OPW INTERVIEW -- Oct 18 -- I interviewed Paul Falzone, CEO/Founder of The Right One and Together Dating at The Matchmakers Conference last month. We were in New Jersey, with NYC as the backdrop. Paul has been busy acquiring and merging with companies and building International Dating Venture. (Full Disclosure: International Dating Ventures is a client of Courtland Brooks). - Mark Brooks
Paul can you tell us a little bit more about International Dating Ventures and the acquisitions you’re working on?
International Dating Ventures is a holding company that we established this year. We are aggressively acquiring companies. We just acquired LoveAccess.com, which will be changing its name to eLove.com. The reason we bought the online company was to show the online world that we can convert online leads at a large price point. Its worked out incredibly so we’re very fortunate so far to have LoveAccess to make our business models much more efficient.
We’re also expanding our footprint across the US. We just finished an acquisition with another offline service, increasing us by 11 locations. We’re in about 35 cities across the US now and by the end of the year we’re looking at being in about 50 cities across the US. My goal is to continue to make our footprint larger and take online leads and convert them to paying members in the offline space at probably 100 times the price point the online company can.
How are you expanding? What kind of companies are you focusing on?
We’re focusing on well run, efficient, small locations. 9 or 10 services in all different parts of the US. And I’m focusing on taking the matchmaking end of it and bringing our management teams in and making these companies much more profitable. And so by year end these people will be happy they joined part of our team. They will be reporting on our CRM systems. We have got the metrics of this industry down. We know exactly how many minutes it takes to convert an online lead to be an offline appointment. We know how many leads we need to bring in for a location to make that a profitable location. We know what multiples we need to use. It’s all mathematical equations and its all part of lead flow.
Everybody is talking about a recession in 2008 and thank goodness this is a very recession proof business and our cash flow has never been stronger.
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At last, someone giving CRM credit for creating business opportunities!
Would you be willing to tell us what vendor you use?
Posted by: Craig Klein | Oct 20, 2008 at 11:20 AM