ePantry Launches – Sustainable Home Supplies, Automatically Shipped To Your Door

http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/04/epantry-launches-an-online-grocery-offering-sustainable-goods-automatically-shipped-to-your-door/

by numlocked • 12 years ago

12 25 12 years ago

techcrunch.com

therobot24• 12 years ago

really cool - but even their website doesn't make it clear why i should choose this over amazon subscriptions

numlocked7• 12 years ago

Great feedback, thanks! Maybe the easiest way to check it out is to kick the tires in our sandbox - you can see exactly how it differs from Amazon :)

https://www.epantry.com/sandbox/4758/

And we'll strive to make the homepage communicate this more clearly as well.

zyxley• 12 years ago

Some assorted nitpicks:

Why is the box with "Annual Savings" and "Average Monthly Price" at the lower left where it's obscuring the content instead of at the lower right where there's a bunch of empty space?

The text for individual items feels small, low-contrast, and "fuzzy" to me - my eyes glaze right over it. I'd personally increase the size by 2pt, change it to black (or a Bootstrappian near-black), and include the product's brand underneath the name in the current grey color (not important to me, but some people will care).

The emphasis on "annual savings" and the big "refer and get $10" are too big and emphasized and make me feel like the site is assuming I'm a cheapskate. It detracts somewhat from the convenience reason for the service when the site is shouting at me about the money saved instead (and if I was looking for absolute savings I already have money put in to Amazon Prime shipping). The Average Monthly Price number, on the other hand, is extremely useful, since trying to figure out that kind of thing is the biggest cognitive load for me for these sorts of services.

The thing at the lower left, the More Products button, the plus and minus buttons on products, and the buttons at the top are all way too emphasized and distracting as compared to the actual important stuff on the page at a first glance (the products queued up, the total pricing, and the ship date for each batch). The mouseover color change per month is also distracting, but I think it could maybe be a nice touch if it was tuned way down.

What's with the Fisher-Price green and blue that don't actually map to any particular sorts of actions? Green is to increment/decrement but also for the Help and date buttons, and blue is used for two buttons, a menu (but for some reason the email address, which I presume is an account name, isn't a menu), and an infobox that's not clickable at all, none of which have anything to do with each other.

I have no idea how any of the products in the list correspond with each other - are they recurring? I don't know. It looks like when first added it adds a matching one to each second month in the future, but there doesn't seem to be any other data linkage, so if I want to adjust numbers I have to manually go down the list and change it for each instance? There's also no way to add anything for future months except by adding a product to the current month and then dragging it forward, and then manually clearing out or moving around all the ones automatically added to future months.

All-in-all, it feels more hassleworthy than Amazon, because this UI is relatively complicated and means a lot more brainwork to process and monitor than having "send me this item every X weeks/months". I think for this to win out, it would need to be at least that convenient, and handle anything unusual by having a list of exceptions (e.g. "send me one extra item Q in July") instead of having a full shopping list for every shipment to babysit.

bananas3• 12 years ago

Great. Another service that automatically ships stuff to me that I already have en-masse because some heuristics have poorly analysed my requirements or rule in favour of the seller who wrote them.

Also, have people forgotten how to do literally everything themselves suddenly?

I like automation but automation shouldn't deprive us of basic choices and "keep us". We should be keeping the machines, not the other way around.

And no this isn't some neo-luddite rant. I said to my wife about 10 years ago that at some point in the future people will run out of things to invent. Then we'll invent services that people need. Then we'll invent services that people think they need. Then we'll invent services that people don't need and develop a dependency on them.

And it's perfectly fine to run out of something. If all our needs are instantly catered for, what are we?

numlocked7• 12 years ago

We couldn't agree more! Our model is not a beat-you-over-the-head subscription. Instead we suggest products and a schedule, and encourage you to customize each shipment. Our goal is to make this a really efficient process. Give it a try and let me know if you still feel the same way:

https://www.epantry.com/sandbox/4758/

Plus we try to be pretty human :) For instance if you tell us a joke on live chat, we'll give you a $2 discount.

