Brothas & Sistas Marriage Agency

[Chong]

Further to this topic that was raised on the "Rotten ChnLove Agencies" thread ...

At this point, this is just an idea floating around but I think that lots of us have great ideas to make what we're doing ( searching for a Chinese bride )... a lot easier !!!  

Let's play this idea out. You never know. In the future when we have all these Brothas living in China and looking for work, there may be an actual business opportunity.

No, it wouldn't be hard to start a business in China ... so long as our ladies are involved. As you know, it's much easier for a local to register the business. Here's ChnLove's business set-up ... they have a central office in Hong Kong ... and their main website represents local agencies. We can do the same. Establish a central office and each Brotha & wife can open up a local office in their respective cities. That way, our agency can have representation country-wide. A portion of profit from each office will go towards a pool for marketing & advertising. Our main website will feature our lady clients from all our locals offices ... just the same way that ChnLove does.

However, the main difference between us and ChnLove is our approach to the process.

1) Our own success stories are living proof. We'll be fully accessible to our foreign men clientele. We'll take them through the process from A to Z.

2) Our wives will deal with the local Chinese ladies regarding interviews, hiring local translators, photo shoots, starting English lessons etc etc ...

3) Our profiles will be very extensive. None of these general descriptions. The men & women clientele will each write their interests, hobbies, jobs, what they look for in a mate, provide a photo gallery etc etc .... so that each other can determine if there's any chemistry .... even before they start to write each other. Just like the North American dating sites where you have to provide more information than just a general description.

But, of course, "money" has to be made. I think that charging a foreign male client ... i.e. $ 3,000 one-time ... or monthly / 1/2 year memberships ... or $$$ scaled memberships ... is reasonable. Of course, the Chinese lady clientele wouldn't be charged ... by joining free ... we can get lots of profiles. The match-making sites here in North America charge up to $ 10,000 with just the promise of 10 profile matches and actual first dates.

How would you guys organize this business project ?

[Norb Smith]

Hiya Chong, think your idea has got lots of merit, just got to let the business man of this outfit better known as Vince figure this one out for us may take him a couple of days tho, and we do have Mike (CS) already implanted there somewhere...lol

Like to see what some of the others think of the idea also

[cHi]

"....I'm not only the President of the company, I'm also a client!"

[Mike Moore]

I'll take the Zhuhai/ZHongshan/Jiangmen satellite office!!  

The high fees for western  males would weed out the tire-kickers and give the ladies more confidence in the service. Aren't the women charged a fee to join with a Chnlove affiliate? It is as important to weed-out the female tire-kickers also, but I guess, being in country and paying attention to a woman's correspondence history (while making periodic customer service calls to our male clients to get their updates), we could eliminate the BS artists among them soon enough to develop a local reputation that would keep some of the female riff-raff away.

[Norb Smith]

Just have an idea that this could just snowball into something really great, as I was also reading the posts from the bad agency post., and there a lot of positive responses in there also, even from Vince.....lol

[RobertBfrom aust]

Good thought Chong , I am already playing matchmaker with some of Qings girlfriends and with approx 180 thousand plus very eligible ladies in her area could be a traffic jam in ChongQing

[Peter]

I am also asked to play matchmaker for some of my lady's friends so why not..

[Chong]

In theory, for this idea to work ...

1) would require a full-time computer tech person to replicate the ChnLove website ... but customize our own intensive features ... i.e. expanded profile info, photo gallery, 'paypal' set-up etc ...

2) Corporation set-up & committment of interested business partners / members to live in China and the committment of their wives to co-venture in their area / city.

3) time ... it would take a year to get this off the ground properly. Just to place local ads and then input ladies' data & pics onto the main website. You need at least 1,000 lady profiles minimum.

4) time ... regarding gathering a data of male clients. Our website would have to be at the forefront along with the other Asian dating websites when 'Google' / surfing.

5) The main website and business model need a 'small scale' trial & error run before even comteplating a world-wide launch.

[Mike Moore]

Further to this topic that was raised on the "Rotten ChnLove Agencies" thread ...
How would you guys organize this business project ?

