{"id":2146,"date":"2016-06-15T09:30:37","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T09:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ivy-international.eu\/nl\/?p=2146"},"modified":"2016-06-15T09:32:52","modified_gmt":"2016-06-15T09:32:52","slug":"steelin-hearts-inga-verbeeck-issuu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/steelin-hearts-inga-verbeeck-issuu\/","title":{"rendered":"Steelin’ Hearts with Inga Verbeeck – KCW Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

International Luxury Matchmaking is anything but a fool\u2019s sport. With clients willing to spend upwards of \u20ac250,000 to find their significant other, it takes nerves of steel to embroil one\u2019s self in the middle of the relationships of the rich and famous.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is fortuitous, therefore, that Inga Verbeeck, the founder of luxury matchmaking agency, Ivy International, has steel in her blood. Before helping the wealthy and successful to find love, she was the chief executive of her family\u2019s Antwerp steel trading business.<\/p>\n

But, according to Inga, the steel industry is not the place to meet eligible bachelors. \u201cThe different kinds of people you meet are, limited\u201d she explains. \u201cNo matter where you go, you keep bumping into the same people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inga was both married and divorced before she was 30. As a gracefully beautiful, tall blonde, she certainly doesn\u2019t seem to need the help of a matchmaking agency. Nevertheless, in her search to find the right man she became the regular client of a premium matchmaking agency. \u201cI travelled a lot,\u201d she tells me \u201cand I thought it was very hard to find interesting people or interesting dates so why not meet some interesting people in London?\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, Inga became so enamoured with the world of luxury matchmaking that she actually crossed the aisle and went from being a client to working for the agency.<\/p>\n

A little over a year ago, however, Inga left her job and set up a rival agency with a \u201cdifferent philosophy.\u201d \u201cI had views about how the business should grow, and how to give more value to clients\u201d Inga says, describing the split. \u201cI have a business background and a lot of people in matchmaking do not.\u201d<\/p>\n

With 22 members of staff and offices in Paris, Antwerp, Geneva, and now London (not to mention plans for 3 new offices in New York, Miami, and San Francisco), Ivy International is a very complex business.<\/p>\n

\u201cI chose this business because of
\nthe personal connections, and most importantly to help make people happy,\u201d Inga says, \u201cbut, at the same time it\u2019s a business and it has to be driven and proper structures and communication are the only way to keep a client truly happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The philosophy that sets Ivy apart is, as Inga explains: \u201cWe are not just an introduction agency. We are really a partner for their personal life.\u201d As well as offering a bespoke dating service, Ivy International also has a team of external consultants, including: dating coaches, psychologists, stylists and personal trainers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe help people throughout the process of meeting people,\u201d Inga says \u201csome people just need to have a refresher session with a dating coach to get comfortable with dating again,\u201d whereas others \u201creally need to look at their lives because they don\u2019t have the time to even meet someone let alone have a relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not just an introduction agency. We are really a partner for their personal life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an expression in Flemish,\u201d Inga tells me \u201cthere\u2019s a lid for every pot.\u201d Charmingly quaint as this romantic saying is, it belies the practicality at the heart of the matchmaking business.<\/p>\n

I ask Inga about the type of people who visit Ivy, and she tells me \u201ca lot of them don\u2019t know what they want, and if they do, they might not know what\u2019s best for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some people find the premise of \u2018luxury matchmaking\u2019 uncomfortable. I ask Inga candidly, isn\u2019t luxury matchmaking just a more discrete term for helping rich people meet similarly well off partners? \u201cNo, it\u2019s not, not at all,\u201d she says \u201crelationships are hard enough as they are, so when you have a very big social or financial gap things can be very complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a successful woman who has worked hard to obtain a certain level of life, it is hard to fall in love with someone that doesn\u2019t have the money to
\nallow that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEither the woman ends up paying for the man and that goes to hell,\u201d or the man ends up resenting the fact he can\u2019t provide the lifestyle his wife has become accustomed to.<\/p>\n

This strand of conversation inevitably turns towards the roles of men and women in relationships. Despite the fact that 21 of her 22 members of staff are women, Inga proudly declares: \u201cI\u2019m a very independent woman but I am not a feminist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know this is dangerous territory,\u201d she says, \u201cbut we have to be honest; men and women are different.\u201d Perhaps it is a consequence of the clientele that Inga caters for, but the romance at the centre of Ivy International is rather conservative.<\/p>\n

Using her own example, Inga explains: \u201cI\u2019m not going to cook for my husband every night, when I have the time, yeah sure, but otherwise he can cook.\u201d But \u201cat the same time I want to feel like a woman, and every female client we have has the same idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

The traditional, perhaps even twee, elements of Inga\u2019s philosophy are what make Ivy International so attractive to her clients. As Inga says, \u201cpeople come looking to make a commitment, and the assurance they get fro]]m us is that the person opposite them will want the exact same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Towards the end our interview, Inga asks me with a characteristically European, entrepreneurial forwardness about my own dating life. As a bashful, British gentleman my first instincts were, of course, to mumble the word \u201cno\u201d three or four times in a bid to change the subject. But the question really belies what makes Inga tick.<\/p>\n

She is an impressive businesswoman, a hopeless romantic, and, most of all, Inga Verbeeck is the type of woman who enjoys getting you to gossip about your love life.<\/p>\n

Written by: Henry Tobias Jones<\/p>\n

Article Featured in: KCW Today<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

International Luxury Matchmaking is anything but a fool\u2019s sport. With clients willing to spend upwards of \u20ac250,000 to find their significant other, it takes nerves of steel to embroil one\u2019s self in the middle of the relationships of the rich and famous. It is fortuitous, therefore, that Inga Verbeeck, the founder of luxury matchmaking agency, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":2157,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-nl"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2146"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2158,"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2146\/revisions\/2158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivyrelations.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}