The Week in Direct-to-Consumer: June 28, 2024 edition

Welcome to The Week in Direct-to-Consumer, a weekly roundup for marketers from Quad Insights that sums up the latest news in the DTC space.

Target has partnered with Shopify to allow “U.S.-based Shopify merchants to apply to sell through the Target Plus third-party marketplace, and in some cases in Target’s physical stores,” Retail TouchPoints’ Nicole Silberstein reports. Despite being an invite-only selling platform, Target Plus has grown to offer over 2 million products from more than 1,200 brands since its 2019 debut, Silberstein notes. Shopify merchants already selected for Target Plus include True Classic and Caden Lane.

See also: “Target invests in generative AI tool for employees” (Retail Brew)

DTC personal care brand Evolvetogether just launched a partnership with Amazon, Happi reports. Offering a range of products that includes deodorant, bar soap, hand cream and lip balm, the partnership will “empower evolvetogether to reach a broader consumer audience who prioritize quality and sustainability in their daily lives,” per a company announcement. Best known for its planet-conscious mission, evolvetogether says its sustainable, dissolvable packaging has so far kept over 33,000 pounds of plastic from use, as noted on its website.

Previously: “Curology launches on Amazon,” as we noted in the January 19 edition of this column.

In an article titled “DTC EBIT margins ‘meaningfully below’ wholesale, per report,” Retail Dive’s Howard Ruben explores a new BMO Capital Markets report that “found that brands that grew DTC [sales] did not see a notable increase in revenue, merchandise margins, EBIT [earnings before interest and taxes] margins or EBIT dollars.” While DTC gets attention for its cutting out the middleman model, Ruben notes, the report says that a brand’s wholesale-to-retail markup factors in heavily when considering the effectiveness of the selling channel (i.e., a brand’s potential success with DTC vs. wholesale depends a lot on margins). Read the full story here.

Previously: “Glossy E-Commerce Summit 2024: Brands discuss seeing better margins in wholesale than in DTC,” as we noted in the June 14 edition of this column.

DTC strategy:

• “eCommerce Leads Levi’s D2C Growth as Online Shoppers Splurge” (PYMNTS)
• “Why Tecovas sought out physical sales first despite its DTC dreams” (TechCrunch)

DTC trends:

• “Why Digital-Era Brands Are Opening Brick-And-Mortar Stores” (Forbes)

DTC acquisitions:

• “L Catterton Acquires Naomi Watts’ Stripes” (Beauty Inc)

DTC expansion:

• “Buck Mason opens third Chicago-area store” (Retail Dive)