THE CASE FOR D2C ECOMMERCE

Advantages of Owning the Customer Relationship for Manufacturers

Are you tired of seeing distributors misuse your marketing messages? Or not use them at all? Losing market share because end users are confused by your brand image or the pricing your distributors use?
Improve your brand performance and consistency in the marketplace by owning the entire customer relationship with a direct sales channel powered by headless commerce.

Distribution Networks: Costing You More Than Money

For many B2B Manufacturers, their selling model relies heavily on distribution networks. This reliance on distributors can have far-reaching consequences, diminishing the return on your brand’s efforts.

We hear these common complaints from  B2B manufacturers

• Our distribution network doesn't allow us to control pricing or product messaging. 
• If we sold directly to consumers, we could set the price in the market.
• If our website had better content control, our network might use our product messaging rather than their own, making it more consistent.
• Incomplete data slows down reacting to market changes since we don't get much of it back from our distributors.
• Our brand is being tarnished by the lack of availability of our product due to insufficient distributor stock levels. We have the products; they are just not replenishing fast enough on their end.
• Our distributor commissions reduce profit margins.

The Challenges of Working Solely with Distributors

Diminished Brand Control

Collaborating with a distributor often entails relinquishing control over how your brand is presented and experienced by customers. This can lead to inconsistencies in pricing and messaging, which dilute and confuse your brand's presence. Having your messaging get lost in translation or not used at all by your resellers can increase call-centre volume as end-users cannot find the information they need through self-serve options, resulting in excessive overhead.

Limited Customer & Market Insight

Relying on distributors for market insights can leave you relying on incomplete data if you get any from them at all. Typically, you must make business decisions based on your wholesale data, which is not necessarily the entire view of the end-user relationship.
Distributors usually keep customer data to themselves, creating a significant barrier between your brand and its audience. Without direct access to this critical information, it's hard to personalize your marketing and fully understand what your customers want. It's like holding a sealed water bottle when you're thirsty—you have it but can't use it.

Lack of Control Over Strategy

When distributors control marketing strategies, it can be more challenging for your brand to respond to market opportunities quickly. This can mean missing chances in essential areas like pricing, promotions, and customer connections. It also prevents you from using strategies that match your brand’s values.

Inadequate Digital Presence

Most distributors don't have a robust ecommerce website because they focus on traditional retail methods. This gap can make your brand's online presence weak and underdeveloped. Neglecting digital channels today is like travelling without a map—you'll likely get lost.

Diminished Profit Margins

The involvement of distributors means an additional markup on your products, impacting your pricing strategy and, consequently, your brand’s profitability and growth potential. 

Resolution

“Direct-to-consumer (D2C) ecommerce currently presents the best opportunity for innovative brands to build direct relationships with their customers. D2C refers to the practice of selling a product directly to the consumer via a company’s own web store, thus bypassing third-party retailers or wholesalers.” - McKinsey & Co, The Six Must-Haves to Achieve Breakthrough Growth in Ecommerce D2C.

In a D2C model, the brand controls the entire customer journey from discovery to purchase and beyond. This direct interaction helps build deeper customer relationships, offering opportunities to engage with them through personalized marketing, loyalty programs, and exceptional customer service. This data helps steer brand strategy and innovation based on real-time consumer insights. These insights can help a company directly answer consumer needs, thereby maximizing consumers’ commitment to the brand and their lifetime value.

Technology is a cornerstone of successful D2C businesses. From ecommerce platforms that manage sales to CRM systems that track customer interactions and data analytics tools that provide insights into consumer behaviour, technology enables D2C brands to operate efficiently and scale effectively.

D2C brands enjoy several distinctive benefits:

• Direct customer relationships allow for personalized marketing and loyalty programs.
• Control over the brand experience ensures consistent messaging and customer satisfaction.

Product development and marketing agility enable quick responses to market trends and consumer feedback.

These advantages position D2C brands to outperform traditional distribution models in the rapidly growing e-commerce landscape.

Taking D2C Headless Using Gesso

Gesso allows organizations to build and manage their own sales channels by connecting their existing tech stack and data through its middleware layer for product, pricing, and inventory information. 

In the diagram below, we use our pre-built partner integrations to show how we can build a composable commerce architecture that meets the needs of D2C and distribution selling models with a toolset for selling online. We use best-in-class platforms in a modern, headless setup for flexibility, user experience, and speed-to-market.

Using this technical architecture, B2B Manufacturers can build direct-to-consumer channels using a multi-site strategy. One site serves the public, and another serves your existing distribution customer network. Your marketing messaging can be clearly displayed for consumer consumption, increasing brand control and reducing friction for end users.

On the distributor side, you can provide self-serve functionality for sales sheets, product specs, and other critical information for sales and service, reducing sales teams' manual work and enabling them to have time for value-adding projects.

Overall, you can further reduce the overhead of your customer service team by providing self-serve options for returns, frequently asked questions and more. The self-guided functions can be for both the D2C and wholesale side of operations, making your process more efficient.

The Acro Commerce team has 25+ years of experience building ecommerce setups and is a master at streamlining workflows through systems integrations.