Announcing the Alice.com eCommerce Platform for CPG

January 12th, 2010 | By Mark McGuire | 3 Comments

Today Alice is excited to announce that we have launched a new eCommerce platform that allows Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturers to create branded storefronts at their own web properties.  You can read our full press release announcing our new platform here.

Why are storefronts important to CPG manufacturers?

Supporting an online store with the Alice.com platform provides a host of benefits for manufacturers, including:

Engaging with Mainstream Consumers

CPG consumers are busy, and they aren’t likely to engage in a meaningful way with a CPG branded site that lacks the ability to actually buy the product.  Offering an online store is an effective way to attract and enter into an ongoing relationship with that mainstream consumer.  

Gaining a “Learning Lab” of Consumer Insights

CPG manufacturers need to get closer to their consumer.  With a direct commercial relationship, CPG manufacturers can transform their websites into “learning labs” that deliver a rich set of consumer insights that help inform marketing/positioning, product development efforts, and brand building.  And most importantly, these insights can be shared with the manufacturer’s retail partners to drive more impactful promotions and increase sales through the retail channel. 

Delivering Direct Response Capabilities to Online Advertising

Manufacturers can now use the direct response capabilities at their own storefronts as a centerpiece of their digital marketing campaigns.  This helps to ensure that their digital marketing is accountable, measurable, and optimized to deliver the most value over time. 

Meeting Underserved Demand

Between the rise of store brands and retailer sku rationalization, the retail shelf is getting smaller every day.  Supporting an online store allows manufacturers to find a home for their “misfit toys” that aren’t able to secure retail shelf space, but still have demand from consumers.

Gain Incremental Revenue

Multi-channel revenue is increasingly important in today’s economy, and an online storefront can provide another important incremental revenue stream

Why the Alice platform?

Manufacturers in non-CPG industries are increasingly using the online channel to sell direct to consumer (for example, Internet Retailer recently announced that manufacturers selling direct to consumer is the fastest growing online retail category in their Top 500 Guide).

To date, however, CPG manufacturers have had a difficult time joining in that trend and putting up a storefront of their own.  At Alice, we asked ourselves why.  There are a host of eCommerce platforms in the market today that can be used to power an online store.  Why aren’t CPG manufacturers using them and launching their own stores?  The reason, we believe, is because the existing platforms that create stand-alone storefronts aren’t optimized for the peculiar needs of the CPG shopper.  Let me explain.

When we shop for CPG products, we typically fill our shopping cart with dozens of products from multiple manufacturers in a single trip.  Are you really going to replace that shopping trip with an online experience that makes you visit 10 different manufacturer store fronts (from toothpaste, to trash bags, to toilet paper), to order 10 different products and pay shipping fees for each box to reach your door?  And are you going to replicate that process each and every time you run out of a product?  That’s a lot of extra hassle, a lot of cardboard, and a lot of extra shipping fees.

CPG manufacturers are realizing that in order to meet the needs of the mainstream CPG shopper, they need to serve up three things within their storefront experience: 1) free shipping ; 2) a broad assortment of brands that can be purchased in a single basket; and 3) an easy way to plan purchases to avoid running out of items and making emergency store trips.

The Alice.com eCommerce platform allows manufacturers to meet these needs by directly tying into, and sharing, the Alice.com customer experience, including a unified checkout and fulfillment process.  This shared experience enables manufacturers to sell direct in a completely new way—one that allows consumers to easily purchase (and repurchase) from multiple CPG manufacturers in a single shopping trip and receive one box of bundled goods direct to their door with free shipping, overcoming the barriers to mainstream CPG sales online.

A Growing Trend

We are working hard to make this new innovative platform a tipping point for the CPG industry to finally unlock the value of the online channel and transform their websites into learning labs that drive sales across all their channels.  In fact, we believe that by the close of 2010, every major CPG company will either have a storefront up and running at their branded property, or will have a plan to launch one.

Agree or disagree, we look forward to your comments and we are extremely excited to work hard this year to help move the industry forward online.

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Posted to: Announcements, Press Releases, eCommerce | 3 Comments

From the DigitalCPG Blog-What Does it Mean to be a “Retailer” Today?

