Bright ideas
beauty and the bottom line
As online dating grows in popularity, elitism is paying off for one site where only the gorgeous need apply
words by Christopher Follett
BeautifulPeople.net, an online members’ club that introduces good-looking people to their peers, is a huge success in Denmark where it’s based, and global membership is expected to near the two million mark by the end of 2007.
“It’s more than an internet dating service for the young, successful and beautiful,” says Robert Hintze, the 30-year-old Dane who founded BeautifulPeople.net in 2002. “It’s an exclusive community for very special people, offering a range of member facilities and services. The purpose is to create relationships, private and professional, between people who stand out from the mass due to their attractive appearance and excellent personal qualities.”
BeautifulPeople.net sees itself as a tool to meet new people at parties, go to the cinema or special events, find a job or the right skiing holiday, track down a flat, sell a car, debate any issue and – of course – find a date.
“We’ve been informed of 25 couples who got married in Denmark thanks to BP,” says Hintze. But it’s not all about finding love. Members have also received offers from TV production companies and been head-hunted as models and actors, Hintze adds. He says over 40 BP members have been recruited for local Danish TV series and shows such as Big Brother, Paradise Hotel and Temptation Island, as well as for leading production companies Metronome and Nordisk Film, and top Danish advertising, music video and model bureaux, such as Scoop, Elite, 2pm, Allure and Scandinavian Models.
It may seem strange that egalitarian Scandinavia has produced such a blatantly elitist community, and understandably it has its critics. “Our concept has been controversial everywhere,” Hintze admits. “There are a lot of taboos about beauty. But BP doesn’t try to define beauty; what it does is to give an accurate representation of society’s ideal of beauty.”
Exclusivity is Hintze’s USP and it seems to be paying off. Today there are 25,000 Danish members and the club is expanding fast overseas, operating in a dozen countries at present. Abroad, the USA and UK are the most significant, with 25,000 and 11,000 members respectively. Last autumn saw BP’s launch in France, Canada and Australia; this year will see Japan, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa join the fold. Launch parties will be held in Paris in February and in Nice in the summer, and official BP parties are staged monthly at such Sterling destinations as Barcelona, Málaga, Berlin, London and Rome.
To join, just click into BeautifulPeople.net and fill in an online application form giving personal details and a photograph. Members of the opposite sex judge new uploaded applications during a marathon three-day rating process and give their verdict on applicants via an electronic form.
Not that the chances of being accepted are all that high. According to Hintze, there have been 100,000 applicants in Denmark alone, but only 22,000 have been granted membership. In Britain, only some 11,000 applicants out of 45,000 have made the grade. No mercy is shown to those whose looks and credentials don’t come up to scratch, but they can expect ‘friendly advice’ from the members taking part in the ballot process.
As Pernille, a blonde, single 24-year-old accountant and ardent BP member who has often taken part in the voting process, puts it: “Let’s face it, the most important thing is that the man is super-attractive; nothing less will do. And it helps of course if he’s well off, owns his own firm and has a yacht!”
But being rejected can seem brutal. “The rating process is nerve-wracking and it’s not funny being turned down, I can tell you,” says Jesper, a quiet, 32-year-old fitness centre trainer and IT man, whose shot at joining BP failed. “I’m going to get some really good professional photographs done, with the focus on my body – that should make me more sellable next time. It’s really important for me to make it into the BP set.”
It figures that, once they’ve passed selection, the kick members get from belonging to an elite club will make them more likely to keep paying the membership fees of €10 a month or €50 for a full year. By comparison, match.com the largest and perhaps most refined online dating service with around 15 million profiles charges the equivalent of €35 per month; and eHarmony, another major dating site, charges up to €44.
Of course, the internet dating market potential is huge. “Over 40 million people around the world net-date and there’s a reason for that,” says Danish journalist Erik Bork, author of Net-Dating – Love at First Sight. “Dating on the net solves the problem of how modern people find each other at a time when everyday life has become more hectic and community life has shrunk.”
As demand grows, sites aimed at a specific market will be the way forward for entrepreneurs entering a crowded field. Hintze is not competing with huge sites like match.com so much as cashing in on a niche they don’t cater for: “Match.com created the demand, but it is vast and people get tired of filtering through hundreds of unattractive profiles. With us you can easily locate attractive people and find your ideal match,” he says.
Analysts note more niche sites developing. Already in Denmark a whole forest of specialist net-dating sites has sprung up: ‘elite dating’ for sophisticates, ‘doctor dating’ for medicos, even ‘farmer dating’ for agricultural types.
According to Bork, dating portals in Denmark are generally chaotic, but BP is one of the few that really stands out – in design and ideas. A fact that has no doubt added to its success. With monthly turnover in a small market like Denmark at over €40,000, Switzerland’s UBS Bank has put BP’s value at DKK 1 billion (€135 million), Hintze claims, adding that he’s on the lookout for investors.
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