Not A Second Bedroom (NAB)

Theory

To summarise, we identified that the damaged confidence and ambition of women entrepreneurs lead them to more easily choose low-cost, low-risk bedroom offices as default. This spatial confinement leads to chaotic time/effort boundaries, mixing work and leisure, sacrificing their social life while limiting their network expansion. These unhealthy boundaries cause emotional chaos, ultimately disabling them from taking action.

Service

Our Solution

Therefore, We would like to introduce Not A Second Bedroom (NAB) as a future model of branching, holds value for the highly competitive banking industry.

Here we aim to reimagine traditional bank branches as entrepreneurial hubs, to create spaces that are not second bedrooms, providing spaces for female entrepreneurs to learn | Meet | Work | Connect, so that they can invest in their business and their holistic health at the same time.

Mechanism of Change

Collaboration with bank spaces and the distribution of NAB entrepreneurial hubs across local areas can offer female entrepreneurs two main benefits: Affordable costs & Safe locations

Design Conditions

• Spatial Design: provide female entrepreneurs with basic modular zones and essential amenities within a professional aesthetic and legitimate site locations.
• Financial Services: Opening a business account is the first step for female entrepreneurs to conduct banking. NAB as host, gives out gifts like cardholders as part of our marketing strategy to attract customers, promote our services, and encourage them to more business banking services.
• Social Opportunities: offer a range of activities like swapping business cards on walls, engaging in seminars and third-party leisure events at lower prices.
• Wellbeing Services: We added a warm barista team and healthy food options to our space. Once they subscribe to the newsletter, they will receive work rest reminders to ensure they get proper rest.
• Service ecosystem expansion: We aim to connect with more third-party partners to expand and enhance our service system to ensure that female entrepreneurs can experience supportive and safe living experiences even outside of NAB.

IMPACT

Value Proposition

What female entrepreneurs need: Better well-being and business spaces, as well as tailored resources.

What high street bank branches provide: Trust, legitimacy, safety, and business banking services.

NAB connects them by simply upgrading the under-utilised spaces of traditional banks.

• For traditional banks: This approach utilises branch spaces, attracts customer acquisition, and enhances the bank's sense of social responsibility and brand image by supporting an underrepresented group.
• For female entrepreneurs: This provides more affordable, proximate workspaces with better rates for holistic health and business enhancement. Utilising the space of high street banks enhances trust, legitimacy, and security because to the established reputation and geographic location of the banks, making the businesses of female founders more credible.

Based on these considerations, we propose different affordable tiered packages, allowing even people outside the NAB system or free members to access part of our services.

Reflection

At the current stage, we also realised that over-reliance on banks’ interests and capacities may impede the speed of implementation.  So rather than focus on one partner, we want to establish criteria and conditions for choosing wider space providers: including, as well-known brand in safe locations that has a capacity of equipped amenities while needing a transformation of space. Consider deploying multiple models with hotels, co-working spaces, architecture companies, real estate, and other entities that also have the rights and resources, we want to embrace more opportunities to make NAB a reality.