete market split,” says Volker Zinkl, the head of real estate for the US subsidiary of German reinsurer Munich RE. “The top offices are all going, while downtown is 40 per cent empty.” Zinkl shows Monocle around one of the firm’s flagship assets: an Eli Kahn-designed office tower on Madison Avenue. Since buying the building in 2020, the new landlords have been busy upgrading its amenities and adding spaces for a café and a bar. 

“We see ourselves almost as hotel directors,” says Zinkl. “Our tenants are fighting to attract top employees, retain talent and impress their clients.” He points to the bouquets of cherry blossoms on the receptionist’s desk. “Take these flowers. We spend $3,000 [€2,560] every month on them. When you have thousands of people passing by every day, you might as well make it count.”

The seating that Zinkl bought for the lobby – a pair of beige curving couches on aluminium legs – is something of a secret handshake in the world of top-flight office interiors. Last year, Italian furniture company Unifor began producing the Andromeda collection, which also includes a credenza and tables with a mirror-like polish; its designer, LSM, has become a go-to architect among the new crop of trophy offices in Manhattan. 

“We always ask our clients, ‘What do you want and what are your business goals?’” says Debra Lehman Smith, LSM’s founding partner. In the case of a financial firm on Park Avenue – one of the firm’s recent projects – the answers to those questions were translated into pleated marble walls and a full suite of Andromeda furniture. LSM has also kitted out a double-height atrium inside Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram building for private equity firm Centerbridge Partners.

As Monocle meanders from office to office in neighbourhoods from Wall Street to Midtown Manhattan, the Dow Jones stock index is taking a similarly zigzagging route. Donald Trump’s various pronouncements are shaking up the economy; bankers and traders have found themselves at the centre of it all. We accompany Lehman Smith for a brisk stroll up Fifth Avenue towards the skyscraper at Rockefeller Center, an art deco marvel with a lobby covered in green Tinos marble. In 2018, when the Rockefeller family office launched an expansion to become a full-fledged financial firm, it turned to LSM to help define its physical footprint. The team toured the available spaces in the company’s namesake tower and settled for a high-ceilinged space with a terrace overlooking St Patrick’s Cathedral. “No matter how great you are, if you’re in a low, dark space, it’s never going to work,” says Lehman Smith. The result is an open-plan office with stripped-back columns revealing the tower’s original iron structure. It has served as inspiration for some younger firms seeking to evoke previous eras of corporate power with their HQs.

“We organise our client cocktails, art exhibitions and town halls here,” says Michael Gaab, Rockefeller Capital Management’s chief administrative officer. “This space represents our company’s heritage.”

Not every firm enjoys an address that’s as iconic as the Rockefellers’ but the centre of gravity in New York is shifting. Many companies have decamped to the lofty steel-and-glass heights of Hudson Yards, a development on Manhattan’s western waterfront that stood desolate for years after opening in 2019 but where rents now begin at $1,400 (€1,190) per square metre – for comparison, a grade-A office in the City of London will set you back less than $1,080 (€920) per square metre. In Midtown, those buildings that are fully leased out tend to be architecturally significant skyscrapers, such as the Seagram, even if tenants pay rents starting at $1,615 (€1,380) per square metre, compared to the area’s average of $900 (€770) per square metre.

In 2020, Alger’s decision to relocate downtown to the old heart of US finance seemed like an edgy decision, given that the area was emptying out. “We’re a little contrarian,” says Chung. Outside the office is Harry’s, a legendary Wall Street watering hole, which used to be packed by 16.30 in the old days with a hard-drinking crowd of investment bankers, stock brokers and portfolio managers. “Then they would all rush to their commuter trains and, by 18.30, this area would be a ghost town,” says Chung. After a long lull following the pandemic, however, the Financial District has become a place to linger after dark. Quite a few places to shop and dine have launched in the past year, including The Observatory, a private dining lounge on the top floor of an art deco apartment building, and department store Printemps, which opened in March on One Wall Street.

These green shoots suggest a surprising revival for New York’s traditional office heartland, even as so much floor space remains empty. It is attracting a new breed of workplace: at 161 Water Street, the vacant former HQ of insurer aig has been transformed into Water Street Associates, or WSA, a new hub courting creative businesses. The drab 1980s tower has been reimagined with travertine floors, cognac-coloured carpeting and faux cubicles assembled from usm shelving, as well as liberal pickings from the catalogue of vintage furniture reseller 1stDibs. WSA has a concierge and butler service; there’s a floor with a barber and an acupuncturist. The tenants include the old guard of law firms and financial start-ups, alongside a crop of designers, stylists and upstart media companies. WSA has expanded to nearby 180 Maiden Lane.

