Would you pay €125,000 for love? This Belgian dating agency thinks you should
The Beatles famously sang that money can’t buy you love. But six decades on, one exclusive Belgian matchmaking agency is putting that theory to the test, with prices for their bespoke search services starting at well over €100,000.
This article is part of The Brussels Times’ dating series, which includes columns and interviews with experts, businesses and members of the public on all matters of the heart.
Born and bred in Antwerp, Inga Verbeeck, 47, first stepped into the world of matchmaking when her friends registered her at an agency in London for her birthday. She went on a couple of dates and liked the concept but thought she could do a better job herself.
In 2013, she launched Ivy Relations in her native Flanders – an exclusive matchmaking agency branded for “elite professionals”. She has since gone global, with branches across Europe, and stretching as far as New York, Hong Kong and Dubai.
Why the exclusive approach? “I don’t believe in in-betweens,” Verbeeck said in an interview with The Brussels Times.
The Belgian CEO, who previously worked in the steel industry, said she wanted to create a “high value” and “scalable” business.
“Dating apps can work for people, although it’s a bit of a jungle. But if you want to do matchmaking well, I don’t think there’s an in-between,” she explained.
Ivy Relations’ client base is roughly 80% male, Verbeeck said. The company has around 50 clients worldwide, ranging from 80 years old to tech entrepreneurs as young as 25. In Belgium, they currently have just two clients.
What sets Ivy Relations apart from other matchmaking agencies, she argues, is that her teams specialise in headhunting.
“Traditional agencies will have a pool of people, and they will make matches amongst them to the best of their abilities. What we do is quite different; each client is a project,” she said.
Clients are assigned a team of three to four people, who get to know them, their life, their expectations for the project and how much time they are willing to invest. From there, they design a framework of the kind of partner they want and need.
They scout people who match this framework and will put together a portfolio of 45 detailed profiles, with photos and a mood board of facts about them and their characteristics. This then leads to nine “introductions”. The process can take anywhere from three months to a year, depending on the client and their availability.
According to Verbeeck, the key is “to be able to source enough opportunities so that you can filter everything you want to filter to create the best potential matches.”