Tagged: dtc
30 results
Fashion AI Visibility
Fashion discovery is moving from search engines to answer engines. When shoppers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity for the best minimalist label or the most sustainable brand, the names that surface are not the biggest ad spenders but the brands with the most public, structured knowledge for AI to cite. This YesPress Newsroom analysis lays out what large language models look for, why many direct-to-consumer fashion brands underperform despite strong paid-social businesses, and how an always-on newsroom turns internal expertise into compounding, citable assets.
Instant
Instant is a Sydney-founded, AI-powered retention marketing platform for ecommerce brands. It identifies anonymous shoppers, recovers abandoned carts and sends AI-generated email and SMS at the moment of highest purchase intent. After starting life as a one-click checkout tool in 2021, Instant pivoted to retention marketing and grew fast - more than 1,500 direct-to-consumer brands now use it, and the company says its AI-driven flows have generated over $1 billion in incremental revenue.
David Dokes
David Dokes is the co-founder and CEO of Polar Analytics, a first-party data and business intelligence platform built for Shopify and direct-to-consumer brands. Before Polar, he led growth at car-sharing marketplace Turo, where he ran a roughly $20M annual marketing budget. He teamed up with former Airbnb data scientist Charbel Seif in 2020 to give smaller retailers the kind of enterprise-grade data infrastructure that big companies take for granted, unifying scattered marketing, sales, and inventory data into one dashboard that installs in days rather than months. Under his leadership Polar has raised roughly $28.5M and now serves several thousand merchants across dozens of countries.
LoudCrowd
LoudCrowd is an Austin-based software company that helps direct-to-consumer brands turn creators and customers into a measurable sales channel. Its all-in-one creator commerce platform runs influencer, affiliate, ambassador, and user-generated-content programs, spins up branded on-domain creator storefronts, and layers on AI agents that automate discovery, outreach, and program management - shifting the focus from reach-based vanity metrics to attributable revenue.
Outerspace
Outerspace is a brand-first third-party logistics (3PL) and fulfillment company that handles warehousing, picking, packing, kitting, shipping and returns for high-growth omnichannel consumer brands. Founded in late 2019 and headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, it pairs dedicated on-site operations teams with its proprietary Mission Control order-management and shipping technology to turn fulfillment from a cost center into a growth lever. The company serves DTC and retail brands across apparel, home goods, beauty and CPG, and has raised more than $34 million, including a $30M Series B led by Prysm Capital in 2022.
Polar Analytics
Polar Analytics is a multichannel AI analytics platform for ecommerce and direct-to-consumer brands, built to unify scattered marketing, sales and CRM data into one dashboard on top of a warehouse-native data stack. Founded in 2021 by David Dokes and Charbel Seif, it centralizes 45+ data sources, tracks metrics like CAC, ROAS, MER and LTV, and layers AI agents and a Model Context Protocol connector so merchants can query live data and act on it. Polar serves 4,000+ brands across 45 countries and has raised roughly $28.5M, including an $18M Series A led by Chalfen Ventures in November 2024.
Prescient AI
Prescient AI is a marketing measurement and optimization platform that uses machine learning and Bayesian statistics to show brands how much revenue each advertising channel actually drives. Its marketing mix model (MMM) captures full-funnel impact - including the indirect halo effects campaigns have on organic lift and downstream revenue - then forecasts future performance and recommends budget allocation across DTC ecommerce, Amazon, and retail. Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Miami, the company serves 100+ omnichannel and DTC brands and positions itself as an independent, privacy-safe alternative to last-click attribution.
Provable Markets
Provable Markets is a New York-based financial technology company modernizing the securities lending and securities finance markets. Through Aurora, its SEC-registered, vertically integrated Alternative Trading System, it combines encrypted real-time order matching, automated post-trade lifecycle management, and connectivity to central clearing (NSCC CCP) and settlement (DTC) infrastructure. Founded in 2020 by CEO Matthew Cohen and rooted in cryptographic research on secure multi-party computation, the company aims to replace the instant-message-and-spreadsheet workflows of a roughly trillion-dollar market with cloud-native, low-latency, transparent trading.