“There’s no reason to only offer young people Wework nightmares,” says WSA’s Sam Wessner. “If you actually make it nice, people will still want to work in offices.”

Entrepreneurs to watch: the forward-thinkers making new paths in Mexican industries

1.
Roberto Rocha and Germán Losada
Co-founders,Vemo, Mexico City

“The first time that we met one of our investors, he said, ‘You either have the best electric-mobility model that I have ever seen or you’re totally crazy,” says Roberto Rocha, Vemo’s co-founder and CEO, sitting in a ninth-floor office in Mexico City’s Polanco neighbourhood. If the past few years are anything to go by – Vemo recently raised $63m (€56m) for further expansion – it’s safe to say that the company falls into the former category. “We have proven that we have the winning formula for a market such as Mexico,” says Rocha.

Opposite him sits Germán Losada, his Argentine co-founder and chairman. The former investment bankers founded their mobility start-up in 2021. Noticing that the take-up of electric vehicles (EVs) in Mexico was low, they hit upon their clean-mobility idea. A core part of their business is an EV lease-to-buy programme called Vemo Impulso for ride-hailing drivers who can’t afford to buy cars right away. “We provide leasing to people who are typically not taken care of by the traditional banks because they don’t have good credit histories,” says Rocha.

Vemo, which partners with ride-hailing platforms Didi and Uber, has had to create both the supply and the demand, since little infrastructure existed before its arrival. It has been developing an extensive EV-charging network across the country and paying 1,600 ride-hailing drivers fixed salaries to work two shifts per day in its cars through its Vemo Conduce arm. “In the absence of [state] subsidies, for the economics to work, we required significant utilisation,” says Losada. A third string in Vemo’s bow is operating EV fleets for businesses.

Vemo’s lease-to-own venture is now operating in five Mexican cities, while the rest of the business also expands. “Today we have the country’s largest public charging network,” says Losada. “And in terms of charging sessions, we’re the largest in Latin America.” Mexican sales of fully electric vehicles in the first four months of 2025 almost tripled year on year and Vemo sees opportunities in other Latin American nations. “We have a unique business model that’s proven to work,” says Losada.
vemovilidad.com

2.
Adrián Marfil and Juan Manuel García
Co-founders, Los Patrones, Monterrey

Furniture brand Los Patrones has been tapping the domestic market for what it does best: metal. Founded in 2015 by Adrián Marfil and Juan Manuel García, it is continually evolving. In 2021, for example, the company took control of its production process. Los Patrones has become a benchmark for metal-furniture excellence in Mexico and is eyeing expansion both at home and abroad.

Monterrey is an industrial city. How did you harness its manufacturing side?
Adrián Marfil: Most of the materials that we use are metal, which is produced here. We have taken advantage of our geographical situation.

How did you end up taking over your factory?
Juan Manuel García: At the beginning, our provider was my father’s company. In that post-pandemic period of sluggishness, he suggested that we absorb it, along with all of the employees.

How are you evolving?
AM: We’re developing stainless steel for gardens and swimming pools, which would allow us to work better with hotels and other big projects. Then we want to look at e-commerce and retail sales.

Do you see yourselves as entrepreneurs?
JMG: We saw an opportunity and we took it – the perfect definition of entrepreneurship. The factory is part of the muscle but the heart and soul of the brand is the design.
lospatrones.mx

3.
Maye Ruiz
Founder, Maye, San Miguel de Allende

When interior designer Maye Ruiz moved from Mexico City to the town of San Miguel de Allende in her home state of Guanajuato, she was initially concerned that being away from the epicentre of art and design would hinder her career. But the move – which was prompted by her desire to be with her husband, Daniel Valero, the founder of artisan-focused studio Mestiz – gave her the chance to get out of the CDMX bubble. “It is really refreshing,” she says.

