If I were a rebel starting a sunglasses company, let’s call it Rebel Sunglasses, and didn’t want to go through Amazon (the empire), here’s what I would do. I could find and order product wholesale on Alibaba, set up a store on Shopify, drive customers to the site by buying ads on Facebook, Google, and Instagram, either myself or by hiring a growth marketing contractor on Marketerhire, take payments via Stripe, drop ship directly from China with Boxc or import with Flexport and ship with USPS, answer customer questions on Zendesk or Kustomer, and return items via Returnly. Not all companies do it this way, of course. Many do their own R&D, set up their own supply chain, lease their own warehouses, and acquire customers in novel ways. Some roll their own tech stack to make sure that their tech meets their companies’ unique needs. But the fact that competitors can easily launch a DTC product means that any one brand’s strategic position, and ability to generate profits over the long-term, is weakened. 

If I were a rebel starting a sunglasses company, let’s call it Rebel Sunglasses, and didn’t want to go through Amazon (the empire), here’s what I would do. I could find and order product wholesale on Alibaba, set up a store on Shopify, drive customers to the site by buying ads on Facebook, Google, and Instagram, either myself or by hiring a growth marketing contractor on Marketerhire, take payments via Stripe, drop ship directly from China with Boxc or import with Flexport and ship with USPS, answer customer questions on Zendesk or Kustomer, and return items via Returnly. Not all companies do it this way, of course. Many do their own R&D, set up their own supply chain, lease their own warehouses, and acquire customers in novel ways. Some roll their own tech stack to make sure that their tech meets their companies’ unique needs. But the fact that competitors can easily launch a DTC product means that any one brand’s strategic position, and ability to generate profits over the long-term, is weakened.