Why All the Warby Parker Clones Are Now Imploding

Warby Parker might have started the DTC trend, but the true awakening came with Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s interrupting the somewhat ridiculous Gillette domination of razor blades at mass/retail. Would-be entrepreneurs and VC investors mistook this unique category situation (single dominant incumbent player, ridiculously high margins, small/ligh... See more

Now that a few high profile DTC brands have been punctured on the public market and the economy is crashing, VC-driven DTC business model will likely go into its own recession. Without DTC, there is an opportunity for a variety of smaller, more sustainably funded players who do not seek hypergrowth.

The optics of successful liquidity events for Blue Nile, Zullily, Chewy and Zappos, and the incredible traction in the 2000s of The GAP as a public vertical consumer brand established meaningful consumer business outcomes. These potential to repeat history through a new crop of Direct to Consumer upstarts paired well with the pent up venture capita... See more

Companies with poor unit economics found themselves propelled by aggressive venture dollars (which themselves were propelled by a low-interest-rate environment). Those companies then turned those dollars into aggressive customer acquisition. Until recently, the market rewarded growth at all costs.