In 2021, Ruiz established design studio Maye, which unabashedly embraces bold colours. “What matters most is working with people who bring a unique sensitivity and a strong creative drive,” she says. Her workplace, on a cobbled street near the centre of town, exemplifies her distinctive style. Visitors enter through a primary-blue steel door into a tranquil courtyard, where windows are framed in the same vivid hue. The bathroom and kitchen, meanwhile, are lined with ruby-red tiles.

“My style works really well in San Miguel de Allende,” says Ruiz. Many of her clients own multiple residences worldwide, which makes them more adventurous in their design choices. “They’re bold about colour here,” says Ruiz. Because the city is famously vibrant, with streets fringed with houses in shades of peach and pink, it’s easy to break away from beige.

Beyond residential projects, Ruiz has ventured into commercial design. Notably, she collaborated with her husband on the restaurant at Casa Arca hotel in San Miguel de Allende. Located in the historic Casa Cohen, it features Ruiz’s playful décor, including large woven lampshades.

Having firmly established herself in the city, Ruiz now aims to grow and diversify her business beyond Mexico and expand into product development. “We are always looking to partner with people and brands that share our vision and push us creatively,” she says. But she has no intention of straying from her new base. “Mexico City is such a vibrant city with so many things to do but it can also be really distracting,” she says. Being in San Miguel de Allende presents a unique opportunity to grow her practice. “It’s a place where you can focus on your business.”
maye.mx

4.
Luis González and Ana Holschneider
Founders, Cervecería Hercules and Caralarga, Querétaro

“I’m restless and have my own ideas,” says Luis González, the co-founder of Hércules brewery, a glass of sour beer in hand. His wife, Ana Holschneider, who is sitting beside him at a beer-garden table in Santiago de Querétaro, agrees. “He’s always talking about the next project,” she says. González and Holschneider, who met in Mexico City and have four children, are entrepreneurs in every sense – even though Holschneider says that they established their careers “without knowing it” and González confesses that he has never put together a business plan. It all started 14 years ago when, after a stint in Hong Kong, the couple moved to Santiago de Querétaro to take over part of a half-abandoned textile factory that belonged to González’s family. 

Eyeing the beautiful factory buildings dating back to 1846 – as well as the grand hacienda attached to it – González saw potential and undertook an impressive renovation project with his twin brother, Carlos. The first step was to establish Cervecería Hércules, an independent craft brewery in a country dominated by big groups. “We saw the chance to make a quality beer in Mexico with profound brewing values,” he says. 

In step with González, Holschneider started a design studio called Caralarga, influenced
by pre-Hispanic Mexico. Having previously experimented with silk and pearls, she hit upon the idea of using the threads from the Querétaro textile factory. “I walked around the factory and saw the leftovers, which looked like queso Oaxaca [a stringy cheese],” she says. “I said, ‘If we can make jewellery from this thread, it will be spectacular.’”

The couple have come a long way. Caralarga, which employs 50 people, has moved into making large wall-hangings for collectors and interior designers across the globe. Cervecería Hércules, meanwhile, has invested in expanding its capacity. Alongside the two brewery bars – and organising concerts, film screenings and dance classes at the Hércules site – it has opened a beer hall in Santiago de Querétaro, as well as a restaurant and a shop in Mexico City. “We don’t want to open something just to open it,” say González.

The latest piece of the puzzle has been Hotel Hércules, which launched in July 2023 in the former hacienda. It has 40 rooms with a mid-century aesthetic and wall hangings from Caralarga. Holschneider and González aren’t finished yet. “I never thought that all of this would happen to me,” says Holschneider.
almacenhercules.mx; caralarga.com.mx

Five more entrepreneurs to watch

1. Juan José Gutiérrez
CEO, Jelp Delivery, Tijuana: Logistics solutions software for last-mile delivery.

2. Montserrat Messeguer
CEO, Montserrat Messeguer, Mexico City: Making boots inspired by the north of Mexico since 2017.

3. Mario Ballesteros
Founder, Ballista, San Miguel de Allende: Curator and former magazine editor Ballesteros runs a platform for art and homeware.

4. José García Torres
Investor, Mérida: The gallerist is an investor in Mérida ventures Salón Gallos and Pizza Neo.

5. Laura Noriega
Founder, Tributo, Guadalajara: Design company from Jalisco’s capital that uses artisans from across the country.

