TIME: Shopping the Net

		JULY 1998
Shopping the Net By MIRIAM HERSCHLAG here are lots of great reasons to shop on the Web. You can: --Order items that are unusual or unavailable locally. --Sometimes save money, since doing business online can mean lower overhead for the retailer. --Shop renowned retailers from all over the world, without getting on a plane. --Shop in your underwear. But if the promise of shopping on the world wide web is huge, the frustration can be equally enormous. Web shopping can be glacially slow, and the sites difficult to navigate. A search that gobbles up your time gets costly and takes all the joy out of web shopping. The first remedy is to make sure your hardware is up to the task. If you're being tortured by the "World Wide Wait," consider getting a 56 kps modem. Web pages pop up much more briskly than with the 28.8 kps modems popular until about a year ago. Moreover, even though Internet use is growing faster in Asia than anywhere else on the globe, most cybersellers are U.S.-based companies targeting U.S. and Canadian consumers. All too often upon finding a tantalizing site, you soon (but not soon enough) learn they won't deliver outside the U.S. But don't despair. Not all Web marketers are based outside the region, and many that are ship overseas. With the Internet's dizzying rate of change, it's a good idea to keep checking sites that interest you in case they start long distance delivery. A leading U.S. toy site, eToys, promises to offer international service "later in 1998." The price of delivery is a critical part of figuring out whether an online purchase is worthwhile. While geography is no barrier to wandering the virtual marketplace, long distances can make it expensive to deliver the goods. Many sites provide charts showing prices for different weights and destinations. The well-known delivery services they use are particularly expensive when the item is cheap. Says Lisa Fraser of Once Upon a Breeze, an Oregon kite shop (www.webcom.com/~mrkites): "If somebody wants a $25 kite and they find they have to pay up to $85 to get it, they're just gonna forget about it." Fraser notes, however, that her unstructured parafoil kites fold up for cheaper shipping. It may be worth a steep delivery charge, however, on an item that is unique. It doesn't make sense to buy a Barbie Doll from New York's famous toy store, FAO Schwarz (www.faoschwarz.com) if it's available locally. A 40% charge tacked on international orders turns the $50 item into a $70 one. But if you simply must have all five Spice Girl dolls (yes, even Ginger) at $124.95, the additional $49.98 charged by FAO Schwarz may not deter you. The typical shopping site provides an electronic catalogue with product photos and descriptions, and an order form that allows credit card purchases. There is still much room for improvement in the instructions for overseas ordering. One common problem is the insistence that customers fill in a U.S. zip code. Leaving it blank is liable to get you booted out of the ordering section. Try putting in XXXX, and if that fails, exit the site. It's not geared for international orders. In some cases, overseas shoppers can't order through the website but only via e-mail or phone. Those options are also available for shoppers wary of forking over their credit card information to a website. Such worried souls should be aware, however, that the encryption software designed to safeguard their credit card information has an excellent track record. Experts maintain that it's riskier to hand your card over to a maitre d' in a restaurant than to pay online. "The software and hardware needed to crack the typically long coding sequences are so expensive it would be impractical," says Tony Bonham, marketing director at Oracle Systems, Hong Kong. Cyberconsumers tend to know what they want before logging on. And most of them comparison-shop. The newest tool for navigating the ocean of web stores allows shoppers to search a particular product across many sites and compare prices. One place to find that service, www.webmarket.com, also offers independent evaluations of shopping sites. On the following pages is a sampler of sites that should give you an idea of the range of e-shopping possibilities. THE BIG TOYBOX Remember Tom Hanks dancing on the giant keyboard in the movie Big? That was at FAO Schwarz, the New York store with a reputation for classy, upscale playthings. The offerings on the retailer's website (www.faoschwarz.com) include some items not available in Asia and a heavy dose of Americana. Among the choices: G.I. Joe, the all-American foot soldier, in space garb ($100); dolls based on vintage U.S. favorites like Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly and the Little Rascals for $100 and more; and high-end learning toys, including Chaos: World of Motion, an "innovative track-based kinetic construction system"--a post-modern erector set--for $140. Overseas shipping charges, rather than being determined by weight, are illogically set at 40% of the toy's price. INSTANT ANTIQUITIES Amidst all the unknowns and newcomers peddling wares on the Web, the more familiar and trusted names tend to stand out like ports in a storm. The Gift & Book Shop of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, metmuseum.netcart.com, is