We’re all familiar with price comparison shopping on high value items but less so on day-to-day consumables like groceries or household items. In effect it feels like just too much work and most of us do online grocery shopping with one store. Amazon Prime is looking at disrupting this space and ShopRunner has been aggregating stores for a while. However, NetPlenish thinks it can crack this market.
Picked out by the TechCrunch Disrupt audience today as the best startup from the Startup Alley, NetPlenish offers a service on an Andorid, iPhone and Web app for shopping that finds the best prices on everyday items like toothpaste and toilet paper. We’re talking price comparison plus automatic replenishment on everyday products. The new product they launched today is NetPlenish Premier.
CEO David Compton of the California-based startups says the company is vendor agnostic, and while you may well have heard of Amazon and not NetPlenish, you have probably heard of their partners: Walgreens, Walmart and Target. Let’s face it, if those guys don’t have the everyday items you need then nobody will.
He reckons he can cut down your average store visiting time from 45 minutes to 45 seconds. How? NetPlenish looks at bundles not just individual items which helps with getting better deals. Users don’t leave site to do the transaction, there’s just one form to fill in.
Like Amazon Prime, NetPlenish Prime has free shipping but, they claim, they have 40% better product reach, better produce selection, better head to head pricing and better cart pricing.
They also incentivise shoppers with a 1% cash back rather than Amazon’s offers on products. Shoppers make lists then move their choices from list to cart.
The company has been live for the last two months and is seeing an uptick in early users. They have closed a $1.9 million seed round, and is raising a further round right now.
In Q&A on stage judges questioned whether consumers would value price over speed of shipping, but NetPlenish said they were confident of their model based on early user feedback.