Retail has a language problem. Sit in on one planning meeting and you'll hear that the DNVB's CAC is creeping up, LTV is flat, AOV is up in-store, and the POS won't talk to the CRM. (Nobody in that meeting will admit they had to Google half of it.)

The jargon matters because the model behind it has changed. The brands that grew up selling direct-to-consumer online are now opening stores, and traditional retailers are selling direct on every channel they can. Your e-commerce team, your store teams and your tech vendors all use this vocabulary, and they don't always mean the same thing by it.

This guide starts with the acronym everyone asks about first: what the DTC acronym means and what makes a brand "DTC." Then it works through every other acronym you're likely to hit in retail, grouped by topic and ordered by how often you'll actually need them. Let's start with the big one.

Key takeaways:

• The DTC acronym stands for direct-to-consumer, also written D2C: a brand selling through its own website, app and stores.
• Every DTC sale is a B2C sale, but not every B2C sale is DTC. Wholesale means the brand sells to a retailer first.
• Most brands now run a hybrid of direct and wholesale channels. Chanel sells through its own boutiques and through department stores.
• DTC brands that open stores need a CRM with one customer profile that joins online orders and in-store POS purchases.
• Read LTV and CAC together. If winning a customer costs more than they will ever spend, growth won't fix it.

What does DTC stand for?

DTC stands for direct-to-consumer (sometimes written D2C). It describes a brand that sells its products straight to shoppers through channels it owns, such as its own website, app and stores, instead of relying only on wholesalers, distributors or third-party retailers to reach them.

If you've seen "DTC" in a different setting, you're not imagining it. The acronym also stands for "diagnostic trouble code" in cars and the Depository Trust Company in finance. In retail and marketing, it almost always means direct-to-consumer.

What is a DTC brand?

A DTC brand is one that sells directly to consumers through its own channels, typically its own branded websites and stores. While "DTC" is typically associated with brands like Everlane and Warby Parker, high-end fashion houses like Chanel and Gucci also sell DTC through their own boutiques (even if their e-commerce game isn't that strong).

The term was also meant to indicate that these kinds of brands were offering their customers better value by eliminating unnecessary mark-ups on wholesale pricing, usually referred to as "cutting out the middle man." Nevertheless, many brands that started off by selling exclusively DTC (and often, online) eventually also started selling through wholesale channels like department stores and e-tailers.

The practical upside of selling direct goes beyond margin. When a customer buys from you, you own the relationship: their name, their purchase history, their preferences and permission to contact them again. When they buy through a wholesale partner, most of that stays with the retailer.

DTC brand examples

Some of the most-cited DTC brands include:

• Everlane, which built its brand online around transparent pricing before opening its own stores
• Warby Parker, which started with online eyewear sales and home try-on, then expanded into its own retail stores
• Glossier, Bonobos and Allbirds, all of which launched online and now have physical retail locations (more on these under DNVB below)
• Luxury houses like Chanel and Gucci, which sell direct through their own boutiques alongside other channels

Is Chanel a DTC brand?

Partly. Chanel sells directly to consumers through its own boutiques, which is DTC by definition. But it isn't DTC-only: its beauty and fragrance lines have long been sold through department stores and beauty retailers too. Like most established brands, Chanel runs a hybrid of direct and wholesale channels. That's the norm now, not the exception.

DTC vs. D2C vs. B2C vs. wholesale

These terms overlap, so here's how they compare:

In short, every DTC sale is a B2C sale, but not every B2C sale is DTC. And D2C is simply another way of writing DTC.

Why DTC brands are opening stores

The rise of DTC was built on the idea that you didn't need stores. Then many of the best-known online brands opened them anyway.

Why? Stores do things a website can't. Shoppers can touch the product, get the fit right and talk to someone who knows the line. A good store also becomes a local marketing channel, a returns hub and a place to build relationships that bring people back.

The catch is data. Online, a DTC brand knows almost everything about a customer. In a store, that same customer can walk in, buy something and leave without your associates knowing they spent $500 on your website last month. If your store data lives in a separate system (or in an associate's notebook), you've lost the advantage that made you DTC in the first place.

That's where the next few acronyms come in.