January 8th, 2010 | By Mark McGuire | No Comments

(This post was originally published on our Digital CPG Blog. Go check it out for more news and notes on the CPG industry)

For all you CPG veterans out there, did you ever think you’d see the day when major retailers would open up their stores up to competitors?  A day, for example, where a small retailer could waltz into WalMart and put an identical product up on the shelf?

It’s happening online.  Today Sears joined WalMart and Amazon as the third big boy to launch a “marketplace” that opens up its online store to third party sellers (see news here, here and here).  eCommerce is certainly changing what it means to be a retailer.

Sears Marketplace

For these big retailers, I can see how the marketplace concept makes sense, namely, by allowing them to leverage the power of their brand to expand their product selection for customers and gain incremental revenue without disrupting their own customer fulfillment costs (Sears, for example, charges each seller a listing fee and the seller drop ships products directly to buyers).  In many ways, it seems like a win for everyone involved.

Can this work for CPG manufacturers that are interested in selling direct to consumer?

In my humble opinion the answer is no for a very simple reason:  Shipping fees.

The mainstream CPG shopper expects to fills her basket with dozens of items from multiple manufacturers and take one bundled basket of goods home in a single trip.  That same shopper is not going to be excited about shopping online for these goods in a marketplace in which she has to pay shipping fees for 10 different manufacturers to drop ship a standalone box to her door.  10 boxes with 10 shipping fees doesn’t seem to work.

Is there a way to drop the shipping fees?  One method Amazon uses with their Subscribe and Save program is bulk CPG buying.  So instead of buying a four pack of bathroom tissue, I have to buy 48 rolls in order to get free shipping.  But is this really mainstream?  And even without the bulk, do I want a stand alone box on my door for bathroom tissue, toothpaste, trash bags, pain reliever and the dozens of other products I stock in my home on a regular basis?  That’s a lot of cardboard.

We’re taking a different approach at Alice.com, which like the marketplaces mentioned above, is open for manufacturers to sell direct to consumer.  But instead of consumers getting multiple boxes, they receive one Alice box of bundled goods from multiple manufacturers shipped free to their door.  By sharing the box and shipping costs (rather than drop shipping), the manufacturers can offer consumers the convenience and free shipping they demand.

Bottom line for CPG manufacturers?  The lines of what it means to be a manufacturer and a retailer are blurring online, and opportunities abound to innovate in how you get your goods into the hands of the consumer.

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Posted to: eCommerce | No Comments

Alice.com & Good Guide help shoppers find out what’s really in their shopping baskets

November 17th, 2009 | By Mark McGuire | 3 Comments

In the past few years, sustainability has evolved from a small niche consideration into a mainstream trend for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies.  In fact, shoppers across all market segments in CPG are now factoring environmental, health, and social considerations into their purchase decisions.

To their credit, CPG manufacturers have responded aggressively to this trend, introducing a host of manufacturing, packaging, and ingredient changes to their products to satisfy changing consumer demands.

One next big step for the industry will be to help consumers separate true innovation from the sea of marketing claims being made in the sustainability realm.  Simply put, consumers need quick, reliable information about CPG products at the point of purchase.

That’s why we are pleased to announce today that Alice.com is teaming up with Good Guide to incorporate the Good Guide product ratings into our Alice.com shopping experience.

Good Guide Rating

By integrating GoodGuide’s independent  rankings and data into our product inventory, we’ve helped put important  information about the sustainability and health impacts of products at the point of purchase where consumers need it most.

Alice.com is excited to be the first eCommerce site integrate GoodGuide’s independent  rankings and data in this fashion. Shoppers choosing products on Alice.com can now see GoodGuide’s independent health, environmental and social responsibility ratings for everyday items such as cereal, cleaning products and baby shampoo.  GoodGuide is also integrating links on its site to Alice.com providing consumers with an easy option to purchase products they have researched on GoodGuide.

You can read more in our press release. We’re excited about this improvement to the Alice.com site and look forward to hearing what you think.

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Alice.com announces $6 million in funding and rapid growth

November 10th, 2009 | By Rebecca Thorman | No Comments

Today, we announced we have completed a $6 million round of funding.  The latest funding comes from a group of private investors and brings the total amount raised by Alice.com to date to more than $10 million.  We will tap the funding to continue to manage our growth and onboard additional manufacturers onto our unique industry platform.

