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The direct-to-consumer (D2C) landscape has undergone many changes over the past few decades. From mail-to-order catalogs to the golden age of digitally native vertical brands, the sector later transitioned into a Shopify-fueled wave of global manufacturers selling directly to Western audiences. Today, the playing field faces overdependence on Meta ads, severe tracking limitations, and an overcrowded marketplace of copycats. Succeeding now means moving from a manufacturing-capacity mindset to one built on need-state design, community feedback, and continuous product innovation.
For fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) manufacturers wrestling with shrinking retail margins, the allure is straightforward. D2C allows you to bypass expensive middlemen, avoid retailers taking a heavy cut, build a quick storefront, and launch directly to the consumer. At the same time, this is where many established players stumble into a strategic trap. They mistake their manufacturing capability for the organizational capability to run a D2C commerce model.
In a recent two-part episode of The Open Podcast, Sander Mangel sat down with Mateusz Oktaba, a consumer health commerce expert who has guided digital strategies for giants like Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, and Haleon. They break down why entering D2C requires a profound shift from tech-led product capacity to human-led "need-state" thinking.
Achieving true viability in the modern commerce space means understanding that your most valuable asset is the direct relationship you cultivate with your audience.
When Unilever bought a business model
Traditional manufacturers approach new digital ventures through the lens of production lines. If you operate a large factory, your core competency lies in physical engineering, optimizing supply chains, and scaling output. Mateusz recalls his early days at Procter & Gamble, where a factory line originally built for manufacturing military ammunition was structurally reconfigured to produce feminine care products. Shifting lines, adjusting capacities, and driving technical R&D breakthroughs are exactly what manufacturers excel at doing. However, attempting a D2C business model introduces an entirely different operational reality that cannot be solved simply by maximizing a factory floor.
As Mateusz notes: "D2C is a shift in your mindset, in your mid business model, rather than just using your capacity. When you are a manufacturer, you can do that. You have a brilliant supply chain, you have a brilliant RD. You can build something different within your operation. But when you try attempting a diverse business model, you hit a wall because it requires different thinking."
Moving into D2C, you are suddenly responsible for single-item picking, individualized packaging, localized courier logistics, and the complex mechanics of continuous consumer communication.
This inherent operational friction explains why Unilever famously acquired Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion. They weren’t just buying a trendy brand name; they were attempting to purchase a subscription-based business model that legacy FMCG systems couldn't easily replicate from scratch. As Mateusz explains:
"I remember that we all understood that they're not buying a brand per se. They're actually buying a business model, right? FMCG is not set up for subscription. When you start drilling into what is possible, we realize okay, this is not so easy with our current setup. We would need a third party partner to actually run it for us."
While Unilever eventually divested from Dollar Shave Club after realizing how difficult it was to structurally adapt that distinct operational muscle, the underlying strategic value of D2C never died. Their subsequent acquisition of US food supplements brand Grüns shows they are re-entering D2C with a decade’s worth of evolutionary learning. For smaller, agile manufacturers, building this operational business model from the ground up offers a distinct advantage over legacy giants who remain structurally constrained by their own enterprise scale.
Moving beyond the "Hero Product" in D2C
A commonly made mistake for traditional manufacturers, when entering D2C, is betting their entire digital storefront on their singular, most proud "hero product". While a hero product can successfully anchor a brand on a physical retail shelf, relying on a single item in the digital space is a risk due to high customer acquisition costs (CAC).
If you are burning marketing dollars on Meta or Google ads to acquire a user, your business cannot survive if that user buys one isolated item once and never returns. To build a sustainable D2C architecture, you must shift from standalone product thinking to "regime," "ritual," or "routine" thinking.
Mateusz validates this by challenging a core marketing assumption regarding consumer behavior:
"First of all, it's easily replaceable because someone else can do as good facial cream as you are doing and they will try it. Consumers are not loyal. They will switch if they want to, and they will switch if there is enough good trigger behind it."
If pure emotional loyalty is a myth, how do digital brands survive? The answer lies in convenience and curated choices. If you provide a cohesive range of products that map to a broader daily routine, consumers have no functional trigger to leave your ecosystem.
Mateusz highlights several compelling examples of this regime-building shift in action:
- Hello Smile: Operating in the Balkans, this oral care brand transformed the functional task of brushing teeth into an expressive experience for Gen Z by expanding their core toothpaste line into an array of experimental flavors, giving users a direct reason to buy a wider variety of products simultaneously.
- Grüns: Instead of delivering traditional clinical vitamin tablets, they re-engineered the delivery system into pleasurable green gummies, turning health maintenance into an enjoyable daily ritual consumers look forward to consuming.
