Tag: flexible retail

In Brief:

• Long Island entrepreneurs are using shared workspaces to reduce overhead and stay flexible.
• Co-working spaces like Moss Wellness help service-based businesses avoid long-term leases.
• Shared retail models allow food and specialty sellers to launch quickly and reduce waste.
• Local e-commerce platforms like Trellus offer same-day delivery without national warehouses.

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Small businesses across Long Island are thriving beyond traditional storefronts, using shared workspaces, flexible retail models and local delivery platforms to reach customers while keeping overhead low.

Diana Lillo sees that shift every day. She is the co-founder of Moss Wellness Workspaces, a shared office environment in Garden City that has become a starting point for dozens of small businesses that need flexibility more than square footage.

“The office is set up as a co-working space, and we do have full-time and part-time private offices, which is a major component of our business model,” said Lillo, who also works as founder and chief creative officer of Inspire Design Creative Studio. “We attract everybody from local professionals, entrepreneurs, small businesses and remote workers, because we’re able to be flexible enough to meet them all where they are.”

Many of the small businesses using Moss are not traditional retail operations at all. Lillo said they include therapy practices, audiologists, infant feeding specialists and creative arts therapists—businesses that require professional space without committing to a long-term commercial lease.

“A lot of them [businesses] start just looking for the hour until they build up their base,” she said. “They don’t have to commit to the lump-sum lease because they can just try out the area or see how it works for them and their business model.”

Another benefit to different models is new ways of collaboration. Small businesses may not have the time or bandwidth to join a local chamber of commerce—and may even plan to move locations once they find a permanent location. At Moss Wellness, a shared workspace gives small business owners to have regular exchanges with peers, where they can share ideas, help each other and form longer-lasting relationships.

Lillo said she has implemented regular, informal, off-hours meetups for small businesses—for relationship building—a benefit that many continue to take advantage of.

“The amount of collaborations that we’ve seen has been so amazing… we host a monthly meet-up and mixer… it’s a really nice, light way to be able to introduce to the community.”

A combination of current economic challenges, opportunities from new technologies and a workforce in transition is driving many of the changes that Long Island entrepreneurs now embrace.

Some of that technology provides for virtual office assistants or receptionists, AI-based email management, and, of course, cloud-based IT.

A similar rethink is happening in retail. Evan Freed opened Common Grounds, a farm-to-table grocer in Port Washington, not as a conventional standalone shop but as a shared, flexible retail operation to reduce risk and food waste while supporting regional farms.

“I was getting sick and tired of looking, and I just wanted to start already,” Freed said, describing his decision to launch without waiting for a perfect storefront. Freed describes himself as a longtime entrepreneur and small business creator.

Rather than waiting to find an affordable, appropriate location for a solo store, Freed took advantage of an opportunity to share store space with a friend, Andrew Bly, who owns and operates Snacks & Design in a Main Street storefront in Port Washington. The shared space facilitated him to jump right in and open for business quickly.

It’s worked. Freed sold 20 Turkeys in the run-up to Thanksgiving this year, and sold out of food entirely in three days—until he closed early on Thanksgiving.

Freed sources most of his products from small farms within a few hours of Long Island, even though that approach costs more than wholesale supply chains.

“Even with the tariffs, it’s still more expensive,” he said. “Small farms are still more expensive.”

But the trade-off is freshness, transparency and flexibility. Freed said operating in a smaller, shared space gives him the ability to closely manage inventory and dramatically reduce waste.

“If I had a full store, I would have had so much more food waste,” he said. “I donated like $1,200 worth of meat to the food pantry this week.”

Freed said customer relationships, not foot traffic, drive his business. Social media, direct conversations, and limited inventory create urgency and loyalty that large grocery chains struggle to replicate.

He also leverages on an active social media presence for direct customer contact, keeping his followers informed of specials, events and answering questions without the need for outsourced marketing.

For Adam Haber, co-founder and CEO of Trellus, the challenge was even more fundamental: How to make shopping local as convenient as clicking “Buy Now” on Amazon.

“Politicians say, shop locally,” Haber said. “There’s no way to do it. There’s just no way to do it.”

Even e-commerce—considered a domain powerfully dominated by Amazon.com—is re-emerging as a competitive tool for Long Island small businesses.

A Long Beach-based startup, Trellus flips the traditional e-commerce model by connecting consumers directly with local merchants and handling same-day delivery without warehouses or national logistics networks.

“We did the reverse of Amazon,” Haber said. “We started doing the delivery, which is a commodity business, but we created a very unique model.”

The platform now works with hundreds of small businesses and uses a network of more than 100 drivers on Long Island alone.

“We have well over 100 drivers for just Long Island,” Haber said. “The gig drivers love it. They get 80 percent of the delivery fee, which is the highest in the industry.”

Haber said Trellus succeeds because it solves real-world problems that big platforms overlook—urgent purchases, gifts and everyday needs that cannot wait days for delivery.

“You need a new shirt, or a pair of socks, or something for your interview,” he said. “We’ll get it to you.”

Despite operating in very different sectors, all three businesses reflect the same underlying shift. Reduced overhead, digital tools and changing consumer habits are facilitating small businesses to decouple success from expensive storefronts.