The reason why I initially dismissed the Contact app is that there's no support for contact groups. It also doesn't let me search by any field other that First Name / Last Name. So these guys would be lost among all my other contacts.

But writing this made me realize that I could just prefix their names with a tag - that would group them (D'oh! - why is it that I always look for complicated stuff when the obvious is in front of me). Low tech solution. On to that now.

Thanks!