Read more from Monocle’s 2025 Mexico Survey:

• Inside Mexico’s creative gold rush: four high-growth industries to watch
  
• Three game-changing developments about to transform Mexico City
  
• Eight ideas for Mexican businesses that are ripe for the taking
  
• Meet the self-starters behind the clever hospitality boom in Oaxaca City
  
• The entrepreneurial trailblazers revitalising Guadalajara’s art scene
  
• Oaxaca Aerospace’s Mexican-built plane has beaten the odds and is ready for takeoff

Reflect Orbital: The aerospace startup ‘turning on the sun’ at night

Ben Nowack is obsessed with energy. The 29-year-old Cape Cod-born has explored ideas such as damming the oceans to harness the tides, flattening mountains with gravity batteries and even latching onto the moon with a vast cable. In high school, he says, he built a kind of fusion reactor as a science project.

One of his ideas is now poised to take flight. The CEO of Los Angeles-based start-up Reflect Orbital plans to launch thousands of satellites into space, equipped with mirrors that can reflect sunlight to Earth. By 2030 the company expects to have enough satellites in orbit to provide solar farms with 200 watts of energy per square metre – equivalent to the sun at dawn and dusk – during the evening hours of peak consumer demand. It also hopes to sell illumination to anyone who fancies an extra hit of sunlight, from concert and festival promoters to remote construction sites. “The range of applications for our service encompasses almost anything that an individual can do during daylight hours,” says Nowack.

The premise has its sceptics – Youtube astrophysicists relish taking pot shots at Reflect Orbital – but it has also attracted serious interest. The company recently landed $20m (€17.42m) in Series A funding, including investment from Silicon Valley heavy-hitters Sequoia Capital and Lux Capital, and had an audience with Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai, about the project.

There is an emerging global interest in what might become one of the US West Coast’s signature exports within this decade: bold, upstart energy businesses. Big Tech’s embrace of power-hungry artificial intelligence and cloud computing has generated voracious demand for electricity. Now there’s a gold-rush atmosphere among start-ups seeking to innovate clean energy sources, from mini-nuclear reactors to fusion power.

But Reflect Orbital is looking for ways to better harness humanity’s oldest source of energy. When Monocle visits the company’s lab in Hawthorne, a small city in Los Angeles County that’s home to a slew of aerospace start-ups, Nowack and his CTO, Tristan Semmelhack, are eager to show off their progress since founding the business in 2021. (First, however, your correspondent must show proof of US citizenship and agree not to photograph certain aspects of the satellite-making process in order to comply with laws around technology with national-security implications.)

As early as next spring, the company will launch a 100kg satellite packed into a box the size of a microwave. In space, the satellite will unfurl four triangular panels creating an 18-by-18-metre surface mounted to booms, attached like sails on a ship’s mast and position itself in orbit along the line separating daytime from night-time on Earth. Nowack and Semmelhack say that the system is reactive, allowing for precision angle changes within seconds as the Earth rotates. While this first satellite can only generate about four minutes of daylight over a 5km radius, the founders say that a ring of 18 satellites trained on the same location could illuminate one spot for an hour.

The technology sounds like sci-fi but it has precedents. In 1993, Russian satellite Znamya cast a 5km-wide beam the strength of a full moon onto a narrow stretch of Europe for a few hours. In April 2024, Nasa launched the ACS3, a spacecraft that successfully unfurled a solar sail, which reflected sunlight to generate propulsion.

The key difference between Reflect Orbital and its space-agency predecessors is that the team wants to turn a profit. The company’s 22-person crew, expected to grow fast this year ahead of the first launch, builds its own components and does much of the fabrication itself on a lean budget. The prototyping workshop is a tinkerer’s paradise of Milwaukee tools, Fiskars rotary blades and Scotch tape, and a sample reflecting sail is laid out in a brand-new “clean room”. Semmelhack, a laid-back New Yorker climber with shaggy blond hair and wearing a flannel shirt, brings out a palm-sized scrap of the ultra-thin sail material and lets it float in the air like a plastic bag.

Reflect Orbital’s do-it-yourself spirit is also evident in its car park, where the team shows off a homemade, 13-metre-long oven in which carbon fibres can be baked into booms. These coil like a tape measure, keep the reflective sail taut and weigh almost nothing.

Building the oven cost a mere $40,000 (€34,000) and took the team a month. “If we were Nasa, this would be a million-dollar device – and the project wouldn’t make any money,” says Semmelhack. “We don’t have a huge amount of capital or time, so we have to build stuff quickly and cheaply that works well enough for our purposes.”

