Multinational Autodesk to settle in Barcelona to run all European sales

Twelve hundred square meters of office space for Barcelona in a year when the Catalan capital surpassed Madrid for the first time in office space rentals. American multinational Autodesk has chosen Barcelona for what has been called its commercial hub for all European sales. This company, the developer of the well-known design software Autocad, presented on Wednesday its new offices in Barcelona’s Diagonal Mar area, on Josep Pla street. The offices have a total of 1,200 square meters of floor space, a figure that they plan to double in the future to house the more than 150 workers that they have begun to hire to sell their product all over Europe, in addition to the 20 staff that already worked in Catalonia. The company chose not to reveal its total investment in these new offices, which are located in a newly-constructed building.

As Roland Zelles, vice-president of sales for the company in Europe and the Middle East, explained during the presentation of the new facilities, Autodesk is in the middle of changing its business model. Up to now, Autodesk sold its programs in the traditional way, as a product. But the multinational has settled in Barcelona precisely to address this change in strategy. It will begin to distribute its programs, like Autocad, via a subscription model and also via the cloud; that is, the so-called software-as-a-service model, which has already been adopted by the majority of platforms and programs. This project has been dubbed Forge, and has involved an investment of 100 million dollars.

Zelles noted that the company chose Barcelona mainly for the ability of the Catalan capital to attract foreign talent, for its quality of life, and its accessibility thanks to the El Prat airport. Precisely because office rentals continue to increase, Barcelona is seeing in 2015 an increase in prices per square meter, which have shot up to 27 euros in the most central areas, and to around 16.5 euros in areas such as 22@, where the Autodesk offices are located, a price that means an increase of 18% this year. The case of Autodesk follows the trend seen throughout 2014, when around 80% of investment in new offices in Barcelona came from foreign capital.

Up to now, Autodesk had an office with 20 workers in Sant Just Desvern, who will relocate to the new facilities in the Catalan capital. Autodesk has seven staff in Madrid. The US multinational plans to have 150 employees by the middle of 2016, with a sales staff that, as a prerequisite, must have training related to product or mechanical engineering and be natives of one of the European countries where the products are distributed.

Autodesk’s turnover was 2.5 billion dollars last year, of which 40% came from the European market. The company was founded in 1982 by John Walker and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It is dedicated mainly to 2D and 3D design for use in architecture, engineering, and construction for special effects in films such as Avatar, Gravity, and Mad Max.