Matchmaking IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Online dating site behemoths are not for everyone; lovelorn gladly pay a premium for personal interaction
CHICAGO — The Internet has upended innumerable traditional business models. Travel agents. Retail stores.
Yet online dating, which has ballooned into a $2.1 billion industry used by almost 40 percent of dating singles, hasn’t killed one of the most old-fashioned professions of all: matchmakers.
Some of these professional cupids say they are seeing renewed and expanded interest in their services as disillusioned digital daters trade computer algorithms for human judgment.
A matchmaking school is reporting growing enrollment.
Even online dating behemoths Match.com and eHarmony.com have invested in personal matchmaking services in the past year that charge several thousand dollars for human attention.
“People have dating (overload) — they’re on Tinder, Match, OKCupid,” said Talia Goldstein, cofounder and CEO of Three Day Rule, Match.com’s “white glove” matchmaking partner. “I think people are getting so confused by all the options that they are looking for someone to help them.”
While there is no data tracking the growth of the human matchmaking trade, Paul Oyer, a Stanford University business school professor, said he wouldn’t be surprised if it is on the upswing. As income inequality deepens, there are more well-off people who can afford personalized services, from day care to dog care to date-arranging, he said.
These love emissaries could hurt for business if online dating sites improve their matching algorithms or figure out how to prevent members from lying about their height and age, as the Web will always offer a bigger pool, said Oyer, author of “Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Economics I Learned From Online Dating.”
For now, though, matchmakers are banking on people paying a premium for thoughtful romantic curating.
Three Day Rule, which launched in Chicago this year, charges men and women $3,500 for three months of personal matchmaking and $5,000 for a six-month package that includes date coaching, styling and professional photography to help clients present their most attractive selves.
Some matchmakers say their clientele is getting younger, a sort of retro backlash against the immediacy of the Tinder era (Tinder, for the uninitiated, is a popular dating app based almost entirely on photos).
Stef Safran, founder of the 5-year-old Chicago matchmaking service Stef and the City, said she has noticed an uptick in 20-something clients who tell her they are tired of the casual nature of many dating websites, wary of misleading photos or overwhelmed by the magnitude of profiles they must pick from and compete with.
“They don’t want to go out with three different people a week,” Safran said.
These young clients aren’t necessarily on the hunt for a spouse, she said, as is the classic purpose of matchmakers, but they do want a better dating experience. She has two price structures to accommodate her disproportionately female clientele. Men pay $2,400 for at least six guaranteed dates, and women pay $50 to $175 per date as matches become available, depending on how picky they are.
Leslie Wardman, co-founder of Ambiance Matchmaking, which is based in Chicago and has offices in Oklahoma, said most of her clients were 40-somethings in transition after divorce when she started the company 14 years ago. But recently more men and women in their 20s and 30s have been signing up to get set up.
“They are more sophisticated and savvy and have less time to focus on themselves,” she said.
On a recent afternoon, Wardman interviewed a 27-year-old real-estate agent.
“What did your father do? … How do you spend time on weekends? … What did you like about your last boyfriend? … What did you not like about him? … What’s your greatest goal in life?” Wardman asked as she jotted notes on a clipboard.
The client, who declined to be identified for this article, signed on with Ambiance on the recommendation of one of her real-estate clients. While she said she has no trouble meeting men, she struggles to pinpoint the right ones without wasting time or causing heartache, and she likes the idea of getting help from an ally with her best interests in mind.
Technology has expanded the toolbox of the modern matchmaker. At Three Day Rule, clients are asked to send photos of their exes, and if it appears the client has a certain physical “type,” facial recognition software helps find matches in the database who look similar, Goldstein said.
But the crux of the service is human interaction. Three Day Rule matchmakers do in-person interviews with their clients to learn about them and their preferences, and also meet with each of their clients’ potential matches to fully vet them before arranging a date, essentially doing the first-date dirty work for them, Goldstein said. Clients are guaranteed one or two matches a month, the focus being on quality.
The matchmakers crash medical conferences, attend law-firm networking events and have infiltrated Comic-Con to recruit new singles to their database.
“If you can’t approach a random person at Starbucks, it’s not the right job for you,” Goldstein said.
Growing interest in matchmaking has met growing interest in becoming a matchmaker, according to one training school for budding cupids.
The Matchmaking Institute in New York enrolled 120 students this year, up from 90 last year and 80 in 2012. Many are lawyers or other professionals who feel trapped in their careers and want more flexibility in their schedules, said co-founder Lisa Clampitt.