One block away is SpaceX’s original headquarters and the tip of its first successfully recovered Falcon 9 booster can be seen peeking out from among the warehouses. Elon Musk moved SpaceX from California to Texas in 2024 but talent remains clustered in Hawthorne. “It’s very easy to get things built with machinists around every corner,” says Nowack. “If you need the perfect laser weld, the guy who did it for the SpaceX and Nasa missions is here.”

Nowack interned at the pioneering commercial space company and its monument, put on permanent display by Musk in 2016, is a visible reminder that proof of concept is vital in this industry if you want to be taken seriously. The clock is ticking on Reflect Orbital’s deadline to load up a rocket and deploy its first sail in the spring of 2026. Yet the commercial space industry has become astoundingly cheap by satellite-launching standards – just $6,500 (€5,500) per kilogramme, or eight times cheaper than it was on Nasa’s now-retired space shuttles – and this is presenting an opportunity for space start-ups such as Reflect Orbital that want to get their projects off the ground.

In order to deploy 100 satellites per rocket launch and reap what it believes could be billions of dollars in revenue, the company is banking on the cost of joining such launches continuing to decline. It is currently fine-tuning its design in a bid to get its satellite-production costs down from $2m (€1.7m) to less than $100,000 (€85,000) per unit.

Where that revenue will come from is still uncertain. But Reflect Orbital has its theories: municipalities seeking to save on street lighting, those engaged in search-and-rescue operations, construction firms operating in remote areas that want to extend the working day – and even Arctic villages hoping to make winters more bearable (bringing light to Russia’s Far North was one of Znamya’s goals).

Objections to the technology aren’t hard to imagine, not least the light pollution and its potential to disrupt the rhythms of flora and fauna. Never mind the complaints from neighbours who don’t want dawn and dusk extended. The company has had preliminary conversations with environmental groups concerned with the matter but the founders say that the light will be dispersed rather than a harsh spotlight and the technology will allow them to quickly point the satellites elsewhere. “Give us four minutes,” says Semmelhack. “If everyone hates it, we can turn it off.”

That might sound like a shaky business plan but there are more remote deployments of Reflect Orbital’s technology that make sense. Semmelhack imagines lighting up a pasture at the behest of a rancher or a ceremony for a sheikh. “We have the benefit of [working across] large areas of land that are controlled by very few people.”

Reflect Orbital started taking applications for its service last autumn and, according to the company, was flooded with 164,000 requests from 157 countries. The company is planning a 10-location “world tour” once the first satellites are aloft, imagining the kind of mass gatherings that a solar eclipse can attract. Sunlight on demand is a large-scale parlour trick that will generate hype. But what drives Reflect Orbital’s mission is the energy business and making the most out of solar panels, says its chief strategy officer, Ally Stone. “It’s a way to unlock value from an already financed, already operating solar asset.”

Reflect Orbital is one of many West Coast enterprises exploring new power-generation schemes as Big Tech pledges to stay true to its commitments to net-zero emissions. For years, data centres have been popping up along the hydropower-rich Columbia River Basin. But the current grid network is insufficient, says Julia DeWahl, a Los Angeles-based angel investor and co-founder of microreactor start-up Antares. “Forecasted energy demand is a step-function increase in growth largely driven by AI,” she says.

Every AI-powered Google search uses 10 times the energy of a traditional search. In response, its parent company Alphabet, alongside Amazon and Meta, have pledged to support efforts to triple nuclear-power production by 2050. Microsoft is resurrecting Three Mile Island, a Pennsylvania nuclear plant infamous for a 1979 meltdown. Meanwhile, there are entrepreneurs across North America working on small scalable nuclear reactors, such as the Bill Gates-backed Terrapower, which plans to be running in Wyoming by 2030. Elsewhere, in the Seattle area, start-up Helion is working on the world’s first fusion-power plant.

“After so many years of software start-ups, there’s a boom around building real things,” says DeWahl. The location of many of these companies is no accident. “There has always been so much innovation on the West Coast.”

Not every idea taken from a sci-fi novel will work but there’s smart money betting that Reflect Orbital can pull it off – with the potential for a considerable return on investment too. The founders expect public support for their solar spotlight, even if that might partly be tech-bro swagger. “If you zoom out and look at this with a bit of perspective,” says Semmelhack, “this is just so cool.”