Magento commerce – the DTC eCommerce launchpad for manufacturers

Customers favor eCommerce. Ecommerce had been growing at a fast clip since its introduction 20 years ago, but COVID-19 changed the game. In July 2020, DigitalCommerce 360 reported that online sales increased by 76% due to the pandemic. Consumers are actively forming new shopping habits and brand preferences to avoid crowded stores.

As a result, new winners and losers are emerging, and a robust DTC channel helps to ensure your brand is one of the winners.

Cut out the middleman. The markups that once went to the wholesalers and retailers of your products now stay on your balance sheet. Customer journey insight. When you sell your products via a third-party, you get no insight into the customer journey, and why customers choose your products over your competitors. The insight you receive from controlling the customer journey will ultimately shorten your lead-to-purchase cycle.

The benefits of launching a DTC channel are more than compelling -- such a channel may be necessary to assure your brand’s survival. But some challenges must be faced and solved. To begin, the retailers and wholesalers with whom you’ve done business may not appreciate competing with you.

Additionally, you’ll need to create a B2C website, and integrate it with your ERP system so that your customers can place orders and be informed of when they’ll arrive at their destinations. There’s also the challenge of selling products one at a time to individual consumers, rather than the volume orders your organization is set up to process. This is no small undertaking. It will require you to understand how, why, and when consumers make purchase decisions and map that insight to an omnichannel customer journey. Finally, you’ll also need to develop a new pick, pack, and ship model, which is no small feat.

Many people are understandably confused by the notion of DTC. How is it different from B2C? The original DTC brands, such as Everlane, Allbirds, Casper, Dollar Share Club, Parker Warby, and Away, are digitally native, meaning they were launched in the digital era and operated solely in the digital sphere. Their mindset and outlook were digitally focused.

From their earliest days, DTC founders have needed to sharpen their digital and social media advertising skills, and rely on clever messaging and branding to cut through the noise of these channels. Another major distinction of DTC brands is their use of the content, which is carefully crafted to resonate with specific user personas at precise points in the customer journey.

DTC brands are excellent storytellers, and those stories are what attract and retain loyal customers. Founders launch their brands because they’re unable to find a product that meets their exacting standards for quality, sustainability, or a host of other issues. For instance, the founders of the cooking brand Equal Parts say they founded the company because cooking is a way to spend more time with family and away from the screens that gobble up so much of our attention. This is a powerful message to consumers who also long to spend more time interacting with people in real life.