Direct-to-Consumer Retailing Boosts Supply Chain Technology Providers

More companies have embraced selling directly to consumers, sidestepping old, larger-scale operations in favor of developing direct-to-consumer (D2C) operations.

With brick-and-mortar commerce still recovering from the pandemic and shoppers electing to make more purchases online, some manufacturers in the footwear, apparel and electronics sectors have added more D2C business, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday (Aug. 6).

One such company, Manhattan Associates, has seen its revenue going up at a double-digit pace thus far this year as corporate customers look at more tech for handling individual orders, per the report.

“We are starting to attract … customers that we’ve never done business with before, because years ago, they weren’t in need of our solutions, but today they are,” said Manhattan Associates’ Chief Executive Eddie Capel. “Almost every company is, in some way, shape or form, getting closer to the consumer.”

Meanwhile, the report noted that Panasonic subsidiary Blue Yonder has added roughly 100 new clients this year for its supply chain management technology.

The trend also saw many companies like footwear brand Allbirds and home-fitness provider Peloton thriving in the pandemic. The D2C strategy saw growth before the pandemic, too — many companies wanted to sell their items to customers directly, sidestepping wholesalers and third-party retailers.

That said, the report noted how operations can vary, including the difficulties of managing individual shipments as opposed to hundreds of boxes managed in bulk. That has seen the rise of companies like Shopify, which offer online tools designed to handle logistics.

PYMNTS wrote recently about a new text-to-buy solution that was built with Shopify’s Shop Pay accelerated checkout technology.

See also: Shopify’s New Text-to-Buy Option Marks Rise of ‘Anywhere Commerce’

This came from Attentive, a conversational commerce platform. It announced last week that the feature will let customers buy things directly just by responding to a promotional message, without having to navigate to a company’s website.

In addition, there’s been another such update from Instagram, which announced last month that it would be allowing purchases directly through its chat function. This would let users pay for items they see while scrolling the social media feed.

For all PYMNTS retail coverage, subscribe to the daily Retail Newsletter.