What businesses around here actually look like
W12 has an unusual mix for one postcode. White City Place and Television
Centre brought production and media companies back into the area, and
the Imperial College campus on the other side of Wood Lane has pulled in
research and life sciences work alongside them. Two streets away,
Shepherd's Bush Market and the Uxbridge Road are full of independent
traders, and the fabric shops on Goldhawk Road still bring people across
London. Westfield sits in the middle of the lot. A business here might
be a three person studio, a family shop that has been on the same corner
for forty years, or a spin-out with institutional money behind it.
W6 is a different proposition. Hammersmith is an office district first,
with large corporate floors around the Broadway and along the river, and
a layer of professional services feeding off them. Behind that you have
Brackenbury Village and the streets around Ravenscourt Park, which are
dense with small independents, dentists, therapists, tutors and trades.
The Lyric and Riverside Studios anchor a real arts audience on top of
that.
W3 is the most practical of the three. Acton runs on light industrial
and trade premises, with Park Royal on its northern edge. Builders,
fitters, motor trades, suppliers and contractors work out of those
units, and nearly all of them are chasing enquiries that arrive by
phone, from someone searching on a phone.
These are not one type of customer and we would not pretend otherwise.
What they have in common is that most of their new business starts with
somebody searching within a couple of miles of where they are standing.