Nike stops selling on Amazon, should you?

Nike confirmed that they will no longer sell its products on Amazon. This will be the first shoe to drop as other smaller brands who have cult followings pull out of Amazon to focus on their own website and a handful of trusted retailers.

Is there more to direct-to-consumer business than just cutting out the middleman?

Having the best content across all owned channels such as your website and social media accounts has become essential in telling a brand’s story. If you feel you have solid brand awareness, it’s time to consider a focus on selling Direct To Consumer (D2C).  

Having direct access to your customers is the key to creating a long-lasting brand that no one can take away from you.

Amazon: friend or foe? You’ve been warned. 

With Amazon now coming out with more and more of its own product lines, including Amazon Devices, Amazon Fresh, and even their own beauty products the retailer obviously favors their own business (and you would too). For example, If you were to ask Alexa to buy a brand name product but Amazon has the same product (and most likely for cheaper), these devices are soon becoming trained to suggest these products INSTEAD of yours. Yes, you read that right.

Amazon isn’t the only retailer withholding information, as many other industries are also dealing with this kind of lack of transparency. Sephora, a major beauty retail store, also carries its own beauty line yet provides little insight into any customer statistics to any of the brands they carry.

Are you willing to compromise your brand?

The danger first and foremost is for any brand to get in bed with any retailer so deeply that if something happens to the retailer, it has a detrimental effect to a significant chunk of its business.

The moral of the story: while retailers provide significant awareness, nothing and no one is more important than building your brand.