Shopping with Alice
June 23, 2009 by Marci
This morning, I received an email that Alice was open for business. It took a minute to figure out what that meant. Then, I remembered I stumbled upon an article about a new online retailer promising to make shopping for my basic household stuff easier. I visited the under-construction version of the site and was intrigued, so I signed up for an email update when the site got up and running so I could check it out. Well, I guess today is the day!
So, what is Alice? Here’s a bit from today’s press release:
Alice.com today unveiled the public beta of its service that gives consumers a better way to buy household essentials online. The service combines always-free shipping and competitive pricing into a reorder queue that makes it easy to avoid the chore of running out to the store. Instead of offering goods as a traditional retailer, Alice.com provides an open platform for consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers to sell directly to consumers, passing along significant cost savings and transforming mass-market advertising dollars into direct consumer value.
What that means to me is that this is an online WalMart. ( Those who know me best know that I hate going to WalMart. Any service that is going to keep me from going there has got to be a good thing! ) This is a place to buy your name brand laundry detergent and soap at the same price or lower (really! I checked!) that you would buy at your local store. (Alice has online coupons, too!!) Alice even has a service that allows you to schedule your shipments automatically so that you don’t run out. For instance, if you know it takes you a month to go through a tube of toothpaste, you can schedule a new tube to arrive at your door every 3 weeks. Did I mention the shipping is FREE!!!
The best part of this for me is that instead of driving to WalMart, parking in a huge parking lot, grabbing a cart, fighting the kids all through an enormous warehouse of stuff screaming their names, standing in line, trying to remember where I parked my car, loading the car, unloading the car when I get home and realizing that I have just wasted a good chunk of my day and my sanity, I can just order my toilet paper and toothpaste online and have it sent to my door on a regular basis with free shipping, no extra plastic cars or candy, and my blood pressure remains steady.
I did place an order this morning. Toilet paper, aluminium foil, band aids, jet dry, tampons, deodorant, coffee and gum. I am excited! One more way to keep the “busy” out of my life!!!!
Check out Alice.com and let me know what you think!!
Comments (5)
That is awesome!! I’m going to check it out now… thanks! By the way, you are definitely not the only one that feels that way about WalMart…. I have been trying to make do for two weeks just because I can’t stand going there!
OH thank you for posting this! I’m going to check it out. I hate going to Walmart too, especially this time of year with all the tourists there too. THANK YOU! I hope they have razor blades…they are SO expensive and at our Walmart they have them locked so not only do you have to fight the crowd but you have to locate one of the “friendly” staff workers to help you. Fun stuff
[...] the new online retailer “Alice”, which almost sounded too good to be true. Read more here. But, I was desparate to find a WalMart alternative, so I placed an order just to test it out. [...]
I used a service like this back in 1999 when the Internet was young and I loved it! Unfortunately, it didn’t last. I’m going to give Alice a try and I’m betting they will have a better shot at this now that more people have Internet access these days.
[...] new online place to shop for the same things you can get at Wal Mart! Woohoo!!! Check out her post, Shopping With Alice. Thank you Marci for letting me know about this new online store. I have put off going to Wal Mart [...]