from MAN&WOMAN:
The Meet Market
There must be a better way of meeting people than sitting in a bar, lamented Jose de Lasa, now 32, while attending Tulane Law School and doing just that. This idea stayed with him even after becoming a lawyer in 1996. So much so that he quit his $86,000 a year job after a few months and started Group Encounters, a social organization with $10,000-money his father had given him to pay off school loans.
While Jose began researching how to write a business plan at Barnes and Noble, Graham McAden, 28, a public relations account executive for consumer products such as Burger King, languished at his job and told friends about the "socializing service" he dreamed of opening. Then one day a friend told him, "someone's already done your idea."
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Mix and Match
Want to get in the dating game? Even an unrelated, existing business can undergo a love injection. For instance:
*The Uptown Valet not only cleans their customer's clothes but adds romance to their lives. This Washington-based dry cleaning service takes pictures of their single clients and posts them on a wall for anyone searching for that special someone.
*When Nancy Slotnick opened Drip, a coffeehouse in New York City ( 489 Amsterdam Ave.) where Starbucks seemingly sits on every corner, took this fact into consideration and made her place original by serving up love with its coffee. At Drip, patrons sift through more than 19,000 personal ads placed in loose-leaf binders, selecting people through their numbered code. Staff arranges blind dates, to be held at Drip, by telephone so if the match doesn't work at least the lovelorn enjoy good Java.
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Rather than giving up, Graham called Jose to "brainstorm" about the industry. A lunch pow-wow turned into a partnership and by spring 1997, Graham matched Jose's initial investment and the twosome headed a revamped activities service dubbed Social Circles. The service, which organizes outings for singles such as rock climbing and swing dancing, sends its members a monthly calendar detailing all events. Interested parties then contact Social Circles to sign up. The New York-based Social Circles gears all activities towards beginners and keeps their groups small, gender balanced and segregated from outsiders. "When we send people to a wine tasting, it is a wine tasting for our group and those 20 people are just from Social Circles," said Graham.
Love is big business.
With estimated sales of $250,000 for 1999 and a goal of $2.5 million within five years, Social Circles works among the plethora of profitable match making businesses. The dating service industry is a $600 million market and growing, according to Marketdata Enterprises, Inc., a Florida-based market research and consulting firm. Best of all, many of the 75 million singles in the United States are baby boomers, whose time-pressed lives make them prime candidates for match making services.
"The match making industry is hot for two reasons," says Trish McDermott, director of communications of Match.com. "From a sociological perspective, single people have a greater need today for some sort of formal intermediary in the dating process. They get married later in life so they don't have the thriving social network of the college campus or club scene available to them. They work long hours at demanding careers and have little time to search for a romantic partner. And, finally, due to divorce, many people have to reenter the singles scene after many years of absence."
Wanted: A Good Time
But just because you become a matchmaker doesn't guarantee you'll create matches. Even after enlisting outside help, the lovelorn can only expect a 15% success rate of finding a spouse. Match making enterprises exist more so to offer clients chances to meet Mr. or Ms. Wonderful. "People are looking for opportunities to meet other eligible singles," says McDermott. "They go to dating services because they don't have access to the type of single people they hope to meet and date in their day-to-day lives. Really, singles go to dating services to purchase access to other singles."
Singles on the hunt look for particular characteristics in their prospective mates. So it helps to find a niche before starting a venture. Inspired by visiting chat rooms, for instance, Jory Rozner, a single Jewish woman and CEO of Zipple.com decided to capitalize on the web's popularity in 1998 and start her own online Jewish community. Her Singles Scene section now has thousands of clients from over 20 countries and receives over 500,000 hits a month. Rozner, 31, took $35,000 from savings and convinced three former business associates to pony up $65,000 more for a percentage of the company-a good investment since Rozner expects revenues of six figures this year. "Singles are always looking for new ways to meet. The Internet is perfect. It gives the most comprehensive forum for interacting, screening and meeting," said Rozner. "With chat rooms, bulletin boards, pictures, profiles and essays...a person can really do a good job at selecting someone appropriate for them. It's better than being fixed up by your mother's friend who thinks that every single Jewish boy in his late 20s or early 30s is 'just adorable.'"
