Maezawa from the President’s Office here.
Thank you for your question.
Before the Frain program was introduced, there was a friend-referral program. We offered a ¥5,000–¥10,000 referral bonus for introducing a friend, and people introduced their friends quite normally, even if they weren’t involved in the nightlife industry.
I don’t know exactly how they brought it up, but apparently some people do end up having those kinds of conversations with their friends.
With the Frain program, there’s also the advantage that, unlike a one-time friend referral, you continue receiving rewards the more often your friend goes on dates.
In fact, it’s basically like an affiliate program, so I feel you could bring it up without revealing that you were involved yourself.
By the way, under the old friend-referral program, people often told their friends something like, “I’m actually Dating Type C, but I registered as Type A because I only do dinner dates.”
So I sometimes wonder whether, as in the situation described in this question, they simply felt they couldn’t tell their friends the full truth.
I’m Kazu, a male member.
It seems there are women who have friends they can talk to about papa-katsu (compensated dating in Japan).
One of the women I’m seeing once introduced me during a date to a longtime friend of hers who’s a real older-man magnet. (I’d already confirmed that her friend wasn’t my type.) Since she introduced us, I assume she’d told that friend that I was someone she met through Universe.
Another woman I met through Universe said she joined after hearing about it from someone at work. They’d been talking at the office about how to get by after their salaries were cut because of COVID, and her coworker told her about Universe.
Neither of them worked in the nightlife industry.
