Alice.com Company Blog

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:

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.

We just flipped the switch on Alice.com, opening up our new service to the outside world. It is a fantastic feeling to bring a new company to life, and we are lucky to have an amazingly talented team that has worked really hard to make Alice happen in a short amount of time. It is great to be a part of it.

The Big Question

Brian and I left Microsoft just over a year ago after they acquired our last start-up Jellyfish.com (news here). At the time, we set out to answer one question: “Why doesn’t anyone buy toilet paper online?” It sounds kind of silly—it did to me anyway—but that question was a metaphor for the larger challenge we wanted to tackle. Namely, could we figure out a way to get the mainstream consumer to buy Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)—non-perishable stuff like toilet paper, toothpaste, laundry detergent, and diapers—on the Internet?

Despite the enormous size of this market, the vast majority of people still don’t use the convenience and power of the Internet for this category. In fact, consumers buy items like clothing and shoes—that need to be tried on and often returned—more than they do these simple CPG goods that are bought repeatedly in chore-like fashion.

The Answer

After many months, we’ve uncovered three main reasons why consumers choose to continue to drive to the store to buy CPG goods:

1) Shipping Fees. Paying for shipping stinks, and most online shoppers just can’t stomach the thought of paying $6 in online shipping fees for a $3 tube of toothpaste.

2) Competitive Pricing. Try buying CPG online today and you’ll often pay anywhere from 20% to 40% more than you do at traditional mass retailers

3) Online is Too Late. Lots of people buy CPG items when they run out, at which point online purchases aren’t really an option.

So there it was—build a service that had always free shipping, competitive prices, and a Netflix-like reordering queue that made it easy to plan ahead. Alice started coming to life, but it was easier said than done.

The Big Idea

We realized very quickly that in order to solve the consumer’s problems, we couldn’t be a traditional retailer, buying products, marking them up, and making a profit on their sale. So instead, we changed the model, shifting from a retailer, to a platform that exists to help CPG manufacturers sell directly to their customers. Basically, we made a more direct connection between the companies that produce these goods, and the people that use them. And by eliminating the retail layer and opening up our platform for manufacturers to use as a direct channel, we were able to do two key things:

1) Create lots of efficiencies and cost savings that the CPG manufacturers could pass along to the end consumer in the form of competitive prices and free shipping, and;

2) Deliver targeted, value-added advertising opportunities for manufacturers to transform their traditional advertising dollars into added value for consumers (things like new forms of coupons, product samples and loyalty programs).

You can read more about the model on our press release here, but we are really excited to give CPG manufacturers the ability to come together on one platform to channel their resources in exciting new ways for the consumer. It won’t be easy, but at least we are swinging for the fences, trying to disrupt a model to deliver more value to an end consumer. (You can read more about our start-up philosophy on the flywheel blog here, if interested).

Introducing Alice, In Beta

Day one on our beta site you will see roughly six thousand unique products from hundreds of different manufacturers. You can read more about all the great ways we think you’ll be benefit as an Alice customer on our community blog here. And during our beta phase, we’ll be working hard to on-board as many manufacturers as we can onto our direct platform, expand our unique automatic coupon and other advertising programs, and continue to enhance the functionality and quality of our user experience. We hope you give the service a try, and we really look forward to your comments, and the opportunity to help you never run out of/for toilet paper again.

We’re weeks away from the official beta launch of Alice.com.  To celebrate and help everyone enjoy the wait, we’ve kicked off a Countdown to Launch campaign over on the Community Blog.  We’ll be giving away progressively bigger prizes each week until launch.  

First up?  Something we hope Alice will soon help you never run out of again!  A year’s supply of toilet paper.  Check here for details on the giveaway and official rules.  And good luck!

Hi, I am Brenna I am 9 years old.  My dad is the CEO of Alice.  Today as you may know is bring your daughter to work day.  So I got to come and see what my dad does everyday.
The best part is I get to miss school.

First, on this busy day I arranged the conference room bookshelf.  Then I organized the Alice logo swag t-shirts and fleeces, then I sent out the community blog contest winners Radius toothbrushes. Then I went and ate lunch Yum Yum Yum and now I am writing this blog post.

Check out my blog at www.i-brenna.com.

If you like giveaways, you’ll want to check out the Alice community blog each Wednesday.

Rebecca, our resident community blogger and queen of the random number generator, just announced that every Wednesday we’ll be doing a giveaway of some sort over on the community blog.  This week, we’re offering up Alice Swag (an Alice hoodie and t-shirts).  Visit here to participate.  Past giveaways included an iPod Shuffle and a Flip Video Camera.  

Social media is a big part of our marketing plan at Alice, and Rebecca has done a great job building a community of users that are excited about what Alice.com is doing.  Giving away free stuff is just one way in which she is engaging our community in a fun way. 

Do you have an idea for an upcoming giveaway?  If so, please let me know and we’ll try to make it happen.

A big thank you to everyone that has signed up to participate in the beta test of the Alice.com service (here).  The interest has been pretty fantastic, and we’re excited to have everyone start using Alice soon.   It has been a few weeks since we announced the start of testing, and I thought an update was in order, so here goes.  

Beta Timeline

Private Testing Continues Through May

Because Alice is a very different eCommerce site, we made the decision to start user testing with a small group of users that we could closely evaluate and gather feedback from in one-on-one user sessions.  

There has been lots of talk the last few days about how much companies should listen to their customers (apparently Facebook isn’t sure it is a good idea, see here and here and here).  Although I agree that customer feedback can be a tricky thing to balance, the initial feedback we’ve been gathering for Alice has been invaluable.  We’ll be adding a few dozen users here in Madison in the next few weeks to continue these user sessions.  

Beta will expand in May-June

If you’ve already submitted your e-mail to us (or do so here in the next several days), congrats!  You’ll be in our first main beta-test group.  We consider you a Friend of Alice, and we are excited to open up our site to you and get your feedback.  Look for an e-mail from us in late May/early June with instructions on how to get started using Alice.  We can’t wait to drop off a box like this to your door soon.