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Comment by jayceedenton | Hacker News Reader

> dripping with the smug evils of a British-style class system

This smacks of a an entrepreneurial young chancer having a go. The business is founded on the hope that the smug evils of the British class system exist, rather than evidence of them.

Many startups are founded on the idea that there is huge profit to be made by targeting the rich. Sell 'high-end' services at crazy prices. The inflated price is one of the KSPs of the product as the exclusivity itself is what's on sale. The fact that these services exist doesn't really prove anything, other than that there is a perception of something there to exploit. Gray & Farrar looks like a website built by young business guys who have watched too much Made In Chelsea, and The Apprentice. The website is genuine, but yes it's a parody of the British class system, just not a knowing one.

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I thought you might be right, but the business seems to have been around for a while as a mother and daughter partnership.

https://www.spears500.com/adviser/4455/claire-sweetingham

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

All-in-all, toe-curling.

But my guess is that they only need 3 or 4 clients a year to run it as a sideline.

> But my guess is that they only need 3 or 4 clients a year to run it as a sideline.

I mean, keeping a website and limited company running for a year costs a lot less than the minimum £15k quoted in TFA. They could have had one client since they incorporated in 2009, and be in the black.

I wonder if the author is just being incredibly naive about the real business here.

I think they were just being playful.

It appears she ironically started the company after her husband left her and their 4 children and they were broke:

https://www.businessinsider.com/billionaires-millionaires-ma...

There is some good incidental description of the operation of matchmakers within a mercantile community in the Ming dynasty in 三遂平妖傳 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Sui_Quash_the_Demons... ). In the story, a girl's father, one of the most successful merchants in the area, visits some matchmakers (who seem to operate as a pair) and commissions them to find a husband for his daughter. He gives them money every time he sees them (initially, plus every time they visit his home to mention a candidate).

There was certainly a lot of money available if you could hold the job.

(It's a humorous episode in the story. The matchmakers are overjoyed to be commissioned to find a husband for a girl widely known to be young, beautiful, intelligent, and rich. They bring back offers from a string of A-list merchant scions, which leads to frustration because the father specifically wants to marry his daughter to someone very stupid.)

> This smacks of a an entrepreneurial young chancer having a go. The business is founded on the hope that the smug evils of the British class system exist, rather than evidence of them.

Reminds me of one of the ads that follows me around the internet, for something called SEI Club. It claims to be a matchmaking service for the creme de la creme, but seems to wear the entrepreneurial chancing even more on its sleeve. None of the we've been around for over 40 years / second generation family business stuff. Just pure aspiration: glamorous pictures of pretty, rich-looking people of the type they hope will use the service.

By the way, SEI, I've been happily married for over a decade, and middle-class at best. But thanks for financing my baby white noise app.

The Gray & Farrar won’t let the turnover & growth get in the way of ensuring real exclusivity. :)

https://companycheck.co.uk/company/OC346350/GRAY--FARRAR-INT...

They still list more than a million pounds in assets, 50k in cash, and have been around for 13 years. A bit much for a "side gig".

In June 2021 the managing director owed the company almost £1.1 million, up from £924k in 2020. Not sure how meaningful the assets are. (Update: I think these are unpaid distributions to the LLP members.)

£2.8 million in turnover in 2018 though, £2.1 million of that from outside the UK.

There's also a parent company (Hadleigh PVT Limited) that indirectly owns the business. And the parent company paid £192k in rental income to Gray & Farrar in 2018. It is all quite weird, e.g. in 2013: "strategic marketing and business promotion costs have been charged at arms length by a business wholly owned by one of the partners"

2016 accounts say the principal activity was matchingmaking services.

It's probably a way for ugly and insufferable rich people to feel better about themselves and their kids.

"I have noticed that your son, Phillip von Twattenheim the Fourth, is graying at the temples. Have you betrothed him yet?"

"I have not, but he has recently been accepted by the finest matchmakers in all of Britain, Gray and Farrar."

It doesn't actually have to solve the problem. It just has to make it look like the problem is being solved.

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