Alice.com may be a Netflix for your household supplies
Ah, the age of the Internet, when nobody needs to leave their house for anything. Right? OK, so Webvan went bust, but some think there’s still potential in the home delivery model. New startup Alice.com is one of those, having just taken $4.3 million for a company that plans to deliver non-perishable household supplies.
The pitch is that between real-world big box stores and online alternatives like Drugstore.com, there aren’t enough pure distribution platforms for household retail. That means everything from your garbage bags to batteries and weather stripping. Users will be able to order online and receive the goods through a standard shipper like UPS.
Alice’s cofounders, Brian Wiegand and Mark McGuire, sold a social shopping company called Jellyfish to Microsoft for $50 million last year, and have other successful ventures under their belt, so it’s hard to argue with their ideas. Then again, it’s difficult to imagine how I could be induced to go through an online shopping process for my next tube of toothpaste instead of just buying it with my groceries, although the company says it’s aimed at my 18-34 demographic.
Wiegand and McGuire are keeping a lid on some details, so it remains to be seen how the company’s service will work when it’s launched next year. The funding came to the pair from DaneVest Tech Fund and Kegonsa Capital Partners; Alice is to be based out of Madison, Wisconsin.
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About the Author, Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison writes about cleantech and environmental issues for VentureBeat, with occasional forays into gaming and semantic technology. He got his start writing about tech for Business 2.0 magazine, but quickly realized new media was the ticket when that institution closed its doors in 2007. Chris has also covered public equities and regulatory issues. He originally hails from southern Virginia, graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington, and now lives in San Francisco.