A Cincinnati-based real estate startup is expanding its physical footprint for the first time outside the confines of the Queen City, and its CEO said the move will serve as a test for the company as it starts to eye other potential U.S. markets.
Oval Room Group, a West End-based commercial real estate visual media provider, is opening a new office in Chicago effective April 1. The company has hired Sophie Haines, a Cincinnati native and Chicago resident, to serve as the inaugural market leader.
Oval Room Group CEO Alex Taylor told me the expansion will serve as a sort of an experiment for the company. While Oval Room Group has grown at a fast clip over the past three years — the company has done work in more than 700 markets, spanning from Elkhorn, W.V. to Los Angeles — it’s yet to base any direct employees outside of Cincinnati.
“From day one, we’ve asked ourselves, ‘How do we best sell this business? Do we need a local sales rep in a city like Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas or Denver?’” Taylor said. “We have sold very effectively nationally — and internationally — (being) based out of Cincinnati, but there is so much more potential in a market like Chicago, that's six times our size. It makes for an exciting proposition.”
Taylor, also the co-founder of newly founded proptech company Ocusell, is a former ground-floor employee at Dotloop, a real estate tech startup that celebrated one of the city’s most notable exits when it sold to Zillow for $108 million in 2015.
He and his business partner acquired Oval Room Group, formerly known as 513 Oval Room, from founder Ted Dahmus in 2019.
Taylor said the company has experienced 375% year-over-year revenue growth in the span since.
While Oval Room initially specialized in 3D home tours, Taylor said commercial real estate projects now represent 99% of its business. The company counts Neyer Properties, JLL, Duke Realty, Norwood-based ComptonAddy and New York City’s Link Logistics Real Estate as clients.
Oval Room still offers 3D virtual tours, but also other a la carte services for commercial office, industrial, retail and multifamily projects including photography, concept planning, dynamic measuring, renderings, aerial mapping and more, he said.
“On the commercial side, there tends to be larger budgets, larger transaction opportunities — there are so many more targets to hit than single-family residential,” Taylor said. “To reach the multimillion-dollar tiers we want to reach, we’d have to do hundreds of (residential) projects a week.”
In Chicago, Oval Room Group will launch in temporary space in the city’s West Loop neighborhood. Haines will be the company’s only employee in the Windy City to start (Oval Room Group has 14 employees based in Cincinnati with 600 subcontractors nationwide). The market will dictate growth from there, Taylor said.
Haines, whose formal title is business development executive, will be responsible for helping Oval Room Group better saturate the Chicago market.
The company already has a bit of a foundation there; Oval Room Group produced all the property marketing materials for the sale of Neiman Marcus’ flagship building along the city’s famed Magnificent Mile, among other projects in the city.
“Chicago is even more centralized, and close to (other) mid-tier markets like Milwaukee, St. Louis, where we could see some spillover," she said. "It seemed like a good place to start.”
