With a strong background in the retail fashion industry, Steve Fox went on to be the creator and founder of the Steve Fox Social Club in the heart of what is undeniably home to the world's largest over-thirty singles population, New York City. Creating the most popular, upscale events for this unique market through monthly parties, each with a different venue and theme (with over 500 attendees at each party), have made these events the talk of the town.
Additionally, Steve designed and directed the now famous "Top 100 Parties", in which a carefully selected group of men and women, the best of the best, are invited to a spectacular dinner party.
Steve has been called upon as a guest and guest host of singles-themed television shows, and has been the subject of numerous articles (below). Most recently, the Steve Fox Social Club successfully launched its Florida branch with over 1,000 new members and growing. In confirmation of the tremendous potential of this market, Cunard Lines of luxury cruise ships, including the spectacular Queen Mary 2, has become a sponsor and will be hosting Steve Fox singles cruises.
A strong force in the rapidly growing singles business, Steve Fox Social Club Inc. is focused on being the best of the best, through details that make his members his best promoters.
This is just the beginning...
FOUNDED: 1994
MEMBERS: 10,264
EVENTS: 143
MARRIAGES: 88 (that we know of)
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Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make Me a Match
From "The Sun Post"
Thursday, April 8, 2004
Written by columnist John Warech
Some people say they meet marital prospects in grocery stores, coffee shops or at Barnes & Noble flipping through a dozen magazines. Others look for singles parties, and one way or another will come into contact with Steve Fox, the real "Mr. Right" when looking for love.
Fox, as the name would assume, is very slick. I've seen him at work. At lunch at Miami Juice one afternoon, Fox walked over to a table of four women, spotted the one single lady and got her number to add to his little black book - a singles database used to unite 30 year olds and up.
He has used his remarkable way with words to start a love connection business that would make Chuck Woolery proud. He starts with the same approach I saw at Miami Juice and does that almost everywhere he goes. Then, when the time is right he hosts a party. Last Tuesday, the time was right for Fox and nearly 300 single people who showed up to mingle at Nikki Marina in Hallandale Beach. There was drinking, and passed hors d'oeuvres and, for a Tuesday, the place was packed.
This is of course the first step for Fox, who turns large parties into...well, larger parties, and also intimate dinners where people are virtually forced to get acquainted. He also gets hired individually, by a number of businessmen looking to make a match.
Fox has been in the matchmaking business for almost 10 years. He began, of course, in New York City - home of Sex and the City, where age and beauty go hand in hand. He hit the bars up there, ran his successful program and, like many New Yorkers, knew he had to fly south for the winter. Crashing in Sunny Isles for the past few
months, Fox started from scratch and in a short time has his business up
and running.
The demand is definitely out there for singles events geared to the mature crowd, as many find it difficult to even meet potential life partners. Fox, who works with girlfriend, Kim Frietas, to bring the crowds together, is here to help.
Interested in going to Fox's next party? Email him at steve@stevefoxsocial.com.
WINNING HEARTS IN LOVE BUSINESS
Matchmaker sets up singles in fast lane
New York Daily News
WILLIAM SHERMAN DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Copyright Daily News, L.P.
Steve Fox is in the high-end local love business, and he's doing just great despite the draining recession and the pall of Sept. 11.
As one of the city's premier matchmakers, Fox has a computerized database of more than 8,500 single men and women in the metropolitan area, collated by age, profession and other characteristics, sometimes including height requisites.
"This is no lonely hearts club, but rather an exclusive service based in the city for people over 30, all very successful professionals, who have neither the time nor the patience to hang out at bars or whatever to play the dating game," he said.
"You'd be surprised how many people - good-looking with good careers - who haven't found the right person," said Fox, who was born in the Bronx but for many years has lived on the upper East Side.
He is single himself, a familiar figure at upscale restaurants, all with very large bars, where he spends several nights a week recruiting for his business with a soft sell that involves an unassuming pitch and a business card.
Late Wednesday, he was at Commissary, a restaurant with an elaborate circular bar at 1030 Third Ave. near 61st St.
"Hi. Can I have a moment of your time?" he said to three blond women sitting at the bar. They stopped talking, and he began his pitch.
"I throw parties where people meet, and perhaps you might be interested."
He got their attention, and the conversation went on for 10 minutes, with Fox gently interviewing. The women were from Finland, living and working in New York, and they took his cards.
"It works 90% of the time," said Fox, who is 57 but looks a decade younger.
Fox's girlfriend of two years, a striking blond named Kim Freitas, was there as well, sitting at a nearby table, and no, he did not meet her through his fee-for-service enterprise.
"A friend fixed me up. Isn't that ironic?" said Fox, a stockbroker by day, who started his business eight years ago after an acquaintance asked for his help in throwing a party.
"He invited 100 people and 19 showed up. I invited 20 people and 19 showed up, so that's how it began."
Fox's clientele is well-heeled, he said - lawyers, accountants, Garment Center executives, an orthopedist who tends to Olympic stars, a spa owner, a top amateur mountain climber, even several actors who despite their financial standing have been unable to find love or are divorced and looking.
