> The gist of the piece is that a lot of these direct-to-consumer businesses are trying to "disrupt" markets that the vast majority of people don't see as broken.
You can do interesting things with products when you remove some of the vast middle-men distributors that sit between you and the customer and reclaim margin. Whether producing a higher quality product at a lower or similar price, or producing an equal quality product at a far lower price.
Plus, the big product conglomerates and retailers have an effective monopoly on traditional product access (Colgate, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Walmart, Target, Costco, Walgreens, et al). The margin saved by removing some of the middle-men, can then be used for distribution-marketing-sales to reach out to customers in order to breach that comfortable group monopoly.
You can do interesting things with products when you remove some of the vast middle-men distributors that sit between you and the customer and reclaim margin. Whether producing a higher quality product at a lower or similar price, or producing an equal quality product at a far lower price.
Plus, the big product conglomerates and retailers have an effective monopoly on traditional product access (Colgate, Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Walmart, Target, Costco, Walgreens, et al). The margin saved by removing some of the middle-men, can then be used for distribution-marketing-sales to reach out to customers in order to breach that comfortable group monopoly.