Alice Oh

…ips with third parties, the brand controls its external distribution versus being controlled by it. Any offline retail is not about warehousing product, it’s about marketing the brand and delivering great one to one customer service. It may be pop-ups. It may be permanent locations. It may be installs at existing retailers. You kn…

Here is what most DNVB entrepreneurs get wrong. The world doesn’t care about your DNVB if you aren’t delivering a better product and service bundle than traditional competition. The world doesn’t need your DNVB — unless your product as foundation is differentiated. For Bonobos, fit personalization. For Warby Parker, price and cool factor of the lowest price. For Dollar Shave Club, price and convenience of subscription. The product, web/mobile experience, and customer service collectively become the brand in the consumer’s imagination. Deeper data on the consumer drives enables the DNVB to stay closer to the customer than its brick and mortar driven peers, and the ownership of the brand end-to-end fuels more affinity for a vertical commerce brand than even the best e-commerce experiences.

The digitally-native vertical brand drives a lot more customer intimacy than it’s competition. The data is better because every transaction and interaction is captured. You don’t have to combine data across businesses, because it’s all one business. You are not blind …