In one division of his business, Fox charges $2,000 for five dates, all of whom he has extensively interviewed and selected out of the jigsaw puzzle of his clientele.
"I have a guy, 6-foot-4, and he doesn't want to go out with any woman unless she's 5-7," said Fox.
"I have another guy, 43, the head of a trucking company, who has offered me $50,000 to find him the right woman. He wants to get married, and the deal is I have to give him 10 phone numbers," Fox continued.
"He only wants girls between 30 and 40, and we're negotiating over the fee. I want a portion upfront monthly, but he only wants to pay if he marries them, so I gave him one number and he went on one date. It was just a taste," he said.
Gatherings are the mainstay of Fox's business, specifically his Top 100 parties, to which he invites 50 men and 50 women, all screened and interviewed.
"I take over a restaurant for the night, a very fine restaurant, and it's five hours, a cocktail party and hors d'oeuvres, then a gourmet dinner and dancing," he said. Those who attend typically pay $100 for their evening, and Fox takes his cut, with the rest going to the restaurant.
"Men are required to wear jackets, and women, appropriate attire," reads the invitation.
Every six weeks or so, Fox throws a larger, less exclusive party, often for 400 people. The business model is the essentially the same, although in these cases Fox charges a $20 entrance fee, which he keeps, and the singles spend at their discretion at the restaurant.
"The restaurant owner is happy because he gets a tremendous guaranteed business on a weekday, which might otherwise be slow for him, and I get the gate," Fox said.
He is in a highly competitive field. Other dating-service entrepreneurs advertise in magazines and newspapers, and a quick surf of the Internet reveals dozens of singles services of every imaginable sort.
But what makes Fox's business different, he said, is that he doesn't advertise. There is no Internet site, no mass mailings and no open parties.
In the summer, he works the Hamptons, meeting more people who know still more single people, all looking for partners.
His clients want the same thing: "Good-looking, someone attractive, someone with money, with a secure job and the right age."
As a sole proprietor with word of mouth as his only commercial, Fox does things the old-fashioned way.
"I think what I do fulfills a need, and I'm not embarrassed about it," he said.
Neither are many of his clients.
"Steve has quality control and a large qualified group," said Jocelyn Hander of Manhattan, who owns a legal recruiting firm and has attended 15 of Fox's exclusive parties.
"He knows everyone who walks through the door," she said, describing herself as single, having had several long-term relationships "but no marriage."
Hander has a degree in accounting, has run other businesses and spends summers in the Hamptons but somehow never got permanently hooked up.
At a Fox party in October, she met a man who struck her interest.
"He's a businessman and also an artist, and we went out for three months, and he fit what I wanted, but the relationship just didn't have legs, so it ended," she said.
Still, she's going to Fox's next Top 100 party, which will be held Tuesday at Bouterin on E. 59th St.
"I know it'll be low-key. I look forward to them and I want to get married, that seems to be the way to go, but it doesn't have to be that way. A full-time partner will do," said Hander.
Kevin Goldstein, 39, a former Wall Street bond trader and Internet entrepreneur, also will attend. He just returned from climbing Argentina's Mount Aconcagua, the tallest in the Western Hemisphere, and he's looking forward to the occasion.
"[Fox has] got great quality. I met one woman at one of his parties who I dated," Goldstein said. "She was in the fitness business, but then we realized that we didn't have an unusual connection, and it stopped."
Goldstein's never been married but has been receptive to marriage for years, he said. "Personally, I'm very selective, and a lot of people assume that a person my age who isn't married has commitment issues, but that's not true. It would be great to meet the right woman and build a life together."
He added that the events of Sept. 11 have served as a reminder to him and to others as "to what's important in life," but he doesn't think there's a big change in the singles scene.
"The party, for me, will be like a blind date. I'm not going with unreasonable expectations because if you expect to have your socks knocked off, you'll be disappointed," Goldstein said.
Gary Kaufman, 50, will be at the party as well. A man with a tough schedule - he does a reverse commute from his Park Ave. apartment to Princeton, N.J. - Kaufman said he has "a finite amount of time" to meet people.
He has never been married but has had several long-term relationships that, he said, "for some reason didn't work out."
"I'm looking forward to the party. I mean, Steve is very sensitive to people's needs," he said.
Rachel Cagner will go, too. At 27, she feels no desperation in being single.
"I'm in the prime of my life, and, oh, yeah, I want to get married, but I don't know when," she said.
A physical therapist who has lived in Manhattan for five years, Cagner said she met Fox at a gym.
"You'll definitely meet a great mix of people ... but even if you don't meet anyone, you'll eat well and you'll dance and you'll get a bang for your buck," she said.
Fox makes no promises to his clients.
"Out of well over 100 parties, I think a total of 30 marriages have resulted, a lot of relationships, some long-term, but only 30 marriages," he said.
"Funny thing is, I had two people - neither wanted to come to my party," he said. "She owned a cosmetics company, he's in the Garment Center, and I persuaded them both to come. ... That was two years ago, and they've been together ever since, and they did get married."
But what about Fox and his girlfriend Freitas, a fashion executive?
"Right now, I'm enjoying life," he said. "When this business gets bigger, we'll get married."