A business model in which a company sells its products directly to end consumers, bypassing traditional intermediaries like retailers, wholesalers, or distributors.
Why it matters
DTC gives a brand full control over pricing, customer data, and the entire purchase experience, but also means taking on responsibilities (fulfillment, customer service, demand generation) that a retail partner would otherwise handle — a real tradeoff between control and operational burden.
In a sentence
"We started as a wholesale brand but shifted toward DTC once we realized how much customer data we were losing by selling exclusively through retailers."
Related terms
- Antonyms: B2B2C, wholesale, retail distribution (selling through an intermediary rather than directly to the end consumer).
- Often confused with: B2C (DTC specifically implies a company that also manufactures or owns the product bypassing distribution intermediaries; B2C more broadly just means selling to individual consumers, which could still happen through a retailer).
- Synonyms: D2C.