
ePantry Launches – Sustainable Home Supplies, Automatically Shipped To Your Door - numlocked
http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/04/epantry-launches-an-online-grocery-offering-sustainable-goods-automatically-shipped-to-your-door/
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bananas
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?

~~~
numlocked
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/](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.

~~~
bananas
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.

~~~
opendais
I can vouch that the US doesn't have much in the way of online grocers and our
brick & mortar stores already stalk you just as effectively via loyalty card
programs AKA 'we raise prices and discount them to normal levels if you
signup' programs. :/

I really wish a store would give me an API to purchase from. >.>

~~~
toomuchtodo
This gets you close with Amazon:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3984254/send-users-to-
a-p...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3984254/send-users-to-a-pre-filled-
amazon-cart-checkout)

~~~
opendais
Thank you :)

It is close enough to the goal I might just tinker with it this weekend.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Please keep me updated! My email is in my profile.

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robertnealan
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.

~~~
numlocked
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.

~~~
robertnealan
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.

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wehadfun
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

~~~
numlocked
#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.

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mintykeen
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! :)

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imtu80
How would you compete with Amazon? Checkout their new device.
[http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/04/amazon-dash-
amazonfresh/](http://www.engadget.com/2014/04/04/amazon-dash-amazonfresh/)

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blahshaw
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.

~~~
numlocked
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 :)

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therobot24
really cool - but even their website doesn't make it clear why i should choose
this over amazon subscriptions

~~~
numlocked
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/](https://www.epantry.com/sandbox/4758/)

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

~~~
zyxley
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.

~~~
numlocked
This is really great feedback, thanks. We're going to take action on a lot of
the suggestions right away. I hear what you're saying in the last paragraph,
but we've done a lot of user testing and research on this and found that:

1) People don't know much toilet paper they use well enough to say "send me x
rolls every y weeks" 2) Managing more than about 3 products via the "send me x
every y" model becomes very difficult, very quickly. You need a consolidated
view.

One thing we think about a lot is exposing less information about future
shipments - that way you are less inclined to meddle with them in advance
(there's really no need to worry about things > 1 month out). Then we can
build a suggested shipment ~1 or so months in advance, with better data.

