I just read about Alice.com today. This is a service which lets you order household goods online. Until now, it really wasn’t easy to do this for a few reasons: shipping costs, higher prices (compared to traditional stores), and timing - it’s usually too late for online ordering when you think to get more.

the business side

Alice.com folks have worked with the manufacturers of these types of products to bring this service. They are not a typical man-in-the-middle retailer that buys large quantities of items to sell to consumers. Instead they offer companies a platform to sell directly to their customers. Because of this, the prices on Alice.com are actually competitive. Additionally, there are no shipping costs. The price you see on the “shelf” is actually the price you’ll pay.

pretty cool features

To make the shopping more convenient than going to a traditional retailer, Alice.com has a space where you can set up your own products so you don’t have to search for the right item every time. They make it easy to set up regular reminders for each item so if you only need some items every other month and other items every week, it will remind you appropriately. It actually will make an initial guess for you based on how many people are in your house and what kind of item it is. Additionally, the will very soon have automatic shipping set up so you don’t even have to go to the site. If you like to shop using coupons, they have them and you can limit your search to show only items with coupons. The same is true of “green” products; every search has the option to show just organic options. There is also a social aspect to the site; you can set up friends and choose items based on what they like. There is also an option to show a list of just the items you’re likely to need right now (based upon your reminders and the last time you ordered the item). Finally, there are budgeting tools which show how much you spend on each type of item.

referral code

Now, if you like the idea, go ahead and sign up, it’s free and they don’t share your private information (including your e-mail address) with anyone. If you click any of the links to Alice.com on this page, or if you paste E088D4E in the referral code part of the sign-up form, you can get some warm fuzzies by knowing you’re helping us out without any cost to yourself. And if you want to, you can get your own referral code when you sign up.

more info

If you want more information, you can read the corporate blog entry about the launch or the community blog entry, which clearly outlines some of Alice.com’s cool features.