a good example. Most of the gift items are inspired by pieces in the Met's collection or those of other museums. They include a small bronze Egyptian cat, a copy of an ancient Egyptian original, for $22; note cards picturing Chinese masterpieces, $15.95; and the Herakles Necklace, from fourth century B.C. Greece in 24 karat gold electroplate (see photo) for $40. The site also offers a CD-ROM called "Making Music" that allows children to "paint a tune." CYBER CELLARS There you are stranded in Katmandu, waiting for the weather to clear so your team can scale Mount Everest. The local Sherpa market may not carry your accustomed Cotes du Rhone, but--assuming you can access the Web--Virtual Vineyards, www.virtualvin.com, can deliver the right vintage as fast as international shipping permits. Specializing in Californian wines, Virtual Vinyard proprietor Peter Granoff rates each product on "Peter's Tasting Chart." The 1995 Pinot Noir from Marimar Torres Winery in Sonoma, Calif., for instance, is recommended as "an undiscovered gem" at $25. The 1996 Sauvignon Blanc from Napa Valley's Joseph Phelps Vineyards, is described as crisp, light and priced at $12. For a wider selection of French wines, try Vintime, www.vintime.com. VIRTUAL GALLERIES Artists are banking on the Web to bring them new patrons. Individual artists are posting their own sites or banding together to form group shows in cyberspace. At prices generally ranging from $500 to $1,000 Artnet (www.artnet.com) sells the work of 60 artists, including Hok Ming Law. The 75 year old master's "New Bambooist" paintings, with their graceful tigers (see photo) and vivid peacocks have graced the walls of Hong Kong's City Hall. Meanwhile, James Whitlow Delano, a Tokyo-based photographer of everyday life in Asian locales, recently launched a site (club.infopepper.or.jp/~james.delano) to sell his work. The site provides a sampler of images, small for easy loading, accompanied by contact information. JOCKS ONLINE If you take sports seriously, you won't settle for just any gear. There are a number of sites where you can get precisely the right racket, helmet or sports shoe. Two major sporting addresses are www.rei.com, and www.sportssuper.com. But for golf and only golf, a good bet is International Golf Outlet at www.igogolf.com. Steve Feuerstein, a Hong Kong golf promoter and the president of Sports International Ltd., warns that the site's massive selection might overwhelm a novice. "This is really for someone who knows the game," he says. Feurstein estimates the site's prices are 15% to 20% lower than local retailers, before shipping. WEB-BASED BONEYARD The Web is an outstanding marketplace for much that is rare, old or unusual, allowing scattered collectors to chat about their passions and expand their stashes. There are sites selling or auctioning stamps, coins, snuff bottles, Batman memorabilia, vintage cameras and telescope parts. One that has international delivery and allows secure online transactions is Stones & Bones (www.stonesbones.com). This site claims to offer an assortment of "museum quality fossils and mineral specimens" costing from $10 to $5,000. Look here if you seek meteorites, bear skulls or Jurassic-age ammonites. FOR OLD MEDIA ENTHUSIASTS Book lovers, that is. There are numerous booksellers on the Web,including the U.S.-based www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com. Standard airmail delivery to Asia takes two to three weeks. But in addition to the well known U.S. sites, there are interesting specialized distributors. Cantonese readers, for example, can find Chinese literature and translations at Chinese Books Cyberstore--www.chinesebooks.net. The site offers a particularly wide selection of romance novels. Top sellers include a translation of The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, chronicling the last months of French magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby. JUST YOUR CUP OF TEA? If it's hard for you to distinguish among the 16 teas at your supermarket, don't shop for tea on the internet. But if you know the difference between Tieguanyin and Phoenix Bird oolong--or would like to--you will enjoy Holy Mountain Trading Company, www.holymtn.com. The site offers hundreds of rare and exotic teas, from Chinese and Japanese green, to jasmine, oolong, black and white. It also carries a breathtaking selection of teapots. A bonus: tea-making guidance and history and stories related to the ancient culture of tea-drinking. FOR THE CRAFTY AND CURIOUS Couldn't get to Bali last weekend? Tibet? Nepal? Got there but didn't have enough room in your luggage to cart back curios? Order them online. Tibetan and Nepalese gifts are to be found at Tibet/ Nepal Imports, www.twotone.net/tibet. Ordering is via low-tech fax or phone, and they're not set up to accept credit cards, but they do ship internationally from their base in California. For Balinese crafts try Pacific Rim International at www.pri.net. Ignoring just how cheap the items would be if you were on the ground buying them, the prices are reasonable. Masks are from $60 to $80. A nice touch is Web-head Josh Sklar's personal stories about finding the items in their native environment.
time-webmaster@pathfinder.com

