DIAL-UP DELIVERY FIRMS BRING THE CORNER STORE TO YOUR DOOR.

Byline: David Bloom  Staff Writer

The competition to make your life more convenient ratchets up another level today with the start-up of Los Angeles' first fully online service delivering everything from compact discs to cold medicine to cold sandwiches.

Kozmo.com promises to deliver most items found in your local convenience store - food, drinks and goods, along with all kinds of entertainment, and even the machines to play them, within a hour of placing your order. There's no delivery charge for this 24-hour to-your-door service.

With the competition stiffening, Pink Dot Inc., a longtime local delivery service with a small Internet presence, is expanding its hours and improving its offerings in the Valley, while the king of convenience, 7- Eleven, is planning its own very different approach to making your life simpler.

The online service at www.kozmo.com is only available in specific ZIP codes in the San Fernando Valley, the Westside and Hollywood. The company will expand into the Pasadena-Glendale area, the South Bay and other nearby areas in the next two weeks, said Kozmo CEO Joseph Park.

Users at Kozmo's site must provide basic credit-card and address information, and then choose from about 20,000 products.

It offers top-selling videos, video games, magazines, books and CDs; ``convenience food'' like ice cream, sandwiches and soda; over-the-counter medicines like aspirin; CD, DVD and video game players; and even such items as cigarettes, liquor, condoms and home HIV-testing kits, Park said.

``It's really kind of a broad range of products that addresses a common problem for consumers in the United States. Time is an asset people are finding is really important in their lives and don't have enough of,'' Park said.

The company also is tweaking its product mix to include locally popular items like Odwalla fruit juices, Park said

Computers route the order to the nearest distribution center, where products are ``picked and packed'' for delivery. Park said prices will be roughly equivalent to those of convenience stores, maybe slightly lower.

The company already operates in New York, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and Washington, but meeting its one-hour delivery promise in Los Angeles' far-flung, gridlocked neighborhoods will be Kozmo's biggest challenge yet, Park said. The company will open five distribution centers to serve the area.

Kozmo's closest competitor is Camarillo-based Pink Dot Inc., which is being forced to start putting more of a dot.com in its own name.

The 12-year-old Pink Dot provides an array of groceries, drug store basics, tobacco, beer and wine, along with made-to-order dishes such as pasta, for its customers, including those in Southeast Valley areas such as Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, Universal City, Burbank, North Hollywood and Glendale, said Karen Sophiea, the company's chief marketing officer.

``It's almost whatever you want, whenever you want it,'' Sophiea said.

Pink Dot's offerings do, however, lean more toward a broad array of food and drink choices and less toward Kozmo's entertainment goodies.

``We limit our entertainment to (local newspapers), a few magazines, stamps and quarters to the Laundromat,'' Sophiea said.

Pink Dot started in West Los Angeles with a phone-ordering system that expanded to include fax-back orders and, more than two years ago, a Web site at www.pinkdot.com. Overall, the business has thrived, opening 10 distribution centers and recently expanding into Orange County.

But Web ordering has never been a big part of the company's operation, comprising less than 10 percent of its business more than two years after that service became available, Sophiea said. And the company has never heavily marketed the service.

But expect Pink Dot's sleepy approach to the Web to change, fast, in coming weeks.

The company will expand its operating hours beginning Wednesday, operating from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m. (The previous start time was 9 a.m.) It will revamp its Web site under the guidance of a recently hired e-commerce vice president, and will expand its service into the West Valley and other areas.

Unlike Kozmo, Pink Dot charges a $2.99 delivery charge, but promises to deliver its goods within 30 minutes instead of 60, Sophiea said.

The rise of the Internet and delivery services also is spurring some changes over at the granddaddy of the convenience business, 7-Eleven Inc. of Dallas.

The company is trying to take care of its 6 million daily walk-in customers, while using the Net to provide new services that also revolve around its 19,500 stores worldwide, said 7-Eleven spokeswoman Margaret Chabris.

Don't expect the company to do door-to-door delivery like Kozmo and Pink Dot any time soon. But this summer, the company will roll out new financial services kiosks in more than 200 Dallas-area stores as it begins the first stage of a partnership with American Express called V.com.

Initially, the kiosks will provide such basics as automated teller machine services while allowing people to buy money orders, send wire transfers, cash checks and more.

By this time next year, the system also will allow 7-Eleven customers to order flowers, buy concert tickets and order compact discs, videotapes and the like, all to be picked up the next day at the most convenient (there's that word again) 7-Eleven store.

Chabris declined to comment on whether 7-Eleven is worried about its online competition. But for Jack Chou, franchise owner of a 7-Eleven store at 20832 Vanowen Blvd. in Canoga Park, the Net's not a source of worry.

``We're still selling,'' said Chou, who estimated he has 800 to 900 customers walking in daily, more in the summer. ``I don't think there's any competition from the Internet. It's no problem.''