Proxima
Proxima is a New York-based predictive data intelligence platform that helps consumer and DTC brands find high-value customers and scale paid media efficiently. It turns billions of anonymized ecommerce transactions from a proprietary network of tens of millions of shoppers into AI-powered audiences, conversion attribution, creative guidance, and industry benchmarks across Meta, TikTok, and Google. Founded in 2022 by Alex Song, the company raised a $12M Series A in April 2024 led by Mucker Capital.
Stay AI
Stay AI is a Shopify-native subscription and retention platform that helps direct-to-consumer brands turn subscriptions into a growth channel rather than a simple billing tool. Founded in 2021 by ecommerce operators Gina Perrelli, Pierson Krass, and Taylor Cawiezell, the platform pairs a no-code, marketer-friendly customer portal with AI-driven churn prediction, smart dunning, cancellation surveys, and A/B testing. More than 500 brands - including OLIPOP, Magic Spoon, Momofuku, Lemme, and ARMRA - use Stay AI to reduce churn, lift recurring revenue, and increase customer lifetime value.
Gina Perrelli
Gina Perrelli is the co-founder and CEO of Stay AI, a subscription and retention platform for Shopify brands that treats subscriptions as a performance channel rather than a payment mechanism. A self-described 'retention girlie' with over a decade in lifecycle marketing, she previously co-founded the ecommerce agency Lunar Solar Group and now leads a company that helps hundreds of DTC brands - including Olipop, Vita Coco, and Momofuku - reduce churn and grow subscriber revenue. Stay AI raised $15.1M in Series A funding and has expanded through acquisitions of RetentionEngine and Bellwethr.
Taika
Taika is a San Francisco-based functional beverage company making ready-to-drink canned coffees and matcha lattes infused with adaptogens and functional mushrooms - ingredients like L-theanine, ashwagandha, and lion's mane - meant to deliver focused energy without the jitters or crash. Founded in 2019 by former Facebook engineer Michael Sharon and world-class barista Kalle Freese, the brand is plant-based and sweetened with monk fruit for zero added sugar. Its tagline, 'Feel Inspired, Not Wired,' captures the pitch: caffeine with calm, sold direct-to-consumer online and through retail.
Ricky Choi
Ricky Choi is the co-founder and CEO of Outerspace, a brand-centric 3PL that runs picking, packing, kitting and shipping for direct-to-consumer companies out of a 200,000+ sq ft campus in northern New Jersey and additional coasts. Before Outerspace, he co-founded Nice Laundry, a Kickstarter-launched premium socks and underwear brand that set an opening-day backer record in fashion. He is a Wharton graduate who worked in venture capital and at LivingSocial before starting companies of his own.
Travis Hess
Travis Hess is the CEO of Commerce.com (the company formerly known as BigCommerce), the publicly traded ecommerce platform he rebranded in 2025 to bet the business on AI-driven, agentic commerce. An agency and consulting veteran who spent 15-plus years scaling direct-to-consumer brands at Accenture, The Stable, and BVA before ever running a software company, he joined BigCommerce as President in May 2024 and took the CEO seat that October. He is candid to a fault about the hard parts of the job, once comparing the experience of watching the stock price to 'getting wedgied in front of the class every day.'
Will Holtz
Will Holtz runs strategy and operations at Prescient AI, the marketing mix modeling platform that tells omnichannel brands where the next dollar should go. He listed as Interim CEO on the company page and VP of Strategy & Operations across recent profiles - a range of hats at a fast-moving Series A startup. A Cornell economics-and-psychology grad with a Wharton MBA, he started in finance at Morgan Stanley and Soros Fund Management before spending a decade in the trenches of DTC operations at Recess, Grove Collaborative, SourceMedium and his own ventures. On the side he co-founded and hosts Don't V*LOOKUP, a podcast about how the best operators actually use their data.
