Direct-to-consumer (D2C/DTC) brands sell products directly to their customers online or through owned retail stores rather than selling through third-party retailers and wholesale channels. The direct-to-consumer business model lowers costs for the brands and for consumers.

Additionally, direct-to-consumer (D2C/DTC) brands own the customer relationships, allowing them to offer more personalization, gather more feedback and collect first-party customer data to create better experiences and products. D2C brands are also able to offer faster customer support, personalized marketing messages and emails and incredible unboxing experiences of their products. With the shopping and purchase data they’re able to collect from their customers, D2C brands can create robust marketing campaigns to encourage repeat purchases and improve their product recommendations.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, D2C brands began to take advantage of their unprecedented access the internet offered them to customers. The internet became the way these direct-to-consumer brands bypassed the traditional “middlemen” and created strong, first-party relationships with customers. Some of the original direct-to-consumer (D2C/DTC) brands that started online include Warby Parker, Away Travel, Casper Mattresses, Dollar Shave Club and Glossier.

The direct-to-consumer eCommerce market is expected to grow beyond $200 billion by 2024, a massive increase from $128 billion in 2021. Because of the low barriers to entry, new D2C brands in various categories are started every single day. In our list below, you can explore over 1,200 of the top D2C brands on the market today by category and learn more about their products.