Revolutionizing the concept of the modern escort industry, Kal Kingsley – the CEO at Smooci.com, aims at letting the modern users know about the emerging industry. With relevant experience in the escort industry, Kal explains that he has continually evolved as an individual by launching the escort industry.
Launching Smooci.com in 2017 from Bangkok, Kal established the norms of the escort directory to help the target audience know about it soon enough. With his relevant industry expertise, Kal helped Smooci.com to expand its horizons in other parts of Asia as well. Currently, in 2019, the founders at Smooci.com aim at launching the directory in Europe as well.
Embrace the inspiring journey of Kal with Mark as he explains the advent of the revolutionary journey. Know how you can make it big in the escort directory industry.
What Exactly Smooci is, A Booking Platform or Directory?
Smooci is a next-generation escort directory. Clients go to our website to make live searches, whilst escorts use our app to show their live availability and respond to bookings in real-time.
Smooci gives genuine clients and escorts a simple and more efficient platform, with more trust, safety, and support for both parties. Through our 24/7 bookings team and verifying reviews and feedback, it quickly allows us to mark genuine clients and escorts as safe and trustworthy, and block or place warnings on those who aren’t.
Can you tell us about yourself and what kind of work you did before starting this Escort Booking Platform – Smooci? Our background is in software and tech development. In 2016 we were working on a project for a group of Bangkok escort agencies. We built apps for their staff which allowed each escort to show their live availability and location, effectively making the agency more organized and giving the individual escorts more freedom, allowing them to control when and where they worked and choose which bookings they accepted and declined.
What made you start a business related to Escort Booking Services Off the back of that, we started researching and found there weren’t any similar products or services making escort bookings more efficient, easier, or safer, and most of the key platforms were basic notice boards or classified listings. We saw a lot of escorts using dating apps and networking sites in order to modernise the way the work, but such services offered them very little by way of support or protection.
How did you start smooci? In early 2017 we launched Smooci in Bangkok, and it grew very quickly, with a lot of demand to expand to other countries. In 2018 we began expanding to neighbouring countries in Asia, and in 2019 we started launching Smooci in Europe.
Have you ever faced any legal issues? We are aware that the new SESTA/FOSTA laws in the US are causing a lot of discussion around the world about how to implement effective anti-trafficking law, and we are doing our best to stay ahead of this and be in position to not only work within those laws, but also help to further prevent and tackle issues related to trafficking and escort safety in general.
As a general rule, before we launch in any country we will meet with local lawyers and get them to fully review our services and company set up, and work with them to tweak and customize our service to each region.
Do you consider this business competitive? And, if so, how do you deal with that? To be honest, the industry lacks genuine competition. Since the closure of Backpage/Cracker and the Craigslist ‘casual encounters’ pages, there seems to be so many new escort directories and escort listing sites, but just about every one we’ve come across is trying to cash in with a quick and basic site, spending more time trying to crack the SEO rather than create a genuinely practical and innovative product.
Good competition is healthy for any industry and its marketplaces, and this is an industry with lots of space and opportunity for more platforms which are willing to be innovative and tackle the serious issues and problems which are there for all to see.
How does smooci stand out from the rest and avoid having to compete with others? I think our background has been a big advantage. Having little to no experience of how the industry works 3 years ago, we had no preconceived ideas about what to do or how things should be.
Our initial introduction to the industry was by way of building a product to help a group of agencies. So we spent a lot of time studying their issues and catering a product to that. When we started taking Smooci more seriously we took in a lot of feedback from agencies, independents, and spoke to a lot of clients via forums and message boards, and as we grew bigger we have started working closer with lawyers, charities, and other organizations.
The main way we stand out is through being innovative, and genuinely trying to develop a product which caters to the needs of the industry, rather than one which is immediately focussed on profit and how to rank on google.
Innovation isn’t just about tech and gadgets, it’s also about attitude, and we feel that any platform which profits from connecting clients and escorts, needs to be doing as much as they can to ensure the safety of their users, not simply seeing their work as done once an escort posts her add, and a client clicks on it, but doing more to ensure both parties are kept safe and supported throughout the experience.
