I opened a marriage agency in a third-tier town and earned 600,000 yuan a year

Entering the blind date market, everyone is an individual quantified by indicators such as age, height, and income. The job of a matchmaking practitioner is more like doing data processing.

Text: "Chinese Entrepreneur" reporter Zhang Wenjing

Edited by Mina

Header image source: Visual China

Three months ago, 25-year-old Tang Lamei got married.

When she was in college, Tang Lamei once said in public that she was determined not to get married. But after graduating from college, she became an entrepreneur in the matchmaking industry. In the past 4 years, she has opened three offline blind date studios in Leshan and Meishan, Sichuan Province, with an annual income of about 600,000 yuan, and has helped more than 500 people get rid of singles and more than 100 people register for marriage.

She admits that, to some extent, choosing to get married has something to do with this entrepreneurial experience. In fact, after working in this industry for a long time, even young girls will not have much hope for marriage. "Prince Charming" doesn't think about it, Tang Lamei said, "very rational about marriage." There are no requirements for the partner, and there is no expectation of any aspect of his growth, what he was before and what he will be in the future. Because I know he's a man, that's all. ”

More and more young people are realizing that blind dates are not like free love. Free love is to meet the favorite person from a group of people, but blind date is to first filter the data, and then cultivate the relationship by selecting the person who meets the requirements through the screening conditions in a group of people. As a result, young people's view of marriage and love is now more rational, and there is no "will" in their dictionary.

And Tang Lamei's marriage agency is mainly engaged in the blind date business of young people. Among her customers, 80% are 25~35 years old. What kind of business is it, and how did she get started?

The following is Tang Lamei's oral statement (with abridgement):

98 years girl's blind date business

I had the idea of starting a business very early on. But I never thought about opening a blind date studio, because in my impression, this industry is basically done by aunts.

I started my business in my freshman year, first as a campus platform, and later as an MCN institution. But I found that there were some gray areas in the live stream and I was reluctant to continue. When I was about to graduate, I was thinking about finding a better track, and my definition of "better track" was: first, the investment should be small, I really didn't have much money at that time, and second, the traffic should be large.

So, initially, we made video content, including food, fitness, blind date emotions, etc. But there is only the number of blind date feelings, and the traffic is running. That was more than three years ago, and this account posted a video casually, and there were tens of thousands of views in a few minutes.

At that time, I made videos of emotional singles, and I went to shoot some customers who had blind date and friendship needs, and also filmed some emotional jokes. At that time, there was no one doing Douyin, we were angry, and a lot of private messages poured into the background every day, asking for help introducing blind dates or posting blind date information.

In fact, at the beginning, we didn't have a clear goal, saying that we must make this account what it looks like, and we didn't have the idea of doing physical matchmaking. But purely online blind dates, we found a problem, the unit price is too low.

Our customer unit price starts from 9.9 yuan, and at that time, as long as the customer transfers 9.9 yuan to me, we can help him post a video about his personal information on our Douyin account, and the traffic is excellent, basically it can rush to more than 100,000.

Later, the unit price was increased to 19.9 yuan, and then we began to register guest information and provide matching services, with the increase and improvement of various services, the unit price gradually increased, to 99 yuan per month, 199 yuan per month...... When the unit price reaches more than 1,000 yuan, customers begin to ask: "Where is your physical store?"

I replied, "There are no stores." "They don't want to pay because more than 1,000 yuan is a relatively large purchase. After discovering this problem, I ran all over Leshan City to find a store.

At that time, because the previous business had just been cheated of savings, the budget was only 20,000 yuan. I'm planning to find a small store to do the reception, at least let everyone know that we have a physical store.

I took a fancy to the vicinity of Shihao Plaza, which is known as "Taikoo Li Leshan", but the rent here is very expensive, with the rent of the first floor generally more than 100,000 yuan, and the second floor also costs 40,000 or 50,000 yuan. I found a small store in a very inconspicuous location on the inner street, and the boss offered 30,000 yuan, and I was very excited, which was already the lowest offer I had heard. I talked with my boss for a long time, and even promised to help his son find a partner, and finally won the small store of "Taikoo Li Leshan" for 15,000 yuan.