While developing her site, Rozner outsourced much of the design work but kept herself involved in the process. "I wanted the site to be cool, hip, colorful and fun," she says. "Jews who are already involved in Judiasm will go anywhere on the Internet to get the information they need, but you have to make a special effort to appeal to young people and non-affiliated Jews."
Online personals also appeal because of their low cost. "Often, online dating is associated with newspaper personals," says Will Bunker, the 30-year-old CEO and co-founder of One-and-Only.com, an online dating site. "In truth, they hit two different demographics. People using newspapers typically are blue-collar workers earning less than $25,000/year with no college education. The majority of online users are working in a white-collar profession earning $50,000 or more, and have a college education. Other brick-and-mortar dating establishments have typically been too expensive for the average single, take up too much time and, more often than not, turn out to be a waste of time and money. Online matchmakers allow people to get to know each other from the inside out in their own time and at a price they won't regret."
Love for Sale
While most Internet dating services, such as Zipple.Com offer free personals, generating their income through advertising, ecommerce or web hosting, traditional dating services usually ask for an up-front membership fee.
Social Circles, for instance, originally charged clients per activity. "What quickly became apparent was the service was worth far more than $10 an activity," said Graham, who now sells memberships at $395/six months and $575/one year. "There are people out there who will pay significant sums in order to augment their social life."
Prices also serve as a gatekeeping function. "Once we got our prices up over the $150 mark we really started to attract a good, steady, consistent type of person," said Graham whose clients vary from a Rockette to accountants.
Like any new business, getting the word out is paramount. Rozner visited every Jewish web site on the Internet, from newspapers to synagogues, and emailed every webmaster, about 6,500 people, about her site. Social Circles, who now has almost 800 members, says that 40% of new customers come from word-of-mouth. Besides using conventional means of advertising such as direct mail, they've had much luck with fliers-especially at the business's beginnings. "We would drive around on Saturday morning at the crack of the dawn in Jose's beat-up Honda and we'd run out to every bank machine in Manhattan and leave these fliers in the bank machines," said Graham.
Match making lends itself well to Entrpreneurship since clients like personal attention and knowing the individual who ultimately "hooks them up." "I think it is important for people not to see us just as entrepreneurs or business people, but as real people who actually have real emotions and go out and participate in these things for the same reason they do," said Jose. "That creates a kind of communal effect and people appreciate that."
By Sandra Mardenfeld
Contacts:
John LaRosa-Marketdata Enterprises, Inc., 2807 Busch Blvd., Ste. 110, Tampa, FL 33618. 813-931-3900.
Jeremy Ahto-S & S Public Relations, Inc., 111 E. Wacker Drive, Ste. 600, Chicago, IL 60601. 312-297-9001.
Trish McDermott, Director of Communications, Match.com, PO Box 77465, San Francisco, CA 94107. 707-765-1526.
Robin Gorman Newman, 58 Grace Avenue, Ste. 2J, Great Neck, NY 11021. 516-773-0911.
The Uptown Valet, Jon and Sung Han, Georgetown, Washington D.C. 202-337-4700.
Jory Rozner, Zipple.com, 925 North Milwaukee Avenue, Suite 200, Wheeling, IL 60090. 312-895-1900.
Jose de Lasa and Graham McAden, Social Circles, 826 Broadway, 9th floor, New York, NY 10003. 212-505-9985.
Nancy Slotnick, owner, Drip, 489 Amsterdam Ave., NYC 10024. 212- 875-1032.
Will Bunker, One and only.com, 5307 E. Mockingbird Lane, Suite 102, Dallas, TX 75206. 214-827-2262.
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