Direct-to-consumer has become luxury’s control center.
What first gained traction as a higher-margin alternative to wholesale in the mid-2010s became a necessity during the pandemic. In the years since, as the multi-brand landscape has contracted, direct-to-consumer (DTC) selling has evolved into the industry’s core operating model.
Today, the biggest luxury players are reshaping their businesses around owned channels, integrating stores, e-commerce, clienteling, and data into a single system designed to control how a brand is experienced. Exclusive Vogue Shopping data suggests those leading players are commanding disproportionate consumer attention, with the 25 top-performing brands evaluated for this report recording year-on-year click-through growth of 11.6%, compared to 2.6% for other premium and luxury fashion brands.
The DTC recalibration is visible across recent earnings: LVMH, Kering, Moncler Group, Prada Group, and Ermenegildo Zegna Group have each reinforced the importance of owned retail, tighter distribution, and direct client relationships. At Ermenegildo Zegna Group, DTC accounted for 82% of brand revenues in 2025, up from 78% in 2024 and 73% in 2023 — rising to 85% in Q1 of 2026.
“DTC has evolved from being one important channel to the central pillar of our business model and a key growth engine across our three brands [Zegna, Tom Ford Fashion, and Thom Browne],” says Ermenegildo “Gildo” Zegna, the group’s executive chair and CEO. “It allows us to present each brand exactly as we want it to be experienced, from product assortment to store environment and storytelling.”
Canada Goose has emerged as a best-in-class DTC operator, combining a strong owned retail network with clienteling and storytelling to deepen customer relationships. “DTC has always mattered to us; however, what’s fundamentally changed is how intentionally we’re using it to connect with people, beyond selling to them,” says Carrie Baker, brand and commercial president at Canada Goose. “Today, DTC represents more than 70% of our business, but we don’t think of it as a channel. We think of it as the space where our brand comes to life most fully. It’s where someone can step into our world.”
However, as DTC becomes the industry standard for selling product, a new challenge is emerging. The tools are more sophisticated, and the investment is higher — yet conversion remains stubbornly difficult. Discovery is increasingly fragmented, and brands are layering new tools onto existing systems rather than simplifying the journey.
“There’s still a conversion gap,” says Juan Pellerano, chief marketing officer at Swap Commerce, an all-in-one platform for managing cross-border operations. “Brands feel they’re delivering a best-in-class customer experience, but consumers say it’s actually getting harder to make [purchase] decisions compared to three years ago.”
Alternative models are emerging in response. At the Vogue Business Global Summit this week, Swap is unveiling what it describes as the first-ever “agentic storefront” — an AI-powered environment designed to take customers from discovery through to purchase within a single, conversational interface. Launch partners include Paul Smith, Odd Muse, Studio Nicholson, and Simkhai.
This signals a wider evolution that will define the next phase of DTC. Brands are moving away from transactional e-commerce and toward more relationship-led models, where trust, guidance, and continuity shape how customers move from discovery to purchase.
In that context, conversion becomes the outcome of the experience — not the starting point.
Step 1: Shift to a trust-led mindset
As DTC matures, the customer journey is evolving. Shopping is no longer a linear path from discovery to purchase. It is now an ongoing process shaped by multiple touchpoints — from search and social media, to editorial content, in-store experiences and, increasingly, AI-led discovery — with decisions formed over repeated interactions rather than a single moment of intent.
At the same time, shopping is also becoming more deliberate. Ermenegildo Zegna Group notes that customers are increasingly thoughtful, placing greater emphasis on timelessness, meaning, and what a brand stands for in terms of values and ethics. “Clients are more informed and look for craftsmanship, provenance, and credibility,” says Zegna.
Reassurance is paramount. Focus group participants consistently referenced shopping with people they trust — be it parents, siblings, or close friends — when making high-value purchases. “We’re seeing a broader change in people’s behavior,” confirms Baker. “They are shopping as families, or as groups, and are spending time in-store exploring.” This is raising expectations around service, storytelling, and creating environments that feel immersive and memorable.
The need for trusted sources of advice and inspiration is reinforced by our survey, which shows that — despite years of disruption — traditional editorial channels remain highly influential in shaping taste. Magazine and newspaper articles rank as the single biggest driver of discovery (42%), followed by e-commerce sites (39%) and social media (37%). We also asked luxury shoppers to score how much they trust a brand out of 10; only five out of the 25 brands scored seven or above from the majority of their shoppers.
Today, the shopping journey is less about a single transaction and more about sustained engagement over time. For brands, that raises the bar: it is no longer enough to drive traffic and convert in the moment; they must build long-term relationships grounded in trust and relevance.
Step 2: Navigate the AI playing field
Increasingly, that journey is being shaped — and accelerated — by new technologies.
AI is already embedded across the luxury shopping journey. Our consumer survey shows 84% of luxury consumers use AI tools as part of how they shop. Much of this is driven by more established behaviors — such as image search (64%) and personalized recommendations (57%) — but newer use cases are gaining ground.
Of the shoppers using AI in their paths to purchase, 42% now use it to compare products and prices, while over a third use the tech to discover brands (38%), or to help narrow down purchase decisions (35%). Only 24% are using or have used AI platforms to complete purchases.
“I use [AI] a lot to find out about new collections or about the creative directors… but I wouldn’t be comfortable completing transactions in ChatGPT, I would want to go to the website of the product itself,” said one focus group participant based in the US. Others expressed concerns around trust, payments, and transparency, though some respondents said they would consider AI-enabled checkout if it was backed by trusted payment providers or additional concierge-style shopping services.
