Sarah Jacobs/Business Insider
Inside The Wing's brand new SoHo location.
- The Wing is a female-only co-working space and club with two locations in New York City.
- Their newest location, which is in SoHo, provides its members with desks, a beauty room, space to nap, meeting rooms, a library, and a cafe.
- 8,000 women are on the waiting list for membership to The Wing.
When The Wing, a co-working space and social club for women, launched in October 2016, its founders, Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan, didn't realize how large the demand for membership would be - or exactly the type of comfort it would provide its members.
In the months before the 2016 presidential election, Gelman, who has past experience working in politics, said she believed Hillary Clinton would win.
"This was [going to be] the golden age of women in power, so women could have rooms like this," she told Business Insider, gesturing around The Wing.
"It was sort of a triumphant concept."
"Obviously that's not what happened," Kassan said. Overnight, after President Donald Trump's victory, The Wing was inundated with calls from members and people on the waitlist, who, according to Kassan, were saying, "I didn't realize how much I wanted or needed a space like this."
Now, the club has 1,500 members and an 8,000-person waiting list for its two open locations. It also plans to launch two more spaces: one in Brooklyn and one in Washington, DC.
With a focus on growing a community between its members, the club provides more than a place to set up your laptop. Speaking events, community volunteer opportunities, movie screenings, and happy hours provide a home base for its members to build relationships.
We got a tour of the new SoHo space on its opening day - and it was already buzzing with members.