e-commerce is not 'direct to consumer'

It's a bug bear of mine, but DtC is when a manufacturer/producer sell direct [ie no one else is involved] to the end user.

I read this in an article about a successful clothes designer ...

' ... her direct-to-consumer fashion brand, designs and produces female apparel and accessories. Referring to the company’s launch, she told me, “I had no idea how to make clothes.”

She does now, impressively, with multiple manufacturers, a thriving community, staff, and eager customers. She shared her story in our recent conversation.'

Note: 'with multiple manufacturers'. If you buy something from a manufacturer [even if you had the items made-to-order exclusively for you] and then sell it to the end user, by whatever means [eg online or physical shop], you are a retailer. Selling purely online does not make you direct to consumer - your website is the link between the manufacturer and the customer. If you want to be pedantic; you are the manufacturer's customer.

Note: I do not mean to decry the success of this business or its founder - my objection is to the term used in the article to describe the nature of her business. Indeed, her business started by her selling items that she had made [manufactured] on Instagram - that was DtC ... but as soon as she bought in stock she became a retailer.

So why do so many companies declare themselves DtC? Well, partly because it sounds sexier than ‘retail’, but mainly because DtC is considered to be a ‘tech’ business (don’t ask) by investors - so you’re more likely to get ridiculous amounts of funding from the 'tech bros' if you identify as DtC. The irony - amongst other things - is that DtC is nigh on impossible to scale up, so creating sufficient profit to pay off investors is pretty much zero.