Anyway - love to hear more thoughts as you have them.

bananas3• 12 years ago

Thanks for the link. This appears to be simple forward selling. I'm not suggesting that it is a subscription model but you will need to keep selling this every month.

Also, I'm in the UK (not your target market but anyway) and we already have massive amounts of online delivery services like this (Tesco, ASDA, Sainsburys, Ocado, Waitrose). Ocado in fact pretty much have exactly the same model for pre-populating baskets but the scope of the service is considerably larger i.e. it covers all groceries and not a simple subset of consumables.

Unfortunately the only way to market this method is having your supermarkets stalk you heavily which I find objectionable (and many others do I assure you).

Disclaimer: I worked for one of the online supermarkets in the UK for a period of time and thoroughly distrust them.

toomuchtodo3• 12 years ago

We should be keeping the machines, not the other way around.

Completely disagree. I want to build machines to "keep me", to provide for my wants and needs. Why is that wrong?

And why the hell are we having software/robotics eat the world if this isn't what we want?

numlocked7• 12 years ago

We started off hoping that customers could "set it and forget it". But it turns out, no matter how good your algorithms are, there's no accounting for in-laws visiting for a week and using twice as much toilet paper. So instead we're focused on dramatically lowering the cognitive overhead of purchasing these products online. We do that through a combination of suggestions/recommendations, curated product selection, and a very different take on ecommerce UX.

hoopism• 12 years ago

Without commenting on this specific services (maybe it is this or maybe it's not) I HATE the monthly curated business model.

It can't go away fast enough.

wehadfun• 12 years ago

1. Need a search text field that is easy to find on this website. That way people can search for the products they want and you can know what products people want

2. Add those refrigerator water filters. they have to be changed every 3 months or the water taste like crap and only like 2 stores (home depot and lowes) sell them

3. Offer "product sampling" service to companies. We have customers using your competitors product we can send them a sample of yours for a fee

numlocked7• 12 years ago

#1 - We are approaching a SKU count where search is becoming inevitable. I'm actually (perversely?) proud that we haven't needed search to date. Users haven't requested it (but they'll start soon, I'm sure) and our on-boarding process doesn't necessitate it. And thanks for the reminder to use search data to measure demand!

#2 - Water filters are coming eventually! But we're a startup and need to be judicious with our purchasing decisions.

blahshaw• 12 years ago

Chatting with the customer service rep. This services will apparently save about 28% over traditional grocery stores, but compared to places like Costco you won't save any money.

numlocked7• 12 years ago

Thanks for sharing the info! You were actually talking to Drew, one of our engineers. He was logged in under a different name -- but you could have easily asked him hairy questions about automated backbone testing too :)

robertnealan2• 12 years ago

If I lived alone I'd definitely sign up for a service like this, but for the time being my roommates and I just rotate taking turns picking up these kind of items. Likely a niche specific to people with roommates, but it'd be interesting to implement either household accounts where the bill gets charged multiple ways or you can allow accounts to be linked into a group where you can see whose turn it is to pay for each item next.

UX Sidenote - Why can't I close the modal after clicking "Get Started"? From a potential customer perspective it's frustrating if I click that and realize I want to find out more information before giving my email or Facebook account info.

numlocked7• 12 years ago

We can split the bill for you! Sign up and you can invite your roommates - and we'll share the cost evenly between you each month. And you can all log in and manage the same dashboard of products.

robertnealan2• 12 years ago

Should definitely push this as a feature on your landing page. It's hard to find out what all I can/can't do with the service and the FAQ is a little unconventional.

mintykeen• 12 years ago

I love the idea! I just had a hard time removing items from the list that I didn't want, and I couldn't find how to check out/pay for the items. I couldn't scroll over to see the right side of the site. Hope you carry more brands soon too! Best wishes! :)

imtu80• 12 years ago

How would you compete with Amazon? Checkout their new device. http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/04/amazon-dash-amazonfresh/

ePantry Launches – Sustainable Home Supplies, Automatically Shipped To Your Door

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