In the world of online shopping developing incredibly fast, we all know that launching an E-commerce journey is an indispensable task. But how to conduct it in the right way? Especially, with Direct to consumer Brands or DTC Brands, you bring customers special products, personalized shopping experiences, and live-chat conversations. You need to have careful preparation before you kick off your business.
That’s why today, we want to show you the most outstanding case studies in the DTC space. We hope that you’ll gain helpful information, on what is a DTC brand, what makes a DTC brand successful, and which brand is similar to yours. After all, it’s wonderful if you can apply the lesson in your case. Now, let’s start your adventure today.
DTC Brand Definition
As Wikipedia, “Direct-to-consumer (DTC) or business-to-consumer (B2C) is the business model of selling products directly to customers and thereby bypassing any third-party retailers, wholesalers, or any other middlemen”.
To put it simply, a direct-to-consumer brand, or DTC brand, is a company that prefers selling its products directly to consumers rather than going through a wholesale channel or retail store.
It means that the brand will control the whole process, from manufacturing, marketing, and providing their products to every customer. The company can have chances to get closer to hearing and communicating with their consumers and improve their system better.
Benefits of DTC Brands
There are many ways for them to start an online business. But in reality, D2C E-commerce is a potential space for all brands developing because of many persuasive advantages. Before find out how to launch your DTC brands, here are some typical benefits you should focus on first.
- Personalize customer experience: Let’s imagine you just approach your potential customers via a normal automatic chatbot and everyone coming to your website will see the same things, what will they feel? But if you consider how consumers will behave on your website, you can provide what they expect. In the end, the result you receive will be different.
💡 Explore: Is DTC Marketing a Good Idea for Your Business? [Take Our Quiz]
It is how DTC brands optimize customer experience on their online store. It gives customers customized product recommendations based on tools like quizzes, and first-party or third-party behavioral data.
- No need for distribution channels: The fewer channels you take, the more productive you get. When you control your production and delivery process more meticulously, your customer experiences will be better and improved quickly.
Besides, no distribution channel means that no retailer or wholesaler complains about their fair share of a product’s retail price.
- Customer feedback: When you start your DTC brand on your own, you’ll have more opportunities to be closer to your customers. It’s the perfect time for you to conduct A/B testing on your landing pages or hear all their feedback directly. Whether their reviews are good or bad, they’re great motivation to improve your product quality and services faster than ever.
Core Factors of Successful DTC Brands
In reality, just a few DTC brands become successful among thousands of cases. So, what makes them outstanding in such a massive crowd of E-commerce? We conclude with some main elements which you can see in almost the blossoming brands:
- High-quality Products: It is the first and most important factor in all successful cases. Trying to upgrade product quality is always the best way to create a great reputation in everyone’s eyes.
- Strong Brand Identity: You’ll see a clear identity from their logo, mission, and design. Thanks to synchronization, customers can remember their brands more easily.
- Creative Marketing: With innovative marketing strategies which are suitable for brand and target audiences, many brands attract a lot of potential customers.
If you want to have an overview of DTC marketing, let’s check out this video:
Ultimate Guide to Direct To Consumer Marketing
- Sustainable Development: Nowadays and in the future, eco-friendliness will always be one of the main priorities of companies and customers. Many brands follow and upgrade their business model based on the old-but-gold aspect.
- Fast Delivery Service: Nowadays, delivery services tend to become one of the main factors which evaluate customer satisfaction. So, if a DTC brand can provide multiple choices with fast-shipping units, it can increase its position in the bustling and hustling market.
DTC Brand Case Studies
In this section, we want to show you some famous case studies of DTC Brands in the 3 typical fields. Each one will have excellent points, which you can learn. So, let’s keep reading to learn more from them.
Fashion and Apparel
1. Ten Little
Year founded: 2019
Location: New York, United States
What the company is about: Ten Little is a brand providing products for children. They cover many things like clothing, playing, feeding and even home-decoring for kids. Their mission is to help parents choose the perfect items for their little angels. That’s why, Fatma & Julie said, “Parenting is hard. Shopping for your child shouldn’t be”
What contributes to its success: They know the big problem of lacking testing and expert curation when parents buy essentials for kids. So, they provide personalized guidance for shoppers before they decide to buy something for children. For example, if someone wants to buy shoes for kids, she needs to take a quiz related to the children first. After answering all questions, customers will be confident about the product’s quality and accuracy.
2. Knix
Year founded: 2012
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
What the company is about: Knix, an underwear brand is estimated to be the leader in leakproof underwear creations. Joanna Griffiths, the founder of Knix says they want to “continue to focus on listening to what people want and bringing revolutionary solutions to life.”
What contributes to its success: One of the most interesting factors leading to its success is its marketing strategy. They are the first brand that uses real women–of all ages, sizes, and backgrounds–on their site. The method is evaluated to be an effective way to be closer to various types of customers.
3. Buck Mason
Year founded: 2013
Location: Los Angeles, California, United States
What the company is about: Buck Mason is a brand that provides classic clothing “to outlive us”. They produce outfits with vintage American styles with high quality and their prices are in the mid-to-high range.