This is our first store, which is very small and the most "hot" one. As our business grew, it was completely inadequate. So recently, we were getting ready to move.

Up to now, we have opened three directly-operated stores in Leshan and Meishan, Sichuan, with a total of more than 2,300 customers, of which 80% are between the ages of 25 and 35. The annual income of the three stores is about 600,000 yuan. The business has grown rapidly in recent years, and two of the three stores have recently moved to a larger venue in 2024.

The most important thing in this industry is trust and resources. Because this industry is relatively special, there is basically no repurchase, and there is no referral, because even if the customer gets married through our introduction, he is embarrassed or unwilling to tell his relatives and friends that he got married through an agency.

For us, the most important thing is to continuously acquire new customers and new traffic. So now, we are looking for ways to expand customers from various channels.

The most important thing is online, such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu, sending customer information, sending various activities and co-branded activities organized by us, including self-driving tours, blind dates, etc. Another channel is to cooperate with local schools, veterans and other units.

In the past, many customers who have also paid fees in other institutions have told us that no one cares after paying the money, or they have been deceived by trust. There are a lot of similar problems in the industry. The issue of trust is a big one.

We have been doing matchmaking locally for a long time, I send short videos and live broadcasts every day, if we don't do a good job of service, they are not satisfied, they may also go to our comment area and live broadcast room to say. Therefore, we must make our customers 100% satisfied and have a good reputation in the local area.

In addition, to solve the problem of trust, it is necessary to rely on the charm of personal IP. For example, all of our IPs are all my appearances, and I can't just share my work, members, and even my own personal life every day. Only if you yourself are a very reliable person with strong personal charm, everyone will trust you.

"Good Friend Supplier"

Being young is our strength and we can easily mingle with young people.

Together with other organisations, we have co-organized large-scale annual events with more than 100 participants. Their matchmakers are all retired aunts, and I found that they have completely different concepts from young people, and there is a generation gap.

A small detail is that we had a dinner together and they asked everyone at the table to introduce themselves. In their opinion, they can only get to know each other by introducing themselves. But for young people, a formal self-introduction can make them feel uncomfortable, inhibited, or even repulsive. We usually use interesting games to guide people to talk about their situation.

Source: Visual China

We are in the blind date business, but many times it seems to have become a platform for young people to make friends. Many customers call me "Good Friend Supplier", and here, you can meet many friends with the same ambition and hobbies.

Our shop in Leshan Shihao is very small, with only four chairs in total, but it is always full, and there is still a person sitting at the door. Customers like to run to the store, they walk in from the next mall, after the gym, they stroll over, sit for a while, many times not to find a partner, just to play. There used to be a lazy sofa in the store, and they were lying in it playing with their phones and games.

There is also a customer, which is very interesting. He is a university teacher, very young, an outsider, who stayed in school after studying in Leshan, and has a very narrow social circle. He paid us the money, but he didn't care about finding a partner at all, and he didn't have any interest in falling in love.

He often came over to chat with us, and when he participated in our offline blind date activities, he did not participate in member activities, but wore a staff clip and pretended to be a staff member. He seems to be spending money purely to come over and have fun.

Our latest fee is 5,200 RMB per person, including one-on-one service until the marriage certificate is obtained, and all of our offline activities are free for customers to participate in during the service period.

Under this charging model, our service cycle is very long. The reason why I set the price like this at that time was actually to avoid some human weaknesses from the rules and systems.

Many institutions in the industry charge according to the number of introducers, such as charging customers 1,000 yuan and introducing three people to him. Then when the matchmaker introduces him to a third person, the matchmaker must hope that the two will not succeed, because as long as it fails, the customer will renew the fee, which means that the matchmaker can have higher income and commission. This can only be circumvented by the system.

