Holding on to Digital DTC Too Long Was My Biggest Mistake

Looking back, holding on to digital DTC for way too long was a big thing I got wrong. Expanding to an omni-channel approach was central to creating an asset worth acquiring. Here are 3 mistakes, 3 lessons and 3 questions to consider if you’re thinking through your ideal sales channel breakdown.

Mistake 1: We must “own the transaction”

I used to think it was essential that we ‘owned the transaction’, got that email address or phone number, and, most importantly (at the time), could attribute purchases to our direct response ads.

Lesson: Yes, maybe we get a little bit more data compared to selling in channels we don’t ‘own’, but I learned it drove us into a way of thinking that kept us small. Namely, that the only way to grow in this new world of retail was to have the tightest feedback loop between meta ads performance and our ecom store

Question to consider: Could there be assumptions you're making where you’re limiting your brand's overall impact on the world because of the 'need' for certain types of data?


Mistake 2: “If customers want to buy from us, they’ll come to our website directly”

Lesson: I just had to do the math. Only 20% of retail sales happen online. Of online sales, amazon and the other biggies own over 50%. To be allocating 100% of our marketing dollars to less than 5% of the potential buying opportunities just no longer made sense

Simultaneously, I had to develop a little bit of humility that even if someone really loves your brand, the reality is they're busy living their own life

So expect 100% of your purchasers to have to enter our url in their browser in order to shop our brand is a super high bar to require, creating unnecessary friction

Question to consider: Are you putting unnecessary friction on the road to your brand becoming the hugely impactful, meaningful brand that you envision?



Mistake 3: Thinking channel expansion would weaken our brand

We thought we needed to own every single touchpoint in the consumer brand journey.

So therefore, as it relates to wholesale partners, it made sense that we'd think, "We can't just show up on a rack in some clothing store"

We thought putting the brand in someone else's hands would be suicide

Then, as we thought about Amazon in the early days, we didn't want to show up next to all the lower priced copycats, or didn't want amazon to duplicate our product if we saw success

Lesson: If we had done a good enough job at building a strong brand, people would see chubbies and purchase chubbies. We were just providing more opportunities to buy.

Retail partners are actually experts in selling stuff whether it be in the physical realm with wholesale partners, or in ecommerce with amazon.

Finally, just by being in more places, we have more opportunities for the consumer to see our product, which also strengthens the brand.

Question to consider: Have you built so much brand equity that you just need to put your product more places to see the next level of growth?