Marketplace
What is Direct-to-Consumer?
DTC
Selling on your own website rather than through a marketplace or retailer, so you keep the margin, the customer data, and the email list. You also carry the cost of getting traffic, which the marketplace was quietly providing.
Why it matters in practice
The usual framing puts direct-to-consumer and marketplace in opposition, and the numbers rarely support that. Marketplace revenue arrives with demand attached, at the cost of a commission and a customer you do not get to contact again. Direct revenue keeps both, but every visitor has to be paid for or earned, so the margin that looks better on paper often lands in the same place once acquisition cost is counted honestly. A brand doing well on a marketplace and starting a direct site is not swapping one for the other, it is adding a channel whose first job is usually repeat purchases from customers who already know the product. The comparison worth making is contribution after acquisition and fulfillment for each channel, not gross margin side by side.
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