We charge a one-time fee until we get married, and under this system, matchmakers will sincerely hope that customers will get off the bill as soon as possible, because only in this way will their workload be reduced.

But this fee system means that the income of the institution will be much reduced. In fact, there are some customers who are not easy to get off the list, and even 60% of them will be difficult to get off the list because of personality reasons, requirements that do not match their own conditions, or will not fall in love and other reasons, we need to serve them all the time, and the cost will continue to increase, of which the labor cost is larger.

But we are young, we have strengths and weaknesses. The disadvantage is that it is difficult to gnaw down the blind date market for the middle-aged and elderly, and it is not easy to gain their trust, and the consumption power of the middle-aged and elderly is very strong, far exceeding that of young people. If we can strive to win the middle-aged and elderly market in the future, our income and profits will rise a few steps.

Quantified blind date individuals

Every blind date who comes to our agency, we will give them a one-on-one evaluation, and we have four evaluation systems, which are for unmarried men, women, and married men and women, so that they can understand their situation in the market.

We will give each customer a score, and the factors that constitute the score mainly include age, full-time education, height, weight, income, garage situation, parents' work, parents' pension insurance, etc. If it is a second marriage, it will also involve whether there are children, who the children follow, the monthly child support, and whether there is any desire to have another child. These data metrics are very important.

In the past two years, an indicator of the rapid rise in the attention and importance of the blind date market is parental insurance. This is something I didn't realize before. However, in the past two years, the market has continued to feedback to us: blind dates generally pay attention to whether the other party's parents have pension insurance, as well as the other party's original family relationship.

According to our observation, 890% of the blind dates now attach great importance to each other's original family.

However, we need to try to do a preliminary screening of the personal information provided by the blind date to verify the authenticity. When we were just starting out in the early days, we also encountered situations where blind dates concealed and deceived personal information and assets.

There was once a man who said he was a rich second generation. Indeed, he drives a good car and spends very generously. But in the end, I found out that the information he provided was all fake.

His car was rented. He said that his father was the owner of a factory and a hotel in a certain county. We went to the local area to find the owner of the factory, and the other party said that this person was just one of his salespeople. We also found the owner of the hotel, and finally checked out, none of them.

In this case, we will directly "hang" in the circle of friends to play a warning role. Leshan and Meishan are not big, and it is easy for people to know each other, and once they make false reports, they will soon be exposed. We will also state in the contract that we will terminate the service immediately if there is any misrepresentation.

When we register and sign the contract, we will do a preliminary verification. The blind date needs to provide us with an ID card, first check the basic information such as name, date of birth, etc., which must be able to match all the documents they provide to us.

They need to provide a photo of their graduation certificate or a screenshot of the academic information network to prove their academic information, and provide a real estate certificate or purchase contract, or a monthly loan deduction record, and a vehicle driving license to prove the situation of the RV.

But in fact, despite all the work we have done, we still can't find out a lot of information in the early stage. However, there are not many cases of data fraud, and since we have been open for more than three years, we have only encountered single digits, and we have not encountered any data fraud in the whole of 2023.

In the matchmaking market, personal data takes precedence over emotional factors. Entering the blind date market, everyone is an individual quantified by indicators such as age, height, and income. The job of a matchmaking practitioner is more like doing data processing.

Blind dates are not like free love. Free love is to see the favorite person in a bunch of people, but blind date is to first screen the data, and then cultivate the relationship by selecting the person who meets the requirements through the screening conditions in a group of people.

Now young people's view of marriage and love is more rational. Young people are now reluctant to compromise, and their quality requirements for each other have increased a lot. For example, in the past, young people could get married when they reached 70 points on a blind date, and their parents might get married when they reached 40 points, but now young people must reach at least 90 points before they consider getting married.

