Direct-to-consumer (DTC or D2C) or business-to-consumer (B2C) is the business model of selling products directly to customers and thereby bypassing any third-party retailers, wholesalers, or middlemen.
[1] Direct-to-consumer became immensely popular during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s when it was mainly used to refer to online retailers who sold products and services to consumers through the Internet.
As new modes of transport kept emerging (steamboat, train, automobile, airplane), consumers gained access to a wider variety of goods and service providers, increasing business competition.
DTC exposes a business to tasks that would otherwise be taken up by wholesalers and retailers, such as shipping, labelling, and cybersecurity.
[5] The direct-to-consumer business model puts the entire burden of the supply chain onto the firm itself; rather than selling to only a few distributors, the products must be delivered to many individual customers.