What if any agency or escort wanted to add their services in Smooci? How does it work? They can email us at contact@smooci.com and we can quickly get them started.
Independent escorts can use our app which we send out on request. Once they have the app they can quickly set up a profile and get it verified, and then they use the app to show their live availability and respond to live bookings in real time.
For agencies we set up a private dashboard, where they can create and manage their escort’s profiles and can add schedules or click escorts on/offline. Agencies get SMS and email updates to help manage and respond quickly to live booking requests.
The major selling point to agencies and independents is that we get a high percentage of genuine clients, with less chat and negotiation. Booking requests come in real-time with indicators to help decide whether a client is genuine and trustworthy, and only premium clients can send messages pre-booking.
Which Kind of Clients & Client’s deals you generally facing? We get a very mixed client base. We have worked hard to create indicators to limit fake and time-wasting clients, and by making a client verify each booking via SMS, it’s helped us to catch fake and dishonest clients quicker, and also highlight clients who are genuine and trustworthy.
For the clients, we have a system that helps us mark bookings as genuine and then allows clients to give us trusted feedback about their experience with a companion. This helps us verify ratings and comments with the community, giving clients more reliable and trusted information when selecting their date.
We are also excited about a new discount system which we are introducing in Asia this month (November 2019). This will see premium clients getting a 5-10% discount on bookings. We will be looking to introduce this in Europe early next year.
Have you ever encountered any conflicts with your clients and how did you manage to fix it? We always log client feedback and have open discussions on several forums and message boards, to try to improve the way Smooci works to fit the client’s needs. We haven’t had any major conflicts with regards to Smooci, the only slight obstacle has been with clients who view us as an agency.
As we can do more, and go further than a traditional directory, occasionally a client assumes we are an agency and contacts us to ask for specific details about an escort, or to complain about a booking that didn’t go as planned.
This is where the ratings and review system comes in; when a client does have a bad experience they get to share that with the community, and in the long run this helps the genuine escorts gain popularity and exposure and helps us to remove those who aren’t genuine.
How do you promote your business to attract new customers? What are the channels or mediums you use? and which one is your favorite? If you ask anyone how to build an escort site, top of their priorities will probably be SEO. While SEO is important, we have always worked on the philosophy that if you build a good product and try to avoid cutting corners or forcing SEO too hard, eventually you will gain the exposure you deserve.
We try to get involved with the client and escort communities as much as we can, and reach out to work with other people and sites who share our concept and values. SEO is important, but word of mouth and the quality of the product are still equally as important in the grander scheme of things, and the key is to build something that makes a difference.
What are your plans & goals for the future? This is just the beginning; escorting is so far behind other industries in terms of safety, tech, and general attitudes and we’re keen to help push for more change.
We want to keep creating better features to grow a safer and more efficient platform for genuine escorts and clients. We are also eager to work closely with key agencies and charities to tackle the wider issue while also pushing the conversation that sex work is work, and offering those in the industry more support, respect, and safety.
If you could give one piece of advice to those who are just starting, what would it be? Create something you can be proud of. There are a lot of taboo and unsympathetic attitudes surrounding the escort industry, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build something that can make a real positive impact and help change people’s lives.
In conclusion, is there anything else you would like to add? Sex workers are among the most vulnerable groups in the world. There are huge issues about trafficking, but there are also a vast majority of sex workers who do so of their own free will and many of those find the experience empowering, but are often forced to take unnecessary risks because of a lack of support.
By creating more modernized platforms for genuine clients and escorts to connect on, it can make the experience much safer, and at the same time start to tackle the wider issues such as trafficking, through monitoring, verifying, and warning systems.
With the ever-changing digital scenario, it is high time that players in the escort industry take advantage of modern trends & technology. By enlightening interested clients about the overall escort industry scenario in Asia & other parts of the world as well, Kal helped us graciously unravel the lucrative industry insights. We would like to thank Kal for sharing their inspirational journey with us.
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