DTC CRM: connecting online and in-store customer data

A DTC CRM is a customer relationship management system built around the brand owning the customer relationship. For a brand that only sells online, that often means an email and SMS platform plus e-commerce data. Once you open stores, it needs to do more: pull in-store purchases from your POS, give associates a view of each customer's online and offline history, and let them follow up personally.

Here's what to look for when your DTC brand adds physical retail:

1. One customer profile across channels. Online orders, in-store purchases and returns in one place, synced from your e-commerce platform and POS.
2. Tools associates will actually use on the floor. Customer notes, preferences and purchase history on a phone or tablet, not in a spreadsheet.
3. Brand-safe outreach. Email, SMS and WhatsApp from a company account, so client relationships don't leave with an associate's personal phone.
4. Attribution. A way to see which sales came from associate outreach, whether the customer bought online or in-store.

Endear is a retail CRM and clienteling platform built for exactly this. It integrates with Shopify, POS systems and marketing tools, and its AI Opportunity Engine surfaces a daily queue of high-intent customers with brand-aligned message drafts that associates review before sending. For one specialty retailer, the AI Opportunity Engine drove outreach from 60 messages a week to 360 within six weeks, without adding headcount, and delivered $35 in attributed revenue for every $1 spent on actioned opportunities.

If you're weighing how to connect your online and store customer data, you can request a demo to see how Endear does it.

The DTC and retail glossary (in order of relevance)

Now for the full decoder ring. Terms are grouped by topic, and each group starts with the ones you'll hear most.

Business models and brand types

DNVB: Digitally-Native Vertical Brands

If we break this term down, "digitally-native" refers to the fact that the brand launched online first through its own dedicated e-commerce site, and "vertical" means it owns its entire production and sales process. Many brands that started online have since opened their own stores, and added on more traditional channels like wholesale distribution to increase their reach. Popular DNVB examples include Glossier, Bonobos, and Allbirds (all three of which now have their own physical retail locations). You can read more about what Bonobos founder Andy Dunn has to say about the trend in his famous 2016 Medium post here.

B2C: Business-to-Consumer

Any business that sells to individual shoppers rather than to other companies. DTC is one type of B2C; a department store selling other brands' products is another.

B2B: Business-to-Business

Selling to other businesses instead of to shoppers. For most consumer brands, B2B means wholesale: selling inventory to retailers that resell it.

Omnichannel

A retail approach where every channel (website, app, stores, social, messaging) works from the same customer and inventory data, so a shopper gets one consistent experience wherever they buy. It's different from "multichannel," where the channels exist side by side but don't share much. Read more about what omnichannel retail looks like in practice.

RaaS: Retail-as-a-Service

A play on SaaS (software as a service), RaaS companies offer brands and retailers a way to sell in-store without having to manage locations on their own. Some companies, like Leap, launch and operate stores on a brand's behalf so the location still carries the brand's own name and look. Others approached RaaS as a modern take on the department store, though not every experiment lasted: Neighborhood Goods, one of the best-known examples, shut down in January 2024.

Shop-in-shop

A branded space inside another retailer's store, often staffed by the brand's own associates. It's a common way for DTC brands to test physical retail before signing their own lease.

IRL: In Real Life

While not technically an industry term, IRL has become a marketing shorthand for a brand moving offline, whether into its own stores, pop-ups or shop-in-shops.

Customer and marketing terms

CRM: Customer Relationship Management

A CRM is a database of all your customers that you can easily manipulate and segment in order to efficiently market your products and services. A retail CRM like Endear goes a step further by showing you how customer outreach converts into sales, both in-store and online.

Clienteling

The practice of store associates building one-to-one relationships with customers, using what they know about each person's purchases and preferences to reach out with relevant recommendations, invitations and follow-ups. It's the in-store version of personalization, and it's how many brands turn one-time shoppers into regulars. See how clienteling works in Endear.

LTV: Lifetime Value

The total dollars a customer will spend with you over time, or a customer's entire value to you from the time they are acquired to the time they stop shopping with you. You'll also see it written CLV or CLTV (customer lifetime value). The higher your average LTV, the more you can afford to spend on acquiring a customer.

