Asia's first online cosmetic and beauty retailer, looks.com, was launched on December 2 in Hong Kong,providing well-known international brands to career women especially.

"Today's young career women have increasing less time to actually visit stores. However, the demand is still there," said looks.com Managing Director Ian Smith, at a press conference.

"By removing the barriers of time and place, looks.com is able to offer greater convenience, choice and value," he said.

A survey finds out that women Internet users accounted for 42 percent of the total in 1998 and the percentage is expected to hit 51 percent in 2002.

In the meantime, the growth rate of women's purchase online is greater than that of men's, and 56 percent of persons frequenting health and wellness websites are women.

"We confidently expect looks.com to become the preferred medium for beauty purchases in Asia," said Smith, adding that his company has forged partnership with a number of websites including china.

com, hongkong.com and so on. Looks.com will initially carry 15 boutique brands from around

the world. The website is in Chinese and English at first, with Japanese and Korean to be added in 2000.