Love is in the air for Coco Moon
The boss of Newcastle 'introductions business' Coco Moon has told Insider of her ambitious plans to be operational across the UK within five years this Valentine's Day.
The company already has clients in the North from York to Alnwick, Northumberland, but by the end of this year, Sharon Kell is expanding her service from the Midlands to Edinburgh, covering half of the UK.
The company is about to embark on a marketing campaign to promote its service, which specialises in finding romance for time-poor business people, to an extended audience.
By 2016, Kell says the company will have a presence throughout the whole of the UK, including London.
She said: “Demand outside of the region is there and we are in the process of branching out geographically so we will be able to reach out to more members.
“People are prepared to travel within a reasonable distance to meet the ideal person, which allows us to grow the business but also benefits our existing members.”
Coco Moon’s approach is meticulous and time-consuming, with Kell or one of her representatives insisting on a meeting every single potential applicant face-to-face to understand what their relationship priorities are and what they expect from the service.
The company also uses its human metrics system – similar to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) - to help clients find the right person and understand their own motivations.
Kell said: “Most business people are comfortable with MBTI to measure how and why people interact and make decisions - they’re familiar with using it to assess how people behave at work, their style of management, how they perform in a team.”
Coco Moon was launched in 2008 and membership has grown 300 per cent a year since then, despite a difficult economic climate.
Kell said: “We launched in a recession so we’ve never known anything different. Nothing could have prepared us for the take-up, which shows that people really do prioritise finding the right person.
“There is an increase in the amount of people spending a lot of time at work and they don’t get into a relationship until they are older. Sometimes people’s relationships have ended and they don’t have the social network to meet people outside of work. It can be difficult if you are career-minded to meet someone out of that environment.”