Keep in mind that in retail, "lifetime" is a lot harder to define than it is with subscription services. But loyal customers are worth the effort: in a classic Bain & Company study of online shoppers, the average repeat apparel customer spent 67% more in months 31 to 36 of their relationship with a retailer than in their first six months. That's called loyalty.

A simple way to estimate it: LTV = average order value × purchases per year × years as a customer.

CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost

Your customer acquisition cost is the amount you spend to acquire one customer. CAC is calculated by dividing total marketing spend by the number of customers you gained. You can have a CAC for your whole business, as well as CAC per channel (for example, how much it cost you to acquire customers through social media advertising compared to Google advertising).

LTV and CAC are usually read together. If it costs you more to win a customer than they'll ever spend, no amount of growth will fix it.

AOV: Average Order Value

The average amount a customer spends on an order: total revenue ÷ number of orders. Many brands see a higher AOV in-store than online, since associates can suggest a second size, a matching piece or the upgrade.

CTR: Click-Through Rate

If a brand is 100% dependent on digital for sales, one of the most important metrics it will track is its click-through rate on marketing channels like banners, emails, and sponsored content. The click-through rate refers to how often people are clicking on a link you've provided to go to the next destination (likely your website or product page). For example, if you send an email to 100 people and 10 people click to learn more about an event or an item, that's a 10% click-through rate.

ROAS: Return on Ad Spend

Revenue generated by an ad campaign divided by what you spent on it. If you spend $1,000 on ads and they drive $4,000 in sales, your ROAS is 4:1 (or 4x).

CDP: Customer Data Platform

Software that collects customer data from many sources (website, app, POS, email) and merges it into unified profiles, mainly for marketing teams to segment and target. A CRM is usually where people act on that data, especially one-to-one.

First-party and zero-party data

First-party data is information you collect directly from your own customers, like purchase history and site behavior. Zero-party data is information customers intentionally share with you, like their size, style preferences or birthday. Both have become more valuable as third-party tracking has become less reliable, and store associates are one of the best sources of zero-party data you have.

NPS: Net Promoter Score

A customer loyalty metric based on one question: "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?" on a 0 to 10 scale. NPS is the percentage of promoters (9 to 10) minus the percentage of detractors (0 to 6).

UGC: User-Generated Content

Photos, videos and reviews created by customers rather than the brand. DTC brands use UGC on product pages, in ads and on social because shoppers tend to trust other shoppers.

Store, sales and commerce tech

POS: Point-of-Sale

The software that enables check-out at a physical retail store. There are many cloud POS software options like Shopify, Teamwork Commerce, and Heartland Retail, all of which Endear integrates with!

POE: Point-of-Everything

As brands have become more omnichannel, unifying their e-commerce and POS data becomes more important than ever, especially in order to ensure there's a single source of truth. Therefore some companies have started to rely on or build solutions that have the ability to manage both sales channels (online and offline), and refer to these solutions as point-of-everything. The goal is to have all transactions pass through this system in one way or another. One of the first brands we know of to launch a POE was Warby Parker.

BOPIS: Buy Online, Pick Up In Store

The customer orders online and collects the order at a store. It's also called click-and-collect. Every pickup is a chance for an associate to say hello, check the fit and suggest what goes with it.

BORIS: Buy Online, Return In Store

The customer bought online but returns the item at a store. Handled well, a return turns into an exchange (or a new sale) instead of a refund.

Ship-from-store

Using store inventory to fulfill online orders, so stock sitting on the shelf in one city can go to a customer in another.

Endless aisle

Letting store associates sell items that aren't in stock at their location, by ordering them from another store or the warehouse and shipping them to the customer.

RFID: Radio-Frequency Identification

Think of RFID as a unique, scannable tracker inside each item of clothing so that no garment can ever be misplaced. Retailers use it to count inventory faster and more accurately than barcode scanning.

Store performance metrics

ATV: Average Transaction Value

The store-side cousin of AOV: total sales ÷ number of transactions. Many retailers use ATV and AOV interchangeably.

UPT: Units Per Transaction

The average number of items in each purchase. It's one of the clearest signals of how well associates are helping customers build a full outfit or room.

Conversion rate

The share of visitors who buy. Online, it's orders ÷ sessions. In-store, it's transactions ÷ foot traffic (the number of people who walked in).