What contributes to its success: They pay attention to its fabric quality, which means each piece is rich and unique. Besides, they use both old manufacturing techniques and modern technologies to create their top-notch clothing. Along with materials, they also use designs that can be used for American generations. That’s why, they confidently confirm that they can bring customers basic items with timeless quality and designs.
Beauty and Skincare
Year founded: 2016
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
What the company is about: Yellow Beauty is a cosmetic brand established by Jaz and Jamil. In the past, Jaz met difficulties with redness and breakouts, and his family helped him by using a little yellow root called turmeric. And he researched and made their skincare products based on natural ingredients.
What contributes to its success: For sure, its superior strength is the natural elements, which attract customers’ attention as cosmetic products contain too many chemicals. Despite the long-standing ingredients inside, Yellow Beauty is remembered with trendy and smooth colors on different sites: from online websites, and banners to their packages. The brand identity looks so popular and catchy in the new generation’s eyes.
Moreover, one of their biggest mission is to help as many Bangladesh girls as possible to eliminate child marriage. They focus on women's rights, which makes their business meaningful and receives more support from the community.
2. Three Ships
Year founded: 2017
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
What the company is about: Three Ships is a beauty brand established by Laura and Connie in 2017. They were disappointed with complicated and overpriced skincare products on the market, they decided to build their efficient brand. Their mission is “to be the most effective, natural beauty brand in the world”.
What contributes to its success: What makes it stand out in the competitive cosmetic market is its deep education level. They will let customers know what’s behind each creation, with full transparency on ingredients. Furthermore, they’ll understand when they should use skincare products on their skin type.
3. Blueland
Year founded: 2018
Location: New York, New York, United States
What the company is about: Blueland is a brand of environment-friendly products for home and boy care. Its mission is quite clear “Make it easy to be eco with innovative products in reusable packaging that are convenient, effective, and affordable.”
What contributes to its success: Obviously, what makes Blueland is its simple but clear identity. It is from the brand name to every message they convey to the community, and finally, the products they deliver to customers. They optimize every step from eco-ingredients and packaging to carbon-neutral shipping and regularly update their impacts, which makes customers believe in their announcements.
Food and Beverage
1. DEUX
Year founded: 2020
Location: Los Angeles, California, United States
What the company is about: DEUX is a brand of vegan and gluten-free cookie dough. Founded by Sabeena, the brand's mission is to replace all bad ingredients like sugar, preservatives, and animal byproducts by using functional ingredients like zinc, elderberry, and aloe vera.
What contributes to its success: Despite the inspiration of loving junk food, DEUX’s founder upgraded her brand to healthy products. And especially, this brand’s approach is unique. Whenever customers visit their website, they’ll see an interactive video of the founder. Besides, their funny social posts on Instagram and Tiktok also help audiences feel connected with the brand.
2. MUDWTR
Year founded: 2018
Location: Venice, California, United States
What the company is about: MUDWTR is a brand that supplies coffee alternatives. Their products are made of 100% organic cacao, ayurvedic herbs, and functional mushrooms.
What contributes to its success: In this case, what makes them outstanding is its unique product and the brand’s story. Shane Heath, the founder of MUDWTR, said: “I wasn't mad at coffee, just disappointed”. He wanted to find another drink to give him energy and immune support without jitters. Then, he found that he could make it from cacao, herbs, and mushrooms.
Because of such unique ingredients, they focus on improving their FAQ Page and blogs where customers can be explained and educated with useful information.
3. Pulp Pantry
Year founded: 2015
Location: Pasadena, California, United States
What the company is about: Pulp Pantry is an unusual snack brand that makes chips from pulp leftovers from juicing. Not only reducing food waste, but the company also helps customers add more fiber to their diet routine.
What contributes to its success: You can easily the success of this DTC brand comes from the one-of-a-kind product as well as its environment-friendly mission. A clear brand identity is conveyed from the website, messages, and packages. When you visit their online website, you immediately see their inspirational stories and commitment to the snack packs that they deliver to consumers.
Why do many DTC Brands choose Shopify?
Picking a platform to launch an online business is never an easy task. But almost famous case studies of DTC brands choose Shopify as the reliable platform to set up their E-commerce business. What makes it special and attractive like that?
In reality, Shopify comprehends the demands of DTC brands and provides boundless opportunities to attract potential customers and optimize customers’ buying process. Besides, platform can help you provide synchronized purchases on all channels to reach right audiences, create loyalty programs for customers, provide various delivery and payment methods, etc.
Even, as a report at 2PM’s DTC Power List updated on May 30th, more than 70% of 802 brands on this list are powered by Shopify:
💡 Quick read: D2C Businesses Are On The Rise: The Huge Impact Of Ecommerce
Conclusion
No one can deny that DTC retail brings business owners a lot of benefits despite the many difficulties they have to meet directly. It is a potential market for all brands to be closer to their customers and develop faster than ever.
We hope these best DTC brands today can inspire you to improve your knowledge before you officially start your e-commerce journey. Let’s apply the useful cases flexibly and suitably with your products. Good luck with your future business!
