Encore Realty, officially launching from IDEA yesterday, was built with a focus on educating undergraduates and young professionals throughout the real estate process.
As CMO Brian Kitchens explains, these groups are traditionally left unheard throughout the rental process, as many Boston real estate offices are “ineffective in relationship building within this target demographic.
While other offices may take advantage of these inexperienced renters, Encore sees the value of transparent real estate transactions.
In further contrast to their competitors, Encore has developed exclusive relationships with landlords throughout Boston, who are “pleased to accept educated clients, as expectations are clearly defined…avoiding any foreseeable problems.”
Encore’s relationship with IDEA: Northeastern’s Venture Accelerator began in the early stages of planning after another venture recommended IDEA’s services. Brian describes IDEA as demonstrating a “clear understanding of launching businesses”, as well as offering access to a variety of helpful resources. In fact, Encore’s team decided at that point to “stitch IDEA’S methodology into the fiber of their business.”
While confident with the talent of their team members, Encore was initially inexperienced with incorporating this talent into a working business plan. IDEA guided the team through a formal planning process that broke down the business into fundamentals, allowing the whole team to fully understand the business and thus learning to manage it efficiently.
Furthermore, the framework from the IDEA business-planning guide challenged the team to address and find answers for every facet of their business. Finally, working with IDEA allowed the team to “solve their role definition challenges,” forming the foundation for “sustainable and cohesive business operations.”
Since working on their launch, Encore has successfully completed their first season, “surpassing many milestones and further building the brand.” Their team of talented agents continues to contribute to their efforts. However, competing businesses and changes in the market environment can arise. For Encore, IDEA has become a “sounding board to help manage this challenge.”
With the help of IDEA, Encore’s team of motivated and ambitious business professionals was able to not only establish clear goals and objectives, but also to meet these goals within a much quicker time frame than they had originally anticipated.
Encore Realty was born when Brian and his team “identified an achievable industry opportunity.” IDEA served as a “catalyst” to help make this opportunity a reality and continues to provide support and guidance. As such, the Encore team is “quite excited” to continue working with IDEA throughout the next stages of their business and beyond.