Most of the male contact should be able to be done through the internet as most agencies do. However, if we go high end on prices, we may have to have a branch office or two in the states for personal contact with male clients. Some poor schlubs might have to be in the states, or it can rotate with guys circulating from China.

Women need to enroll in person in the branch offices, with frequent evaluation of their correspondence tactics. I don;t think it's unreasonable to have women pay for the kind of treatment we envision offering them.

Enlist hotels near the offices for good rates on client stays, other frills like that.

Men can check out profiles and our customer service guys can make suggestions, based on first hand knowledge of the women, and based on the compatibility profiles we require in the enrollment process. But before contact can be made they have to pay up for one level of service or another - silver - gold - platinum.

What comes first the women enlisting or the men??? Have brigade of video survey takers, or some well placed focus group evaluations of the idea somewhere near our planned branch office locations in China, showing dozens/hundreds of qualified women who agree they would enroll if the service was offered - a short individual video of them, some personal info pasted with her video on the website and the ball might be rolling. Those women who help us with this initial offering pay nothing for the service when be do begin to provide. We need to entice the cash without having to lay out a lot of cash up front, so we need something to show men - early signers for men might get a discount as well.

Web design is the key element, but all phases have to be real tight. Just random thoughts.....

[Chris]

A one time fee seems like a bad idea, and here's why. The labor cost of paying translators is directly proportional to the number of letters of average length received per day, not the number of clients. If you offer free translation services, you're going to have diminishing returns.

Here's the math behind it:

Let M represent the number of men enrolled, N the average number of new men enrolling per year,  W the number of women, T the number of translators needed, C the fixed cost of enrolling, and R is the average annual translator salary.

The total revenue taken in annually is NC.
If every man writes only one woman once per day and she responds, then there are 2M letters to translate per day.
Assuming that a translator can do 2 letters per hour, for an 8 hour shift you would need M/8 translators. So that's an annual cost of MR/8. (Let's ignore the fact that M changes for the sake of simplicity.)
HOWEVER, with free "emfs" most guys would communicate with multiple women until they settled on one. So realistically the number of letters would be closer to 8M. The annual translator cost would be MR/2.

So you have NC - MR/2 to cover annual operating expenses. Since C is fixed, N has to grow every year to cover the increased growth from the previous year. Granted, M will decrease some as people get married, drop out, etc. But the revenue stream isn't stable. Granted, there are a LOT of assumptions in this analysis, but I think the logic holds. And yes, I'm a math geek.

(NB: interesting that W never came into play.)

I'm beginning to understand why they charge for emfs. I think there should probably be several tiers of membership pricing levels. At the basic (free?) level, you can browse around, and maybe get a few free translations a month of letters of limited length. At mid-level, you get full scale translation services, no limit on length or number of letters. The best plan gives you webcam access, help with visas, maybe tours, that sort of thing.

One thing I'm not sure about is how (much) to pay the agencies, assuming the head office takes in all the money. If a handful of agencies are doing most of the business, how are funds allocated to reflect that? Maybe a fixed amount with bonuses per 100 translations?

[David]

Offer technical help for setting up Skype, MSN, QQ, webcams, help with cell phone issues etc.  I think this is a good idea actually.

Big Dave

[Mike Moore]

Should a premium be paid to initiate contact with a select group of english-speaking women?

Damn, Chris! I'm stumbling through an attempt to put together a presentation for a meeting on May1 with a major investment house - hoping to get funds for a start-up cellular company in an exotic location. I should have enlisted your services - sounds like your a math prodigy!

[Chong]

No !

Mike ... the guy you should be talking to is ... Carl from Minnesota. he's an expert in start-up phone companies.

[Hajo]

I like the idea. Ronan and I could do the IT things    
What do you think Ronan?

Ok, suitecases are packed. Show me the way to my office.  :twisted:

[Paul Todd]

I'll be moving to Baoding in Oct 09. I will run the idea past my lady. She already has a successful biz there so she might have some useful input. Good idea, after all the competition is nothing to worry about!