Recognizing that customers are now shopping differently, Proctor & Gamble (P&G) recently launched the Tide Wash Club in Atlanta, a direct-to-consumer service that delivers Tide Pods directly to subscribers, reports the Wall Street Journal. Tide Pods, the company’s highest priced Tide product, are dissolvable capsules filled with laundry detergent that make doing laundry a bit easier. With the new subscription service, customers get free shipping for Tide Pods which are sent at regular intervals.

According to the Wall Street Journal, P&G is testing price points for the subscription service. For now, the Tide Wash Club is $15.99 or $20.99 per delivery depending on the size container purchased. In an article on Marketplace, Michelle Grant of Euromonitor International said selling household goods via subscription is becoming popular with big name retailers like Amazon, Target and Wal-Mart.

“I think it’s more of a broader way to adapt to what consumers want and expect nowadays from their buying experience,” Grant said.

This news comes at the same time that Unilever announced its cash purchase of Dollar Shave Club, which competes directly with P&G’s Gillette Shave Club. With Dollar Shave Club’s success, and Unilever’s backing, this acquisition will help Dollar Shave Club to gain market share against competitors like P&G.

P&G experimented with another new product earlier this year. It launched Tide Spin, a Tide-branded laundry delivery service in Chicago, signaling that P&G wants to be a part of the direct-to-consumer trend. The service charges $1.59 per pound for wash-and-fold laundry service by Tide-branded vendors. Customers order Tide Spin using a smartphone app.

Insider Take:

Will consumers go for laundry products via subscription? If so, are they content to settle for one of the highest-priced products or will they want choices? That could be the deal breaker. Major retailers are already offering direct-to-consumer subscription options.

For example, both Target and Amazon offer a subscription service for everyday essentials and household goods like diapers, toilet paper and toothpaste where consumers sign up and receive regular deliveries based on their own pre-selected schedule. Target offers this service with free shipping and a 5 percent discount. The key difference here is that subscribers can choose their favorite brands versus the Tide Pod subscription which offers only one premium product.

It is good that P&G is experimenting with direct-to-consumer subscription options, including price testing, but we think it will take more than convenience to convince folks to subscribe to Tide Pods when other options with more flexibility exist. We hope they’ll take the opportunity during the Atlanta beta test to find out what their customers really want and adjust their new service accordingly.