The shifting centre of gravity — why houses with little in common converge on direct

The observation. Over the past three to five years, houses with little in common — by age, size or trade — have converged on the same decision : take back direct ownership of the relationship with the end customer. Bose closed its 119 physical stores in 2020. Villeroy & Boch, founded in 1748, has been accelerating its direct channel since 2021. Levi's, under CEO Michelle Gass, made DTC-first central in 2023. Nike launched Consumer Direct Acceleration in 2020 and parted ways with several wholesale partners. Birkenstock, at its 2023 NYSE listing, named its engineered distribution a strategic asset. This is neither a fad nor a single playbook ; it is a structural shift in the industry's centre of gravity.

The short history of a long chain

Distribution as we know it — manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, customer — is a relatively recent construction. It was optimised after the war on a simple premise : makers make, distributors sell, and each stays in their lane. That tacit contract held while logistics, customer-acquisition cost and data management all favoured specialisation. Three forces have eroded it since.

The first is marketplace economics. When a distributor invites suppliers to sell 1P or 3P on its marketplace, it transfers — often quietly — the entire operational risk to the brand : delivery, invoicing, warranty, after-sales. The distributor keeps the audience and the transactional data ; the brand inherits the complexity. McKinsey noted as early as 2021 that this shift was redefining the distributor's added value — from sales agent to platform operator.

The second is private label (the marque de distributeur in French). When a retailer develops its own line on the same shelf, the relationship is no longer a partnership but a coexistence. Bain & Company has documented since 2019 the rising share of private label in retailers' margins — often the trigger for defensive D2C moves by industrial brands.

The third is the falling marginal cost of direct commerce. Last-mile logistics, payment gateways, machine translation, ERP integration — everything that, twenty years ago, made direct selling prohibitive for an industrial mid-cap is now accessible. What does not automate is trust.

Five houses, five decisions

Villeroy & Boch, German tableware maker founded in 1748, accelerated omnichannel and direct e-commerce in its 2021 annual report and through the 2023 acquisition of Ideal Standard. A house nearly three centuries old does not change its distribution model on a whim — it does so because the cost structure and customer-data capture make it necessary.

Bose, founded in 1964, closed its 119 physical stores in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia in February 2020 (Bose press release, February 2020). The company explained that most of its customers' buying journeys had moved online — and that its relational investment was better placed where the conversation actually happened.

Levi's, under Michelle Gass since 2024, has placed direct-to-consumer at the centre of its strategy ; the group's quarterly reports point to a DTC share trending toward 50 % of revenue. The brand has acknowledged that its cultural relationship with its customer can no longer be fully delegated to intermediaries.

Nike announced its Consumer Direct Acceleration in June 2020 under John Donahoe's leadership, exiting some wholesale partners (Belk, Urban Outfitters, Olympia Sports, among others) to consolidate its own channels. Five years on, the strategy is being adjusted — proof that these transitions are never linear, and that a partial return to partners remains a governance option.

Birkenstock, at its NYSE listing in October 2023, wrote engineered distribution into its F-1 prospectus : a calibrated channel mix where the direct share grows at the pace of operational capacity. A family-owned house of more than two centuries does not coin a consultancy phrase without intent — it is the formalisation of a change in doctrine.

What it requires

Taking back the direct relationship is not just opening an e-commerce site. It demands product infrastructure, data quality, local customer service, channel-coherent pricing and — most demanding — loyalty toward distributor partners who remain essential to the trade. The danger in any D2C transition is not cost : it is relational confusion. A house that announces a direct channel without clarifying its promise to its historical resellers builds a trust debt that comes due later.

The question is therefore not direct or indirect. It is : for which customer, at what service level, with what pricing, and what explicit promise toward each link of the chain. It is a governance question more than a marketing one.

Where we stand

Montandor Andorra is a young house — set up in Andorra in 2024 — and we distribute a brand with its own history. The opening of an online boutique for HoReCa pros is not a break with distribution ; it is the addition of a channel coherent with the nature of certain customers — those who want to order four chalkboards on a Tuesday evening, in a few clicks, without opening an account. For markets where the reseller remains the best entry point, the reseller remains the best entry point.

“A serious house does not change its model to follow fashion ; it does so when service to the end customer requires it. What we learn from houses with two or three centuries on us — Villeroy & Boch, Birkenstock — is that a distribution transition is measured in years, in price coherence, in clarity toward partners, and in loyalty.”
— Wouter Meijboom, CEO, Montandor Andorra.

Sources

• Bose Corporation — press release, February 2020, closure of 119 physical stores in North America, Europe, Japan and Australia.
• Nike, Inc. — Consumer Direct Acceleration announcement, June 2020 (Nike investor relations).
• Levi Strauss & Co. — quarterly reports and investor day under Michelle Gass, 2023-2024 (Levi Strauss investor relations).
• Villeroy & Boch AG — 2021 annual report and 2023 Ideal Standard acquisition (Villeroy & Boch corporate communications).
• Birkenstock Holding plc — F-1 prospectus filed with the SEC, October 2023 (NYSE listing, ticker BIRK).
• McKinsey & Company — research on the future of retail marketplaces, 2021-2022.
• Bain & Company — research on private label in consumer goods, 2019-2023.

Published 3 May 2026 by the Montandor team — analysis by Céline Faure (Content & SEO Lead).