Since opening the Alice.com service to the public on June 23, 2009, the company has experienced rapid customer growth, and is currently averaging more than 1 million unique visitors to the service on a monthly basis.

“We have been extremely pleased with the reception that the Alice.com platform has received in the marketplace from both consumers and manufacturers alike,” says Brian Wiegand, CEO.  “Direct to consumer sales by manufacturers is a growing trend online, and the Alice.com platform is helping the CPG industry open up a direct channel to its mainstream consumer.  It’s a win-win that brings great value to the end consumer, and critical consumer relationships and insights to the manufacturer.”

Read the full press release >

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Alice makes it even easier to find the best price

November 4th, 2009 | By Rebecca Thorman | 1 Comment

We live in a transparent world, and Alice is continually working to ensure that the consumer has the big picture on price when shopping at Alice.com.  We’ve always given the user a price comparison on every product so they can compare the prices available at other stores.  Today, we are enhancing our site to add a price per unit feature to unit in order to compare one product to another and find the best value quickly.

This price per unit feature has been requested by many of our customers, and we are happy to be able to respond to their requests.  Here’s how it works:

Cost per unit

On all of our products, you will now see the cost per unit listed next to the quantity on that item. For instance, if you’re looking at a pack of 104 diapers at a cost of $20.24 on Alice, you can easily reference that the price is $0.19 per diaper. You can also sort by the Price Per Unit feature to quickly find the lowest price.

In today’s economy, every purchase is more considered, and we are happy to bring this new functionality to market to help make buying CPG goods online even more powerful for today’s consumer.

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Posted to: Announcements | 1 Comment

New Site Updates

October 26th, 2009 | By Rebecca Thorman | 4 Comments

The Alice team has been busy enhancing your shopping experience, and I’m happy to tell you about a few great changes we’ve made to the site since our last update.

1. Free Samples Tab
If you have ordered recently, you might have found a goodie bag from Alice in your shipment that included a personalized free sample (or two) and maybe a little something extra from us.  To help you keep track, we added a Free Samples tab for you that will show if your next box will arrive with a goodie bag, and what coupons are available on the samples you receive. Coupons are automatically applied when you add the product to your cart.

freesamples

2. New Product Rooms
As we’ve expanded our broad assortment of products, we’ve also expanded the ways to shop for them, including offering new rooms under “Shop By Room” to make navigation easier.

newrooms

3. Product Videos.
In an effort to offer useful information as you decide whether a product might be best for your household, we’ve added relevant product videos to view. If a video is available, you can view it on the super shelf and/or the product detail pages.

videos

We hope these updates make your Alice experience even better.  Please let us know if there are other things you’d like to see added to Alice to enhance your shopping experience.

What do you think?  Do you like the updates?  Are there other things you’d like to see added?

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Posted to: Site Updates | 4 Comments

From the Digital CPG Blog-Mattel Goes Direct to Consumer Online

October 23rd, 2009 | By Mark McGuire | No Comments

(This post was originally published on our new Digital CPG blog.  Go check it out for more news and notes on the CPG industry.)

As we’ve mentioned previously, manufacturers in non-CPG industries are increasingly using the online channel to sell direct to consumer (for example, Internet Retailer recently announced that manufacturers selling direct to consumer is the fastest growing online retail category in this year’s Top 500 Guide).

Mattel, the largest U.S. toymaker, made news this week with a new direct to consumer website that offers all of Mattel’s well known brands under one eCommerce site.  The site, located at Mattelshop.com, includes a number of innovative social features (full coverage here).

Mattel shop

It is very interesting to see a manufacturer combine its broad brand portfolio into a single eCommerce effort.  But what I find even more interesting is the analogy to the CPG industry.  Both the toy industry and the CPG industry have a retail landscape that is dominated by a few giants.  Mattel, for example, generates approximately 1/2 of its revenues from three big retailers, Walmart, Target and Toys “R” Us.  The national CPG brands have similar distribution among a few retail giants.

The takeaway for me?  A big national manufacturer like Mattel can take bold steps to go direct to consumer online without disrupting  its traditional retail relationships.  

Shouldn’t the CPG industry be in the same position?  CPG manufacturers have an assortment problem in going direct on their own (something we are trying to help solve with our shared platform at Alice.com).  Are there other pitfalls to a CPG manufacturer going direct that aren’t present for Mattel?  If not, I think Mattel is leading the way in what is sure to be a bigger trend online.

