Hong Kong co-working startup Campfire pulls in $18M ahead of global expansion

WeWork may be doubling down on Asia, having initially focused its efforts on China, but that isn’t stopping local players from hatching ambitious expansion plans of their own.

One of those eying new markets is Hong Kong-based Campfire, which tries to stand out from the crowd with industry-focused spaces. Today, the startup announced it has raised an $18 million Series A ahead of planned expansions to three overseas countries: Singapore, Australia and the UK. It previously raised $6 million in March 2017.

Two-year-old Campfire’s business right now is in Hong Kong, where it has eight locations which include co-education, co-retail and co-living sites, as well as more standard co-working venues. In the case of its fashion-focused location, that even includes runway, photo studio, fabric facility and 3D printer.

The new capital comes from a trio of real estate firms in Hong Kong, they are Kwai Jung Group, Fast Global Holdings — which is a subsidiary of Rykadan Capital — and Sa Sa. In the latter case, Sa Sa is actually a cosmetics brand that operates across Greater China and parts of Southeast Asia, but the firm owns a significant retail footprint. That includes the building that houses Campfire’s ‘V Point’ space in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, so the relationship is already well advanced.

A Campfire representative confirmed that the capital is all provided up front and equity-based, in other words it is an investment in the business not specific locations or joint ventures, as is sometimes the case with investment deals in co-working firms.

Going beyond Hong Kong, the group is set to open its first overseas space in London (Shoreditch) with co-working locations in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore planned thereafter. Further down the line, it is looking to move into “global gateway cities,” with the likes of Tokyo, Osaka, Bangkok and Brisbane among those that are on the list.

Co-working is sufficiently developed worldwide that most countries across Asia have a number of local players who compete with WeWork, the global leader valued at $35 billion, either now or else soon in the future. Some of the more developed of that bunch include Singapore’s JustCo, EV Hive in Indonesia and China’s Ucommune. WeWork has actually been busy consolidating its position, having snapped up Spacemob in Southeast Asia and its main rival in China, Naked Hub.