

Do you hate running out of toothpaste? (My startup pitch) - DealsForHackers
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/439845/My-startup-pitch-Do-you-hate-running-out-of-toothpaste

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byoung2
_A service that would, once a month, deliver by mail ALL of your needed
toiletries - toothpaste, shampoo, shaving cream, deodorant, soap, etc. These
would be the products you use normally - Old Spice, Colgate, Gillette, etc.
The prices would be equal to, or often less than the store prices._

Amazon Subscribe and Save already offers this service:
[http://www.amazon.com/Health-Personal-Care-Subscribe-
Store/b...](http://www.amazon.com/Health-Personal-Care-Subscribe-
Store/b/ref=sv_hpc_7?ie=UTF8&node=1260921011)

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DealsForHackers
Nice catch - do you know how successful Amazon's program is?

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byoung2
I don't know how profitable it is for Amazon (since the items are 15% off and
they ship free), but it has worked out well for my fiancee and me. For things
that we would have bought at Costco (shampoo, toothpaste, lotion), we are
saving a little and we don't have to make that extra trip to Costco or carry
heavy items from the car.

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gregjor
If I heard this startup pitch I would want to know what experience you have in
retailing and especially logistics. I wouldn't care at all about your web or
programming expertise.

Suppose you were doing this without computers or the web. Customers filled out
a paper order form and you then fulfilled their standing orders. This is very
similar to what Schwann's and diaper services do now, and what milk trucks did
when I was a kid. 75% of the problems you need to solve will be in old-
fashioned logistics: purchasing, warehousing, picking, packing, shipping.
Almost all of the remaining work will be customer service: returns, fixing
mistakes, handling late deliveries and billing issues, etc.

Now add a web site to place and track orders to the business. It is a tiny
part of the work required to launch and doesn't change any of the back-end
"brick and mortar" stuff.

Amazon has the infrastructure in place to do both the hard
(logistics/fulfillment/customer service) parts and the easy (web site) part.
If you think this is something you can crank out in a weekend with a Ruby on
Rails book good luck.

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gphil
Something that would be a valuable addition to this idea would be a way of
starting out by making purchases on demand, and then being able to easily
automate them if they are regularly occurring. For example, I don't pay
attention to how often I actually need toothpaste, so right now I wouldn't
want your service because I don't know how much toothpaste to buy, and how
often I need to buy it. But I might want it if it tracked the toothpaste usage
for me, and then I could automate it if it turned out to be a very regular
need.

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arn
Yep, as someone mentioned, Amazon offers a lot of this.

You should also look at Diapers.com and Soap.com which was recently acquired
by Amazon. [http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/06/amazon-to-buy-
diap...](http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/11/06/amazon-to-buy-diapers-com-
for-540-million/)

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jond2062
Although I don't believe they offer automatic delivery yet, check out
<http://www.alice.com>

It's basically a direct-to-consumer marketplace for manufacturers.

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gregjor
Good example of an idea that mistakes everyday annoyances or obsessive-
compulsive behavior with an actual need.

