Reinventing the Direct-to-Consumer Business Model

What was innovative in 2010 is now table stakes. E-commerce paired with Instagram ads and a modern logo is no longer a novel experience. “DTC was an insight 10 years ago,” said Ben Lerer.

Now-established players have learned that Instagram advertisements and influencer campaigns only scale to a point: they can net no more than a few hundred thousand of a brand’s “first best” customers. This has driven a shift toward physical retail and prompted founders to agonize over if and when to peddle their wares on Amazon, making direct to co... See more

A unique advantage of DTC brands stems from their ability to have one-to-one relationships with their consumers while capturing valuable data that would be impossible to glean at traditional retail.

voice interfaces stand to reshape commerce in much the same way that the internet did 30 years ago. Existing supply chains, marketing strategies, and brand systems are optimized for the screen-based way that we currently interact with the web. Companies that are not thinking ahead to the next platform shift will inevitably fall behind.