In the midst of the Internet boom two years ago, Reflect.com was too boring to some dot-com experts to make a splash. In the 2001 Internet carnage that followed, the online cosmetics retailer is exciting simply because it's still standing.

        Like its primary funder, Cincinnati's Procter & Gamble Co., executives in Reflect.com's San Francisco offices are trying to look at the long term.

        “From day one, we've tried to explain to people what we were doing,” said Richard Gerstein, vice president of marketing and design. “I don't think people wanted to talk to us because we weren't spending the crazy amounts of money.”

        Reflect.com creates customized makeup, shampoo and skin-care products, with details down to a customer's name on the front of the package.

        For P&G, spending $60 million in three rounds of funding so far was a symbol of its willingness to branch into unknown territory to provide customized products to Internet-savvy consumers.

        P&G chief executive A.G. Lafley, who was promoted from the Beauty Care business and remains on the board of Reflect.com, has pledged to exit unprofitable businesses more quickly.

        Reflect.com has not reached profitability, but it has met internal projections, Mr. Gerstein said.

        But Ann Gillin, who studies P&G for Lehman Bros. in New York, predicted that the Internet business would keep P&G's support longer than many other ventures.

        “Beauty care is too important for them, and developing an alternative distribution channel is a key,” she said.

        In an interview this week, Reflect.com's Mr. Gerstein outlined the company's accomplishments:

        • Customer traffic has bounced around during the last year, ranging from 263,000 unique visits in October 2000 to 648,000 in April, according to the industry tracker Jupiter Media Metrix.

        After that high in April, traffic has dropped to 470,000 visitors in September, its first month below half a million visitors since February.

        That gave it about 14 percent of all unique visitors to fragrance or cosmetics retail sites, competing with sites like Avon.com and Sephora.com.

        • Repeat business, coveted by consumer-products retailers like P&G, has been above Reflect.com's projections.

        • Purchases have met projections. Mr. Gerstein would not provide details, but said results have increased each month.

        • Prices were boosted 30 percent last year to bring them more in line with other premium products.

        • A new distribution and service center in Butler County was completed this year. That houses about 20 workers, with about 50 in the San Francisco headquarters and about half a dozen in a New Jersey plant.

        • A third round of funding this year brought total funding to $90 million. P&G still owns 65 percent of the company, while Redpoint Ventures in Silicon Valley owns 15 percent, and employees own 20 percent.

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