Alice.com, the retail platform for household goods, has raised $4 million in a Series B round according to an SEC filing. According to the filing, the company is trying to raise an additional $2 million in this round. The startup had previously raised $4.3 million in Series A funding from Kengonsa Capital Partners and DaneVest Capital in November of 2008.
Launched in June, Alice.com is an open platform for consumer packaged goods manufacturers, like Procter & Gamble, to sell directly to consumers instead of going through retail channels like Target or Wal-Mart. On the consumer side, Alice.com lets users create a profile of their household (i.e. how many adults, kids, babies) and then the site will keep track of items and reminds users with emails when they are running low and need to reorder. Each shipment is bundled together in a single ‘Alice’ box, delivered directly to the consumer’s door, with no shipping costs.
As we wrote in our review, we think Alice.com has potential to take off thanks to competitive pricing, an well-understood business model (the site makes money via advertising) and experienced entrepreneurs at the helm of the startup. Co-founders and serial entrepreneurs Brian Wiegand and Mark McGuire have managed to sell three companies in the past +10 years, most recently flipping social shopping service Jellyfish to Microsoft (which it later used to create Live Search Cashback).