A decade later, many early DTC brands face slowing growth, leadership issues, and unsustainable funding, though a few have adapted and continued to see success. Here's what you need to know:
Several of the early DTC brands that once promised to disrupt retail are now facing slower growth, market cap declines, and identity struggles.
Heavy VC funding led to inflated valuations and pressured brands to scale quickly, often at the expense of profitability and long-term stability.
Reformation stayed profitable and trend-relevant with minimal funding. They are on track to exceed $500 million in annual sales. Meanwhile, Everlane and Allbirds saw major declines due to brand confusion and a lack of innovation.
Brands like Bonobos and Glossier illustrate the risks of scaling without clear long-term strategy. Bonobos sold for a fraction of its earlier valuation; Glossier struggles with consumer focus.
The next wave of successful brands will blend wholesale and DTC models, prioritize sustainable growth, and learn from the first generation’s missteps.
How can you successfully identify fast-growing DTC brands? Use Charm.
Charm ranks 5 million DTC brands by growth based on the Charm Growth Score. The Charm Growth Score is a multidimensional score ranking the growth of a brand based on various factors, including the growth of its social media audience size, social engagement, reseller distribution, website traffic, and other metrics.
The score is generated using a proprietary machine-learning model and represents a brand's relative growth compared to other brands in the same product category. For example, a beauty brand with a Charm Growth Score of 85 would indicate that the brand is growing faster than 85% of other beauty brands tracked by Charm.
Let's take a look at some of the fastest-growing DTC brands right now, according to the Charm Growth Score.
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