GEM
GEM is a Los Angeles-based wellness company that reimagines the daily multivitamin as a whole-food bite rather than a pill or gummy. Founded in 2018 by Sara Cullen, GEM packs 20+ vitamins, minerals, superfoods, prebiotics, probiotics and microalgae into a single real-food chew, sold mainly through a subscription model plus retail and Amazon. Its pitch is 'food is medicine' - transparent, plant-based, and traceable nutrition for people who distrust synthetic supplements.
GoodDay Software
GoodDay Software is an Austin-based startup building GoodDayOS, an AI-native, Shopify-embedded ERP alternative for inventory-driven consumer brands. Founded by former Chubbies and Loop Returns operators Kyle Hency and Dave Wardell, GoodDay unifies inventory, purchase orders, landed costs, presales, and multi-channel operations across DTC, wholesale, marketplaces, and retail - promising launches in weeks rather than the months and consultants legacy ERP demands. The company raised $7M in early 2026 (roughly $13.5M total) and counts 40+ Shopify brands among its customers.
Kindra
Kindra is a clinically-backed, direct-to-consumer vaginal health and sexual wellness brand founded in 2019 through a launchpad formed by venture firm M13 and P&G Ventures. It sells estrogen-free, doctor-formulated intimate care - lotions, serums, lubricants, bath soaks and menopause supplements - designed for women navigating dryness, discomfort and hormonal shifts across menopause, postpartum and everyday life. The brand pairs its patent-pending, peptide-based formulas with education and community, and says its products are recommended by 6,000+ OB/GYNs and pelvic-floor, oncology and sexual-medicine specialists.
Our Place
Our Place is a Los Angeles-based direct-to-consumer kitchenware brand founded in 2019 by Shiza Shahid, Amir Tehrani and Zach Rosner. It is best known for the Always Pan - a ceramic, PFAS-free multifunctional pan that replaces eight to ten pieces of traditional cookware and became one of the internet's first viral pieces of cookware. The company designs multifunctional, non-toxic, and design-forward cookware, bakeware, dinnerware and small appliances, and pairs its products with a mission of celebrating home cooking, cultural connection and social impact.
Replo
Replo is a San Francisco-based software company that lets ecommerce marketing teams design, launch, and test high-converting Shopify pages without writing code. Built around a visual drag-and-drop editor, hundreds of templates, live product-data integration, and increasingly AI-driven page generation, Replo targets mid-market direct-to-consumer brands that need custom landing pages and marketing funnels fast - without hiring engineers. Founded in 2021 by ex-Uber and PlanGrid engineers Yuxin Zhu and Noah Gilmore, the Y Combinator-backed startup has grown to thousands of ecommerce customers.
wildwonder
wildwonder is a San Francisco-based functional beverage company making sparkling prebiotic and probiotic drinks inspired by the Chinese herbal healing tonics founder Rosa Li grew up drinking. Each organic, vegan, low-sugar can pairs 5g of prebiotic plant fiber and live probiotics with herbs, botanicals, and fruit flavors like Guava Rose and Mango Gold. Positioned as a better-for-you soda alternative, the brand has sold millions of cans across thousands of retailers, landed a Shark Tank deal with DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, and directs 5% of profits toward empowering women and marginalized communities.
Elizabeth Liu
Elizabeth Liu is the CEO of Crowd Cow, the Seattle-based online marketplace that connects independent farms and fisheries directly with people who want to know where their meat and seafood comes from. She has been with the company since its earliest days, rising from category and operations roles to VP of Marketing before taking the top job in February 2023 when co-founder Joe Heitzeberg stepped down. Before Crowd Cow she spent roughly 15 years in direct-to-consumer and marketplace commerce, including marketing director at Wayfair, payments product manager at Amazon, and business development at Zulily. She holds an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and mentors early-stage founders through Techstars.