JULY 1998

Shopping the Net

By MIRIAM HERSCHLAG

here are lots of great reasons to shop on the Web. You can:

--Order items that are unusual or unavailable locally.

--Sometimes save money, since doing business online can mean lower overhead for the retailer.

--Shop renowned retailers from all over the world, without getting on a plane.

--Shop in your underwear.

But if the promise of shopping on the world wide web is huge, the frustration can be equally enormous. Web shopping can be glacially slow, and the sites difficult to navigate. A search that gobbles up your time gets costly and takes all the joy out of web shopping. The first remedy is to make sure your hardware is up to the task. If you're being tortured by the "World Wide Wait," consider getting a 56 kps modem. Web pages pop up much more briskly than with the 28.8 kps modems popular until about a year ago.

Moreover, even though Internet use is growing faster in Asia than anywhere else on the globe, most cybersellers are U.S.-based companies targeting U.S. and Canadian consumers. All too often upon finding a tantalizing site, you soon (but not soon enough) learn they won't deliver outside the U.S. But don't despair. Not all Web marketers are based outside the region, and many that are ship overseas.

With the Internet's dizzying rate of change, it's a good idea to keep checking sites that interest you in case they start long distance delivery. A leading U.S. toy site, eToys, promises to offer international service "later in 1998."

The price of delivery is a critical part of figuring out whether an online purchase is worthwhile. While geography is no barrier to wandering the virtual marketplace, long distances can make it expensive to deliver the goods. Many sites provide charts showing prices for different weights and destinations. The well-known delivery services they use are particularly expensive when the item is cheap. Says Lisa Fraser of Once Upon a Breeze, an Oregon kite shop (www.webcom.com/~mrkites): "If somebody wants a $25 kite and they find they have to pay up to $85 to get it, they're just gonna forget about it." Fraser notes, however, that her unstructured parafoil kites fold up for cheaper shipping.

It may be worth a steep delivery charge, however, on an item that is unique. It doesn't make sense to buy a Barbie Doll from New York's famous toy store, FAO Schwarz (www.faoschwarz.com) if it's available locally. A 40% charge tacked on international orders turns the $50 item into a $70 one. But if you simply must have all five Spice Girl dolls (yes, even Ginger) at $124.95, the additional $49.98 charged by FAO Schwarz may not deter you.

The typical shopping site provides an electronic catalogue with product photos and descriptions, and an order form that allows credit card purchases. There is still much room for improvement in the instructions for overseas ordering. One common problem is the insistence that customers fill in a U.S. zip code. Leaving it blank is liable to get you booted out of the ordering section. Try putting in XXXX, and if that fails, exit the site. It's not geared for international orders.

In some cases, overseas shoppers can't order through the website but only via e-mail or phone. Those options are also available for shoppers wary of forking over their credit card information to a website.

Such worried souls should be aware, however, that the encryption software designed to safeguard their credit card information has an excellent track record. Experts maintain that it's riskier to hand your card over to a maitre d' in a restaurant than to pay online. "The software and hardware needed to crack the typically long coding sequences are so expensive it would be impractical," says Tony Bonham, marketing director at Oracle Systems, Hong Kong.

Cyberconsumers tend to know what they want before logging on. And most of them comparison-shop. The newest tool for navigating the ocean of web stores allows shoppers to search a particular product across many sites and compare prices. One place to find that service, www.webmarket.com, also offers independent evaluations of shopping sites.

On the following pages is a sampler of sites that should give you an idea of the range of e-shopping possibilities.

THE BIG TOYBOX
Remember Tom Hanks dancing on the giant keyboard in the movie Big? That was at FAO Schwarz, the New York store with a reputation for classy, upscale playthings. The offerings on the retailer's website (www.faoschwarz.com) include some items not available in Asia and a heavy dose of Americana. Among the choices: G.I. Joe, the all-American foot soldier, in space garb ($100); dolls based on vintage U.S. favorites like Lucille Ball, Gene Kelly and the Little Rascals for $100 and more; and high-end learning toys, including Chaos: World of Motion, an "innovative track-based kinetic construction system"--a post-modern erector set--for $140. Overseas shipping charges, rather than being determined by weight, are illogically set at 40% of the toy's price.

INSTANT ANTIQUITIES
Amidst all the unknowns and newcomers peddling wares on the Web, the more familiar and trusted names tend to stand out like ports in a storm. The Gift & Book Shop of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, metmuseum.netcart.com, is a good example. Most of the gift items are inspired by pieces in the Met's collection or those of other museums. They include a small bronze Egyptian cat, a copy of an ancient Egyptian original, for $22; note cards picturing Chinese masterpieces, $15.95; and the Herakles Necklace, from fourth century B.C. Greece in 24 karat gold electroplate (see photo) for $40. The site also offers a CD-ROM called "Making Music" that allows children to "paint a tune."

