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Beauty sites on the Internet are attracting plenty of attention
10/20/99
Cosmetics online: You can't touch them, smell them or try them on. But then, if you live in the middle of Big Bend, or simply can't get out to shop, clicking for lipstick, perfume and blush may be just the way to go. In the past few months, the Web has virtually exploded with new and revamped beauty sites. Women's Wear Daily recently counted more than 50.
Two huge new drugstore sites -- Planetrx.com and Drugstore.com -- sell popular brands such as Revlon, Cover Girl and Biorč. But the biggest growth is in boutique sites such as Ibeauty.com, Eve.com and Beautyscene.com that specialize in smaller, prestige lines typically found only in high-end stores such as Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue.
Beauty sites do more than just sell. Ibeauty.com, now the exclusive online sponsor of 7th on Sixth Fashion Week, offers complete videos of several New York runway shows, including Anna Sui, Bill Blass and BCBG. Beautyscene.com
recently lured Elle beauty editor Jean Godfrey-June to provide tips and fashion coverage.
At Beautybuzz.com, the Lookalikes section lists inexpensive "copycat" alternatives to higher-priced products. And Eve.com has a Test Drive feature where women with different hair and coloring try out various products and give their reactions. Beautycafe.com, a site started by Lisa Slavik of Allen, specializes in small, hard-to-find lines of fragrances and body products.
Many leading brands also have their own sites, including Clinique, Aveda, The Body Shop, Bobbi Brown, Mary Kay, Avon and Origins. Typically, they offer product information and sources. Many also are taking advantage of the Web's interactive element, offering games and asking for customers' feedback. To launch its site in September, Maybelline had a contest to choose five women who would spend a year "living" online, sharing their lives through journal entries and photos on Maybelline.com.
Sales are, for now, a fraction of the estimated $25 billion beauty market.
Overall online beauty sales were estimated to be about $15 million in 1998, Women's Wear Daily reported in April. Beauty.com alone is targeting $25 million in retail sales for 2000. And other sites are projecting sales from $500,000 to $20 million each.
In an amusing twist, sites are using hip, high-profile (and expensive) ads in print magazines to lure readers to the Web.
Eve.com
had ads in Glamour, Vogue and Cosmopolitan that showed a bright blue butterfly and matching Benefit eye shadow or a black and pink tropical fish with a Lorac lipstick. In the November Jane, an ad for Procter & Gamble's new Reflect.com features a hip, young Asian model and an opaque overlay page touting the site's creativity with a capital C. A two-page spread in a September issue of WWD had a black and white scene with the White House "pinked in" with lip color -- the advertiser: Gloss.com.
Gloss.com, which launched Sept. 30, is one of the newest beauty addresses on the World Wide Web.
The site is the brainchild of two former executives with Bath and Body Works. Gloss.com's founder and chief executive, Sarah Kugelman, 35, says she came up with the idea four years ago. When she made a presentation about the huge retailing potential of an online beauty and bath products site to the president of Bath and Beauty Works, she says she was told, "It's not important."
But Ms. Kugelman didn't lose her vision. Through a move to New York and a stint in Banana Republic's growing fragrance/home department, she worked out a business plan along with another former B&BW exec, Deanna Kangas, 33, who is Gloss.com's co-founder and vice president of marketing.
"It sat in a drawer for two or three years," Ms. Kugelman says, and then at a dinner party in January a banker heard her talking about The Plan. Within six weeks, that banker had snagged $4.75 million to launch Gloss.com. Recently, the site has gone through its second round of funding, bringing in $20 million.
One of the problems involved in securing funding, however, was that "men didn't understand the impulse concept around cosmetics," Ms. Kugelman says. "When we started talking about it, they'd glaze over. I had to tell them: More women I know use lipstick than read books."
Gloss.com, like many other beauty Web sites, relies heavily on innovative, smaller cosmetic lines, such as Philosophy, Tony & Tina, Peter Thomas Roth and Bloom.
Cristina Carlino, Philosophy's founder, says that a presence on the Web, both through its own site and others, has given her company exposure in parts of the country where the products aren't available in stores.
Ms. Carlino also acknowledges the pros and cons of online selling. "You reach a more diverse audience through the Internet, people that would not patronize the upscale department and specialty stores that we sell to will know us through our Web site. You have much more control over image . . . also, there's sheer convenience -- a customer may purchase products any time of the day or night."
On the other hand, "when you are a cosmetic line, you rely heavily on customer response to the aesthetics of your particular line . . . you may lose those people who need to touch, smell, feel, see and test beauty products themselves."
Linda Crosson, Amy Berlin, The San Francisco Examiner
and Women's Wear Daily contributed to this report.
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