- Glove: This Polish brand originally launched with a simple €10 microfiber glove that removes makeup using only water. Instead of stagnating, they mapped the consumer’s broader beauty evolution up the curve by introducing high-end beauty devices worth €100 to €150, leveraging their initial low-cost acquisition point into a high-lifetime-value product pipeline.
By owning the entire regime, you aren't just selling a raw formulation; you are curating a predictable, recurring experience that generates sustainable margins.
What competition in the attention economy looks like
When manufacturers analyze their competition, they typically look at the brand sitting directly adjacent to them on the shelves. In the digital ecosystem, however, your true competitor is anything competing for your customer’s maximum budget, time, and attention span.
Consider the mobility platform Bolt. They didn't limit themselves to being a standard Uber copycat. They focused on the foundational human need: getting safely from point A to point B. Depending on the weather, traffic, or urgency, that need-state changes. Consequently, Bolt expanded into electric scooters, e-bikes, and short-term car rentals. They fell in love with solving the underlying need-state of urban mobility rather than sticking strictly to their initial product format.
This same dynamic dictates consumer wallet share. A consumer's disposable income contains a small percentage dedicated to self-reward. As Mateusz illustrates with an anecdote about an exchange with a friend:
"I treat myself with coffee. He treats himself with wine, but neither of us are planning on spending on something else. But maybe if something comes up, I will take my coffee budget, which is more of a hobby, rather than my daily dose of caffeine, and I'll spend it on that. Because this is something that I'll use exactly to reward myself, to do something nice. And I think these choices are a bit on the level of a need-state and fulfilling your needs, then only competing brands."
Worse, you are competing against the digital environment itself. Mateusz continues with a classic marketing question from a decade ago that still rings true today:
"I remember I read an article which had a very nice and interesting title. So that was probably like more than ten years ago because the title was like 'Is your app more interesting than Angry Birds?'... At the end of the day, you cannot get people to use these apps if they are not as interesting as Angry Birds, which at that time was really attracting attention. I think there is a lot of truth in that, you need to be aware of what people are choosing to really be able to truly compete with that."
If your digital storefront, brand story, or unboxing experience cannot hold a consumer's attention on their smartphone, your brand will be completely ignored. You must understand the exact emotional occasion you are fulfilling to cut through the noise.
Succeeding means listening to your community
Consumers are increasingly blind to traditional advertising, accelerated by the mass adoption of ad-blockers and ad-free tiers like YouTube Premium. Modern consumers want stories, authenticity, and human truths.
Independent D2C brands hold an undeniable advantage here. It is simple to tell a compelling story about a passionate founder solving a real problem, but nearly impossible to illustrate that same resonance when a product is built by a corporate committee of 200 people.
However, a story like this only gets a customer through the door once. Long-term viability means constantly talking to your audience. As Mateusz states:
"If you're a founder of a D2C brand, the most important thing, like the kind of cardinal rule, is go talk to your consumers. And literally use social media to get feedback and keep listening to the feedback. I think these are the two distinctive things. First of all, really start with a human truth and understanding the people you want to serve, but in the long run, also try to follow their feedback and their needs. Product portfolio development is all about really understanding how people use your product, what do they use it for?"
A brilliant case study of this feedback loop in action is Hi Bestie, a Polish menstrual care brand founded by a socially conscious influencer. She launched via a D2C model centered around a reusable menstrual disc. Rather than treating her digital community as a passive audience, she treated them as an unedited R&D laboratory. By consistently reviewing direct messages and listening to customer friction points, she uncovered critical human truths.
When her community expressed a need for immediate physical availability, she scaled distribution into Rossmann, a massive retail chain across Poland. When users noted they still required single-use options, she launched an accompanying line of organic cotton tampons. By matching her product pipeline directly to live feedback, she scaled a highly intimate startup into a multi-million euro brand.
Key takeaways when starting a D2C channel
For an established manufacturer, transitioning to D2C is a holistic business model transformation. You move away from the cold efficiency of manufacturing capacity and step into the empathetic world of need-state design, continuous product innovation, and community interaction. As Mateusz concludes:
"This is the best time to live in, and it's the worst time to live in at the same time... This is exactly the space for people who have something to say different, who want to challenge the category, who want to bring a new benefit. This is the time to be here because you can be easily heard and I think that more than ever it's dependent on your product."
In the upcoming second installment of this D2C playbook series on The Open Podcast, Sander and Mateusz move from overarching business models to the practicalities of launching a D2C brand on a finite budget. They discuss how independent players can outmaneuver multi-billion-dollar enterprises simply by staying hyper-focused on the ground.
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