CYBER CELLARS
There you are stranded in Katmandu, waiting for the weather to clear so your team can scale Mount Everest. The local Sherpa market may not carry your accustomed Cotes du Rhone, but--assuming you can access the Web--Virtual Vineyards, www.virtualvin.com, can deliver the right vintage as fast as international shipping permits. Specializing in Californian wines, Virtual Vinyard proprietor Peter Granoff rates each product on "Peter's Tasting Chart." The 1995 Pinot Noir from Marimar Torres Winery in Sonoma, Calif., for instance, is recommended as "an undiscovered gem" at $25. The 1996 Sauvignon Blanc from Napa Valley's Joseph Phelps Vineyards, is described as crisp, light and priced at $12. For a wider selection of French wines, try Vintime, www.vintime.com.

VIRTUAL GALLERIES
Artists are banking on the Web to bring them new patrons. Individual artists are posting their own sites or banding together to form group shows in cyberspace. At prices generally ranging from $500 to $1,000 Artnet (www.artnet.com) sells the work of 60 artists, including Hok Ming Law. The 75 year old master's "New Bambooist" paintings, with their graceful tigers (see photo) and vivid peacocks have graced the walls of Hong Kong's City Hall. Meanwhile, James Whitlow Delano, a Tokyo-based photographer of everyday life in Asian locales, recently launched a site (club.infopepper.or.jp/~james.delano) to sell his work. The site provides a sampler of images, small for easy loading, accompanied by contact information.

JOCKS ONLINE
If you take sports seriously, you won't settle for just any gear. There are a number of sites where you can get precisely the right racket, helmet or sports shoe. Two major sporting addresses are www.rei.com, and www.sportssuper.com. But for golf and only golf, a good bet is International Golf Outlet at www.igogolf.com. Steve Feuerstein, a Hong Kong golf promoter and the president of Sports International Ltd., warns that the site's massive selection might overwhelm a novice. "This is really for someone who knows the game," he says. Feurstein estimates the site's prices are 15% to 20% lower than local retailers, before shipping.

WEB-BASED BONEYARD
The Web is an outstanding marketplace for much that is rare, old or unusual, allowing scattered collectors to chat about their passions and expand their stashes. There are sites selling or auctioning stamps, coins, snuff bottles, Batman memorabilia, vintage cameras and telescope parts. One that has international delivery and allows secure online transactions is Stones & Bones (www.stonesbones.com). This site claims to offer an assortment of "museum quality fossils and mineral specimens" costing from $10 to $5,000. Look here if you seek meteorites, bear skulls or Jurassic-age ammonites.

FOR OLD MEDIA ENTHUSIASTS
Book lovers, that is. There are numerous booksellers on the Web,including the U.S.-based www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com. Standard airmail delivery to Asia takes two to three weeks. But in addition to the well known U.S. sites, there are interesting specialized distributors. Cantonese readers, for example, can find Chinese literature and translations at Chinese Books Cyberstore--www.chinesebooks.net. The site offers a particularly wide selection of romance novels. Top sellers include a translation of The Diving Bell & the Butterfly, chronicling the last months of French magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby.

JUST YOUR CUP OF TEA?
If it's hard for you to distinguish among the 16 teas at your supermarket, don't shop for tea on the internet. But if you know the difference between Tieguanyin and Phoenix Bird oolong--or would like to--you will enjoy Holy Mountain Trading Company, www.holymtn.com. The site offers hundreds of rare and exotic teas, from Chinese and Japanese green, to jasmine, oolong, black and white. It also carries a breathtaking selection of teapots. A bonus: tea-making guidance and history and stories related to the ancient culture of tea-drinking.

FOR THE CRAFTY AND CURIOUS
Couldn't get to Bali last weekend? Tibet? Nepal? Got there but didn't have enough room in your luggage to cart back curios? Order them online. Tibetan and Nepalese gifts are to be found at Tibet/ Nepal Imports, www.twotone.net/tibet. Ordering is via low-tech fax or phone, and they're not set up to accept credit cards, but they do ship internationally from their base in California. For Balinese crafts try Pacific Rim International at www.pri.net. Ignoring just how cheap the items would be if you were on the ground buying them, the prices are reasonable. Masks are from $60 to $80. A nice touch is Web-head Josh Sklar's personal stories about finding the items in their native environment.

time-webmaster@pathfinder.com