 

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Posted to: eCommerce | No Comments

From the Digital CPG Blog-Will Meijer’s Grocery Express Work?

October 9th, 2009 | By Mark McGuire | 7 Comments

(This post was originally published on our new Digital CPG blog.  Go check it out for more news and notes on the CPG industry.)

The Meijer grocery chain announced recently that it has expanded the test of its new online/store concept called Grocery Express into the Chicago area (coverage here and here).  The concept is pretty straightforward-the customer logs onto the Meijer website, picks out the items she needs and schedules a convenient pick up time for the order.  Armed with the customer order, Meijer “personal shoppers” grab all the items and package them up for pick up by the customer in a designated parking lot pick up zone.  The customer pays an extra $6.95 fee for the privilege of zipping into the parking lot to pick up the goods.

Webvan put a fork in the online CPG industry for several years, but innovation is starting to percolate again in this market.  For example, delivery services like Amazon Fresh are expanding, and CPG manufacturers like P&G have been making some noise about eCommerce lately.  (Our company is certainly making a run for the mainstream CPG consumer as well).

It makes sense for a traditional retailer like Meijer to leverage its existing store infrastructure to deliver an online/offline hybrid offer.  So much sense that I suspect many traditional retailers will jump on this bandwagon if the concept shows promise.  But the key question becomes whether this will attract the mainstream consumer.  Our research at Alice.com shows that shipping fees have been a huge barrier to online CPG.  Will consumers view this $6.95 fee in the same fashion?  Another high profile launch of the “order online/pick-up” model, Sears MyGopher, hasn’t faired too well.

Time will tell whether Meijer will be more successful, but we’d love to hear your views.  Is the Grocery Express concept a winner for CPG eCommerce?

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Posted to: eCommerce | 7 Comments

Announcing Our Free Sampling Program!

October 1st, 2009 | By Rebecca Thorman | 2 Comments

Beginning today, consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers can now execute their own sampling campaigns to maximize advertising accountability and consumer value. Here’s an excerpt from our press release–

Alice.com today announced a first-of-its-kind digital sampling program that allows consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers to control the entire product sampling process—from defining a specific target audience to converting delivered samples into ongoing sales. The Alice.com sampling program is the first of many advertising programs to be launched within the Alice.com platform, and represents one of the ways in which CPG manufacturers are using Alice.com to directly connect with their end consumers and gain greater accountability from their advertising.

“Sampling has traditionally been a hit-or-miss use of our advertising dollars, because of the difficulties in measuring who received a sample and whether the sample resulted in a sale,” said John Mullins, President and CEO of Sun & Earth, an all-natural, non-toxic cleaning products company. “Using the Alice.com platform, we can now leverage a rich set of data to pinpoint which consumers receive our samples, make it easy for those consumers to buy the product from us, and precisely measure whether the campaign is actually working. It’s a great way for us to treat our customer as an individual and make sure we are spending our advertising dollars wisely.”

We’re celebrating the launch of our free sampling program with a special consumer campaign. Beginning now through October 31st, consumers may find an iPod shuffle, Flip video camera, free movie rentals and more in their Alice box, in addition to targeted free product samples. Head on over to the Community blog to learn more.

Read the full press release here.

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Posted to: Announcements, Press Releases, Sampling | 2 Comments

Alice.com chooses OHL as supply chain partner

August 26th, 2009 | By Mark McGuire | 2 Comments

Alice today announced our selection of logistics company OHL to provide fulfillment for Alice.com.  We’ve been growing like crazy since launch, and it is great to have such a solid partner that provides both expertise and the ability to scale quickly to accommodate our customer and manufacturer growth.  Thanks OHL!

Here’s what OHL has to say about the relationship:

“Alice.com has entered an essentially untapped market and we are excited about our relationship with them and the growth we have seen already,” commented Bob Spieth, President of OHL’s Contract Logistics business unit. “OHL’s flexibility and deep experience in the direct to consumer marketplace allows us to meet Alice.com’s business requirements and respond to their rapid growth as they expand their direct to consumer model.”

You can read the full press release for more information.

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Posted to: Announcements, Press Releases | 2 Comments

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