Juan Camilo Meisel
Juan Camilo Meisel is the founder and CEO of Grip, a Miami-based cold-chain logistics platform built to keep perishables cold and on-time from warehouse to doorstep. Before Grip, he spent six years running logistics at ButcherBox, helping scale frozen-meat delivery from zero to roughly $600 million in annual revenue. Colombian-born, Boston-trained, Miami-based, he now runs a network of refrigerated fulfillment hubs across the U.S. and was recognized on Forbes 30 Under 30 Miami in 2023.
Kyle Hency
Kyle Hency is the co-founder and CEO of GoodDay Software, an AI-native ERP built for Shopify-era consumer brands. He previously co-founded Chubbies, the Stanford-born shorts company that ran on irreverence and FridayAtFive energy until Solo Stove acquired it in 2021. Now based in Austin, he's rebuilding the unsexy guts of e-commerce: inventory, orders, finance.
Brad Berman
Brad Berman is the co-owner and CEO of BodyBio, a family-owned cellular-health and nutritional-supplement company in Millville, New Jersey. He arrived not from a lab but from the beverage aisle, with stops at PepsiCo and FIJI Water, and married into the founding Kane family. Since taking the top job in 2019 he has rebranded the 25-plus-year-old practitioner brand, pushed it into direct-to-consumer and mainstream retail, and steered roughly 41% revenue growth that landed BodyBio on the Inc. 5000.
Jaclyn Fu
Jaclyn Fu is the co-founder and co-CEO of Pepper, the direct-to-consumer bra brand built for small-chested women that grew from a Kickstarter funded in 10 hours into an eight-figure company that has sold more than one million bras. A UC Berkeley graduate and former product marketer at Mozilla, Etsy and Conversocial, she turned four words scribbled on a road trip - 'bras for Asian Americans' - into a movement to redefine how small chests are seen. She and co-founder Lia Winograd landed on Forbes' 2020 30 Under 30 list for Retail & Commerce.
Rosa Li
Rosa Li is the founder and CEO of wildwonder, the sparkling beverage brand she built around the herbal tonics her grandmother brewed in Beijing. A Stanford MBA and former private equity investor, she traded Wall Street spreadsheets for a homemade carbonation rig made from a beer keg, launched in 2020, and landed a deal with DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on Shark Tank in 2023. wildwonder now reaches 3,000-plus retailers across 40 states and has sold millions of cans.
Sara Cullen
Sara Cullen is the founder and CEO of GEM, a Los Angeles wellness company that reinvented the daily multivitamin as a bite-sized chew made from real, whole-food ingredients. After a personal health slump in her late twenties left her disillusioned with the synthetic-filler vitamin aisle, the Oregon farm kid and Cornell graduate built the product she could not find. She validated it inside a private Facebook group of women before raising venture capital, selling more than 20 million bites, and turning 'food is medicine' into a real business.
Simon Cheng
Simon Cheng is the founder and CEO of Pique, a Los Angeles-based wellness company that turned whole-leaf tea into dissolvable crystals using a patented cold extraction process. A Hong Kong native who grew up drinking tea with his grandparents, Cheng abandoned those rituals in his teens, then spent his 20s cycling through surgeries and a decade of health crises. He rebuilt his health on a multi-year study trip across Asia learning from medicinal-plant and breathwork masters, and channeled that obsession into Pique, which launched in Whole Foods in 2016 and scaled to thousands of stores. Harvard and Stanford educated, and the youngest member of Harvard School of Public Health's Nutrition Roundtable, Cheng built Pique on three promises: efficacy, purity, and zero prep.
Alex Persson
Alex Persson is the CEO of Privy, the email and SMS marketing platform built for founder-led, scrappy ecommerce brands rather than enterprise giants. A former technology investor at Jefferies and ex-CEO of WeCommerce, he took the helm of Privy in 2024 and steered its 2025 acquisition of conversational SMS pioneer Emotive, betting that growing merchants want a partner and not just another dashboard.