|
|
|
COVER STORY
From the
MONTREAL GAZETTE’S
Business Section
The Bare Facts
Afsun Qureshi and Eimile Robertson are co-founders of a Montreal-based Web site that aims to provide credible, unbiased information about cosmetic surgery. It includes a list of certified surgeons and a forum for people to share their experiences and have their questions answered by experts. |
|
THE GOOD, THE BAD,
THE UGLY
Site Offers Information About Plastic Surgery
ALISON MACGREGOR
Montreal Gazette
Wednesday, October 10, 2001
Eimile Robertson wants to help people avoid a traumatic plastic-surgery experience like the one she went through in her early 20s.
The 32-year-old McGill University MBA graduate is a founder of TalkSurgery.com, a Montreal-based Web site that provides information about cosmetic surgery.
The site offers articles on plastic surgery, listings of board-certified cosmetic surgeons and a forum for people to share their experiences.
They can also have questions answered by the site's psychologist and makeup and dental experts.
The site makes money through sponsorship deals with plastic surgeons and companies like beauty retailer Sephora, a subsidiary of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy. TalkSurgey.com is also featured in the health section of the Canoe Web site.
The company expects to post $250,000 in revenue by year's end and plans to be profitable by mid-2002, said Afsun Qureshi, 35, TalkSurgery.com co-founder and editor in chief.
This might prove to be a challenging goal in the increasingly tough economic climate.
Asked about the viability of such a Web site, Yankee Group Canada analyst Jeremy Depow said: "It's difficult to say at this point."
"With the Internet, you never really know how things can become trendy and how they will work."
Depow said TalkSurgery.com's business model of relying on corporate sponsors that have a direct interest in the site gives it an advantage over other dot.coms that rely solely on attracting a large quantity and variety of entities to advertise on their sites.
v
"It's sort of a one-stop place. ... It could work," he said. "However, my concern would be that it is a very specific kind of information. ... You are going to have people going on once or twice ... and (it) will have to continue attracting subscribers.
"If it does present itself to be a fairly successful business, eventually down the road it could partner with a much bigger entity or partner like MSN or something along those lines.
"It really remains to be seen."
Robertson said part of the reason for the site's popularity is the taboo surrounding plastic surgery.
"I think people are really scared to admit to other people that they've had something done - or even that they have an interest in that kind of thing," she said at the company's loft-like office in the Cité du Multimedia on the edge of Old Montreal.
"They want to ask their friends but don't out of fear of offending somebody," she added. "The Internet is the perfect medium to research this kind of stuff - but it was missing before we came on."
For instance, visitors to the site can find information about procedures used to treat gynomastia, a common but little talked-about condition in which men have overdeveloped breasts.
One man shares his story in a piece titled "Male Breasts - My Enlarged Breasts Were an Eyesore."
Robertson recounts her unsettling rhinoplasty operation in "How I Swallowed My Nose."
Qureshi said the company is neither for nor against plastic surgery; instead, it aims to provide credible, unbiased information - the good and the bad.
"(People) really think it's a day at the spa," she added of such operations. "There is anesthetic, skin is being cut ... it's surgery. ... People need to know that."
Both women emphasized the importance of going to a board-certified plastic surgeon. They cited the case of a woman who died in the Toronto area this year after an attempted breast-implant operation in an illegal clinic.
"Most people have no idea that anybody can call themselves a cosmetic surgeon," Robertson said. "Any doctor can claim to be a cosmetic surgeon and do liposuction."
SELF-IMPROVEMENT PROCEDURES
One article on the site is "Supermodel Beauty Myths," which talks about self-improvement procedures that are performed routinely in the modeling world. These include breast implants, liposuction, cheek implants - even removing the lower rib to accentuate the waistline.
Other articles include "Ugly and Proud of It - the Ugly Club Pokes Fun at the Tyranny of Beauty," "Death Rate From Liposuction Unacceptable" and "Don't Do It, Kate - Don't Do It," which implores British actress Kate Winslet not to lose weight.
The site was born two years ago when Qureshi and Robertson, who were then working at Teleglobe subsidiary Up2 Technologies Inc., were asked to conduct an Internet search on breast-reduction surgery. Dismayed at the lack of credible information they found, they teamed with co-worker Dejan Macesic, 34, to design a site that enabled women to post their plastic-surgery experiences online.
Overwhelmed with responses, they turned their hobby into a business in December 1999. The first year was spent forming partnerships with doctors from Harvard University and the University of Toronto, and inking a deal with Sephora.
They pulled together an advisory board that includes high-profile Montreal lawyers Philippe Casgrain and Douglas Roberston, as well as Beatrice Beitmann, investment manager for Paris-based AXA Private Equity Europe. John Molson signed on as TalkSurgery.com's interim chief executive.
They landed office space in the Cité du Multimedia and the services of the Centre d'Entreprises et d'Innovation de Montréal, a provincial agency that helps startups.
In January, they got a cash injection from angel investors.
Quershi said TalkSurgery.com's business plan took into consideration mistakes made during the dot.com boom and subsequent meltdown.
"The No. 1 thing was just the ridiculous amount of money being spent," she said.
The company's mantra is "small is beautiful," she said. To date, the site has had 1.2 million hits with 100,000 unique visitors. About 40 per cent of visitors are from Canada and 60 per cent are from the United States, she said.
In September, the site won an excellence media award from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons for an article on breast reduction.
Copyright © 2001 Montreal Gazette.
Copyright © 2001 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest Global Communications Corp. All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|