SSS: Same-Store Sales

Sales growth at stores that have been open for a comparable period (usually at least a year), which strips out the effect of new openings. You'll also hear "comps" or "like-for-like sales."

Product, inventory and pricing

CPG: Consumer Packaged Goods

Everyday items consumers buy and use up regularly, such as food and beverage, household products, and beauty and personal care. You'll sometimes hear the broader phrase "consumer goods," which also covers apparel and home goods purchased by consumers for their direct use.

GMV: Gross Merchandise Value

GMV refers to the total value of the merchandise that customers purchased. Different from net sales or revenue, GMV does not take into account any discounts you may have offered or any returns that were made.

MSRP: Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price

The recommended number to put on a price tag for an item, also known as the "sticker price." This shorthand is basically irrelevant in the DTC world since the manufacturer and the retailer are one and the same.

SKU: Stock Keeping Unit

This is the equivalent of a single item's social security number: a unique identifying code that refers to a specific stock item in a retailer's inventory or product catalog. While products may have the same name, no two items have the same SKU, which may take into consideration details like color and size.

UPC: Universal Product Code

If a SKU is like an item's social security number, then a UPC is more like its passport: a standardized 12-digit barcode number that identifies both the product and the company that makes it, so it can be recognized by any retailer or system it passes through. (Your SKUs are yours alone; a UPC works the same everywhere.)

OOS: Out of Stock

An item that isn't available to sell. Frequent OOS on best-sellers is a sign your inventory planning (or your inventory visibility) needs work.

Sell-through rate

The percentage of inventory received that actually sold during a period: units sold ÷ units received. High sell-through means you bought well; low sell-through usually means markdowns are coming.

ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning

Large data management solutions, typically related to a brand's inventory, finance and logistics.

3PL: Third-Party Logistics

Outsourced services that manage inventory and fulfillment (warehousing, picking, packing and shipping) for brands and retailers.

DTC and retail acronyms: frequently asked questions

What does DTC mean in marketing?

In marketing, DTC means direct-to-consumer: the brand markets and sells to shoppers through its own channels, like its website, email, SMS, social and stores, rather than relying on retailers to reach them. DTC marketing leans heavily on first-party data and building a direct relationship with each customer.

What is the difference between DTC and D2C?

There isn't one. DTC and D2C are two abbreviations for the same thing: direct-to-consumer. Which one you see mostly depends on who's writing (and where).

What is a DTC brand example?

Everlane, Warby Parker, Glossier, Allbirds and Bonobos are classic DTC examples. All of them sold directly to shoppers online first, and all have since opened their own stores.

What does DTC mean in retail?

In retail, DTC describes the sales a brand makes directly to shoppers through its own stores, website and app, as opposed to sales through wholesale partners like department stores. Many brands now report DTC and wholesale as separate revenue lines.

How do you know if a brand is DTC?

Ask one question: can you buy from the brand itself? If it sells its own products through its own website, app or stores, it has a DTC channel. Most brands today are a mix, so the better question is usually how much of their business is direct versus wholesale.

Is Amazon a DTC brand?

Mostly, no. Amazon is primarily a retailer and marketplace that sells other companies' products, which makes it B2C rather than DTC. A brand selling on Amazon is reaching consumers through a third party, so it doesn't own the customer relationship or data the way it would on its own site or in its own stores.

What are the disadvantages of DTC?

Selling direct means you take on everything a retail partner used to handle: acquiring customers (and paying the CAC), fulfillment and returns, customer service and, if you open stores, rent and staffing. Many DTC brands have found that paid acquisition gets expensive as they grow, which is one reason so many have added wholesale partners and physical stores.

Do DTC brands have physical stores?

Many do. Brands that started online, like Warby Parker, Allbirds and Glossier, have opened their own stores, and those stores still count as DTC because the brand is selling directly to the shopper.

Speak DTC fluently (and put your store data to work)

Knowing the acronyms is step one. The brands pulling ahead are the ones that act on what they mean: tracking LTV across online and in-store purchases, giving associates the customer context they need, and turning every store visit into the start of a relationship.

If your online data is sharp but your stores feel like a black box, Endear can help you close the gap. Request a demo to see how your store teams can turn customer data into sales.