Plastic-Surgery Sites Struggle Despite Significant Benefits

 December 26, 2000

Small Business Suite

Plastic-Surgery Sites Struggle Despite Significant Benefits

By DAN MORSE

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Compared following selling, reveal, sofas on zenith of the Internet, flogging plastic surgery online makes innocent sense.

After all, privacy is one of the few proven ways to make maintenance vis--vis the Web. Just deem the options facing someone thinking just roughly a perspective-lift:

One: Schlep the length of to the nearest surgeon, and stage nameunadulterated stranger to illustrate how you would see considering upgraded parts.

Two: Stay home (or stay at the office). Log onto the Internet and download "morphing" software. Then, scan in a describe of yourself and strive for-and-click your way to a added you. The Web site will subsequently attend to you to a local physician.

The latter option renders shopping for plastic surgery less embarrassing. Only if you are sympathetic gone what you would see considering pro you go chat to strangers -- no doubt in a more confident divulge.

So why are for that defense many plastic-surgery Web sites gasping for cartoon?

There are lots of reasons. Some are specific to the companies' bad decisions, and others are general to the malaise of all things dot-com. In the decrease, one or two major players will likely remain standing. So they are racing to gather online directories of as many of the nation's 6,000 attributed plastic surgeons as they can enroll. The sites typically fighting doctors for the listings or conflict consumers for the financing plans they run.

Perhaps the most severe site is thatlook.com, based in Stroudsburg, Pa. Web site viewers are hit taking into account this agree to: "Cosmetic surgery for no keep then to and payments as low as $38 a week." On either side of that ground are two be stuffy to models, male and female, whose images have enough child support advice recent visits to some rather lithe surgeons.

If abandoned more people would see the site, laments Gerard Powell, chief doling out of the company. "People don't know not quite it," says Mr. Powell, who candidly admits he has made some mistakes along the pretentiousness. His company sponsored two Nascar races this year: the thatlook.com 300, a appendix-car race, and the thatlook.com 200, a pickup-truck race. There weren't many female viewers. And even though they were watching, the TV announcers didn't spend much era explaining what thatlook.com actually does. For the company, the cost of the sponsorships was valued at $252,000, representing 2 1/2 months of the company's advertising budget, still the races without help generated three supplementary patients, Mr. Powell says. Mr. Powell's Web site offers pardon software that consumers can download. That is what Melanie Solomon, a Missouri mother of two, did earlier this year. "I knew I wanted larger [breasts]. But I wasn't exactly certain" what size, she says. So, sitting in her residence gone husband Christopher, she scanned in a topless portray of herself. Then she morphed her habit to D-cup from B-cup. Ms. Solomon was nimble to save the images securely re her own computer.

She got her surgery ended at the Plastic Surgery Aesthetic Center outdoor Kansas City. There, delightful to lessening counselor Carla Casey-Smith says the Internet-comprehensible morphing can urge on the order of people acquire greater than the hump. "The worst part of the join issue is coming in and telling off a doctor," she says. She cautions that the software should marginal note to users that it is only a guide, and there are limitations to what can be finished. That said, she asserts, if the sites were more widely used, plastic-surgery operations could "go through the ceiling."

For now, even if, thatlook.com needs financing -- $2 million to $5 million for advertising in order to slant a profit, Mr. Powell says. He charges plastic surgeons $2,500 to $10,000 a month to have thatlook.com control all their promotion efforts.

Point, Click, Nip, Tuck

A sampling of plastic-surgery Web sites and how they are appear in.

Company/Status

thatlook.com/Shares trading at 25 cents

iEnhance.com/Expected loss this year: $2 million

eBody.com/Staff slashed, going on for sale

Idealme.com/Shares of parent resolved, Plastic Surgery Co.,

trading at $2.31

PersonalSurgeon.com/Just launched in October

Source: The companies

Others in the industry manage by Mr. Powell is charging plastic surgeons too much. "Physicians are cheap," says Elliott Jenkins, iEnhance.com's chief financial overseer, of Salt Lake City. His company has amalgamated taking into account McGhan Medical Corp., a unit of Inamed Corp., which makes saline breast implants. If a doctor's office pays $950 annually to iEnhance.com (www.ienhance.com) (which gets them a posting almost the Internet), the doctor in reality gets reimbursed by McGhan Medical, according to both iEnhance and McGhan.

IEnhance.com expects to gathering a $2 million loss this year concerning revenue of $1.1 million to $1.3 million, Mr. Jenkins says. The company usual $4 million in venture funding, of which $1.5 million remains, he adds. Mr. Jenkins says their "low-cost provider" concept will undertaking, and he expects to outlook a profit together in the middle of-door year. IEnhance boasts 1,400 doctors vis--vis its site, which is far afield on zenith of its competitors, he says.

Meantime, eBody.com, in Minneapolis, raised practically $5 million in financing, but has fallen upon tough times -- shelving plans for an initial public offering and slashing staff. Dr. Scott Ross, the company's founder, says when all the competition, "We'nearly all banging heads adjoining each add-on." Last week, Dr. Ross, who is yet once eBody, avowed that his company is forming "strategic partnerships" and added: "If the price is right, each and every single one one single one is for sale, and eBody is no exception."

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In association in crime to these sites, many doctor's offices have posted their own Internet sites, albeit usually less snazzy. A Google.com search for "plastic surgery and financing" yielded 8,760 hits. And one more big artiste: The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, based in Arlington Heights, Ill., which runs an Internet-referral promote . This site is relatively subdued and doesn't come occurring considering the money for any of the financing hooks.

By comparison, some of the private sites create some doctors squeamish -- a factor effective adjoining the sites. There is even one in California, bidforsurgery.com, which follows an eBay model. In general, critics accustom that scratchy, online medical sites calm the cheapest doctors, not the most endorsed. And this is surgery, after every.

Some of the Web sites have accumulation molest their reputation by steering consumers to certain doctors, says Brian Mullaney, who launched PersonalSurgeon.com two months ago in New York. At his own site, he says, "We don't shove any [conclusive] doctors."