T A B L E__T A L K Is buying or selling a house like getting a root canal without Novocain? Vent and tell horror stories in Table Talk's Business and Personal Finance area R E C E N T L Y Halloween's hollow spree By Heather Chaplin How the season of candy-eating kiddies has become monstrously lucrative (11/06/98) The greatest gambling hall on earth By Heather Chaplin A view of the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (10/23/98) The geology of investing By Dave Zgodzinski What investors can learn from sedimentary rock (10/16/98) Hedging their butts By Heather Chaplin While the world's mega-players bail out a wrecked hedge fund, one befuddled reporter tries to figure out just what these arcane vehicles actually are (10/09/98) Rooting for the crash By Dwight Garner Retirement fund be damned, this market watcher is looking forward to the end of the Wall Street boom (10/02/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Reluctant Capitalist archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Salon Columnists S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		[ T H E_.R E L U C T A N T_.C A P I T A L I S T ]________ SOME PEOPLE BUY PORN; I LIKE TO BUY MAKE-UP -- IN PRIVATE. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BY HEATHER CHAPLIN I am a modest person. Most days I can be found hunched over my computer wearing jeans, a sweat shirt and running shoes, my hair pulled back, not a smidge of make-up. To the chagrin of my boyfriend, I've been known to go out in public like this. But go to my dressing table, poke in the drawers. You will find enough lipsticks, powders, compacts and brushes to make Jean Harlow and Ginger Rogers blush. I rarely wear what I buy, yet I succumb to the shimmering colors of the beauty counter. The neat packages of eye shadow -- silver, green, lavender, violet -- start my heart longing. I've been known to hyperventilate, just slightly, upon entering the cosmetics section of Nordstrom, Bloomingdales or Barney's. Some people buy porn, hiding it from their partners and children, reading it secretly, guiltily and with great pleasure. Me, I buy make-up. Take me past the Lancôme counter or show me the Stila section and the blush of forbidden passion spreads across my cheeks. When I walked into Sephora, I knew I was in trouble. If you haven't heard about it yet, you will. Sephora is a 5-year-old French chain that sells high-end make-up in a manner considered quite unorthodox by the U.S. cosmetic establishment. Its first American shop opened this past July in the SoHo area of Manhattan. Its progress is being analyzed by department stores and cosmetic companies as if it held the secret to wrinkle-free skin. What's so radical about it? Within Sephora's chic black and white walls, there are no beauty counters, and no beauty counter saleswomen secretly counting your blackheads. Forgoing the traditional department store layout, Sephora is organized around free-standing racks that each hold two brands -- Clinique, Shu Uemura, Christian Dior, Hard Candy, Lancôme, Elizabeth Arden, to name a few. It shocked the beauty world by displaying certain products alphabetically rather than by brand. One whole wall is devoted to perfumes, arranged A-Z; another wall holds skin-care products for everything from acne to wrinkles. Trying things on is easy, as each rack is equipped with mirrors, cotton swabs, make-up remover and disinfectant. There's no saleswoman as go-between and no pressure to buy -- except of course the pressure of a hundred little packages of brilliant color calling your name. You're free, a black Sephora basket swinging from your arm, to ogle and to finger the merchandise to your heart's content. Owned by French luxury goods company LVMH -- the same people who bring you Dom Perignon, Moet & Chandon, Louis Vuitton and Givenchy -- Sephora is aggressively spreading beyond French soil. Since the Manhattan opening four months ago, Sephora has opened six more stores in upscale areas such as South Coast Plaza in Orange County, Calif., and Coconut Grove in Florida. Before the ball has dropped in Times Square this December, the company plans to open eight more shops, and by the time we're celebrating New Year's Eve 2004, Sephora expects to have opened 200 stores in the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. A friend who shares my passion for make-up -- although she actually wears what she buys -- says she can't imagine buying anything at Sephora. Part of what she likes about shopping for make-up is the attention of the saleswomen behind the counter. Without the high that comes from that, and without the saleswomen's help choosing the right shades and combinations, she doubts she would move beyond the browsing stage. For me, the charm of Sephora is escaping all that. At Sephora, I can wander among the jars and tubes and compacts and revel in their allure -- privately. At times, I've roamed the maze of department store counters, ready to be lured into love with some sparkling trinket or other. But instead I ended up leaving, unwilling to fight my way to a counter or face the scrutiny of the store's work force. At Sephora, I can -- and did -- spend an hour finding just the right shade of brown lipstick, without worrying that the saleswoman is going to keel over with irritation or boredom. Mais non! you cry. It will never work! How can you sell expensive cosmetics without the lure of a department store to bring customers in? How will you convince women to buy $50 bottles of anti-aging creams and $22 tubes of lipstick without the coercion of well-trained saleswomen? Well, the French handed Sephora 20 percent of all cosmetic sales in that country last year, or about $300 million. It's possible its appeal is limited to France, where women are born with their own sense of style and beauty and don't need saleswomen telling them what to buy. But the SoHo shop is already doing better than expected, on track to beat its projected first-year revenues of $10 million, according to Sherry Baker, vice president of marketing for Sephora in its new territories. "It's the logical evolution of selling cosmetics," Baker said. "Consumers change. Today they're organized and informed, and they resent being told what they should buy." While baby boomers spend more on cosmetics than any other group, according to DCI, an industry trade magazine, Sephora attracts a fairly young clientele -- young and affluent, considering the store only carries the high-end stuff. In the SoHo shop, most customers are in their 20s and 30s. "Within this [younger] demographic, women are delighted to have the products they want in an environment they can enjoy," Baker said. That's the kind of smug P.R. comment that usually makes me roll my eyes, and certainly never makes it past my notes. But mid-eye roll, I stopped. And I blushed, because, well, it was delightful to find the products I liked in an environment I could enjoy. Yikes. In falling for Sephora, not only was I indulging my secret obsession, but I'd walked right into a beautifully constructed marketing trap that had been set just for me. SALON | Nov. 20, 1998 Heather Chaplin's Reluctant Capitalist column appears every other Friday in Salon.