This phenomenon becomes a lot clearer when you invert the question: Why are all the products selling for 10x the commoditized version direct-to-consumer? I thin

This phenomenon becomes a lot clearer when you invert the question: Why are all the products selling for 10x the commoditized version direct-to-consumer? I think that's a lot more obvious. Or at least it is to me since I had a startup which created a premium version of something VERY commoditized(car batteries) and went through this thought process. The first reason is retail margin. If you can manufacture something for $X, it will probably retail for $2.5-3X. When it's really cheap to make, that might be a reasonable price, but when you are making something that has 3-5x the BOM of the cheaper versions, that high of a markup can make the product inviable. When you start to look at the absolute dollar values, you realize you might be able to do your own marketing and sell direct at a lower price. Second, with such a price premium, retail isn't as appealing because your buyers are going to be high intent. If your underwear is 5x the cost of everything around it, you're not going to sell the average Walmart shopper just because they're already there. So the other value prop of retail, exposing your product to their captive audience, isn't going to be very valuable either. So we're left with a lot of DTC business, generally selling quite premium products at high prices, but what are often very reasonable margins. The economics can be shaky because of the high cost of user acquisition, but unfortunately there aren't really any better alternatives at present. Some people do take advantage of this general ecosystem to try to sell cheap stuff in the same manner. I think long term this is hard to due because so much of the business relies on word of mouth, but these sorts of entities definitely do come and go.