Source: Visual China

Human beings are becoming more and more rational animals, which is an irreversible trend in the process of human development. With the improvement of material conditions and education level, people will certainly develop towards a trend of becoming more and more rational and seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages. This trend will naturally manifest itself in marriages as well.

After entering the matchmaking industry, I had a more pronounced anxiety about age. Because the information fed back to us by the blind date market is that for women who need to get married, age often forms a clear dividing line.

For example, if a woman is over 25 years old, there will be some pressure to find a high-quality man, and for example, 29 years old is an important node, once you are over 30 years old, it will be relatively difficult to choose a mate in the blind date market.

Being in the matchmaking industry and having seen all kinds of blind dates, I will have a clearer understanding of the other party in the marriage and myself. For example, people in other industries fall in love and don't know where the other person is in this market, and they don't know if they will meet a more suitable partner in the future, because they can't compare.

But because I'm in this industry, it takes me 10 years to compare the results, and I can do it in a month. I also have a clearer idea of what I need.

Admittedly, my change of mind and decision to get married was also influenced by the age anxiety that this industry brings.

In fact, after doing this for a long time, even young girls will not have much hope for marriage, and "Prince Charming" is impossible to imagine. We are sensible about marriage, myself included. I don't have any requirements for my partner, and I don't expect him to grow in any way, what he was before and what he will be in the future. Because I know he's a man, that's all.

Blind date, a slow business

Still, I'm not happy with the current situation.

I put in more effort than others, but the reward was much less. Outsiders will think it is glamorous when they see me, but only I know that in fact, the speed of making money in this industry is relatively slow.

Someone once suggested that I open up to join and charge a franchise fee. It is true that collecting franchise fees can make money quickly, but there is no point in opening up the matchmaking industry to join, it is purely cutting leeks.

The most important thing in matchmaking is resources and trust, and they can't be solved by joining.

Now there are more catering and milk tea brands that are open to joining. Taking Bawang Chaji as an example, the reason why it can join is: first, the brand is large enough, second, the product is standardized, and third, the brand's materials and resources can provide business help and support for the store.

However, our resources and brands are limited to the local area, and without the local area, the brand has no influence in the field, and it has no value and role. Franchisees also face the challenge of resources and trust. If I can't provide value to others, but I charge them franchise fees, I will inevitably end up in more disputes and troubles.

I've also considered accepting financing. My original dream was to make this company bigger, just like Jiayuan and Zhenai.com.

At that time, I found an investor from a well-known investment institution. He took care of the younger generations to start a business, helped me analyze, and told me frankly: This project will inevitably not be favored by capital, because the capital has invested in Jiayuan and Zhenai.com, and history has proved that this project is not big. Now capital is more inclined to high-tech and new consumption. In short, in the end, it was concluded that capital would not invest in projects like ours.

Later, some bosses who had surplus funds and wanted to invest approached us and wanted to invest. But they didn't invest a lot of money, they didn't want a lot of shares, and I couldn't accept others interfering in my decision-making, so I refused.

Now our resources are mainly distributed in Leshan and Meishan. I've tried to expand to other cities, but it's difficult: first, the cost of traffic has gone up, and second, it's a matter of trust.

We started very early in Meishan and Leshan, and when Douyin was just emerging, we started, and the first matchmaker agency we brushed up at that time was us, who have been following us for so many years and know how we have developed along the way, and they have full trust in us. But the cost of trust is very high when moving into a new place, and it's very difficult for us to solve that.

For me, the hardest part of starting a business is overcoming my own shortcomings, such as laziness. Starting a business is more about cultivating yourself. Our company is now a start-up, and a lot of things depend on me, and if I am a little lazy, the company's performance will fall.

Entrepreneurship is actually very anxious, and all entrepreneurs are the same, anxious about traffic, anxious about income, and anxious about growth. My biggest concern now is how to get more traffic, more customers.

At present, my expectation for this company is that it is enough to be the first in the two cities of Meishan and Leshan.