While still nascent, generative AI — and specifically large language models (LLMs) — are becoming important entry points for discovery in fashion and luxury. Around 28% of survey respondents use AI search to discover new products or brands; of those, 40% use ChatGPT, 32% use Google Gemini, 14% use Microsoft Copilot, and 8% use Claude.
This introduces a tension: while DTC is built on control, LLMs transfer influence to third-party platforms at the earliest stage of the journey. “LLMs pull a lot of recommendations from editorial sites,” notes Lisa Aiken, Vogue’s executive fashion director and Condé Nast’s SVP of commerce. “For brands, that’s quite confronting. You want to control everything about what gets said, but LLMs don’t care what you say about yourself. They care about what other people say about you.”
Pellerano adds that, even as LLMs build out their own commerce experiences, they are continuing to prioritize platform engagement over conversion for the merchant. The result is that brands risk losing control over the customer relationship, as well as the data and revenue those interactions generate.
Swap’s agentic storefronts are dedicated AI-powered environments that sit alongside a brand’s core e-commerce site, offering an alternative, more guided, and conversational interface. The model reflects a broader rethinking of how digital commerce is structured. Rather than directing customers through static product grids, agentic storefronts combine discovery, recommendation, and checkout into a single flow, while allowing brands to retain control over the customer relationship and underlying data.
“You can search conversationally, find outfits, try them on virtually, and complete the purchase through voice or text,” says Pellerano. “We’re giving merchants the tools to be the LLM themselves.”
Though still early, initial results suggest this approach can improve performance. Swap says its storefronts are converting at roughly twice the rate of standard e-commerce experiences, while integrated virtual try-on tools have helped reduce return rates by 20%.
These developments suggest brands will need to think beyond chatbots or basic AI integrations and focus instead on how AI fits into the wider customer journey — particularly where it can reduce friction, build trust, and create more intuitive paths from discovery through to purchase, while remaining in control of the brand experience and customer relationship.
Step 3: Fix the path to purchase
Even as these tools make discovery more instinctive, later parts of the purchasing journey remain complex — and it is here that many brands continue to lose sales.
DTC offers control, but it is difficult to execute. “Being a retail-first organization requires knowledge and discipline, as well as scale and financial strength,” says Zegna. In practice, this means tighter assortments and sustained investment across stores, technology, and logistics.
Much of the complexity is most visible in DTC e-commerce, where experiences remain uneven. “Brands scaling DTC today are running into a familiar set of operational pressures: fragmented data, rising fulfillment costs, and increasingly tight margins,” says Deann Evans, managing director of EMEA at Shopify. “As these businesses grow, complexity becomes the biggest tax on performance. Disconnected systems make it harder to get a single view of the customer or operate efficiently across channels.”
The impact is clear in conversion data. Global cart abandonment rates sit steady at around 70%, according to Swap Commerce, with nearly half of shoppers abandoning purchases due to unexpected costs at checkout. A lack of preferred delivery or returns options can push abandonment rates above 80%.
Cross-border commerce remains a particular pain point. In Europe, abandonment rates can also reach up to 80% — around 10 percentage points above the global average — driven largely by duties, taxes, and delivery uncertainties, Swap’s data shows. Brands that move to clearer, upfront pricing models — where additional costs are clear from the start rather than added later — can see conversion improve by as much as 15% to 30%, highlighting how sensitive customers are to friction at checkout.
While payment options are increasingly standardized, delivery and returns are not. Consumers may be able to check out easily, but “they don’t know whether or not they’re going to receive the item easily”, notes Pellerano. Friction around duties, customs, and returns can undermine the entire experience — and directly impact customer lifetime value.
Addressing this requires a change in focus from checkout to fulfillment, Pellerano says. Localizing payment options is no longer enough; brands must also localize delivery, duties, and returns, giving customers clarity at every stage of the journey.
More broadly, the focus for DTC growth is moving beyond acquisition to long-term relationship-building. As Evans notes, consumers increasingly move fluidly between online and offline channels, raising the bar for consistency between the e-commerce experience and that of a brand store. “In a market where technology has made switching easy, it’s that combination of operational simplicity and customer intimacy that ultimately drives sustainable growth,” she says.
That shift — from transaction to relationship — is where physical retail becomes critical again.
Step 4: Use stores as relationship platforms
While DTC began as a largely digital model, it has evolved into a hybrid approach, with physical stores now playing an important role.
When asked where they had made luxury fashion purchases in the past six months, 52% of our survey respondents said a brand’s own website, while nearly the same proportion (47%) said mono-brand stores.
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And while only 25% say they use stores to discover brands or products — compared to the 39% that use e-commerce sites — stores remain the dominant channel for spending on higher-value items. Some 48% of respondents say they spend the most on luxury in stores, versus 30% on e-commerce sites.
As a result, expectations of the in-store luxury experience are higher than ever: customers expect staff to offer deep product knowledge, styling advice, and a broader understanding of luxury fashion. Meanwhile, several of our focus group participants described traveling to stores in other cities after experiencing poor service in those local to them.
Brands are responding by investing in more tailored, immersive environments. At the Zegna brand, this includes invitation-only spaces offering made-to-measure services. The brand is also changing the way it plans and delivers collections — introducing drops at specific moments during the year, with the aim of ensuring stores feel fresh and drive footfall. Thom Browne and Tom Ford Fashion will soon follow suit.
Similarly, as Canada Goose’s distribution mix evolves, it is thinking differently about how to keep its stores and online experience dynamic. “It’s about keeping the floor fresh, introducing newness consistently, rotating stories, and making space for a broader, more relevant assortment,” says Baker. Meanwhile, its recently opened flagships in Paris and Milan are more experiential and designed to be more emotionally engaging, with lighting, materials, and architectural forms that give a feeling of “Canadian warmth”, she says. Artwork celebrates its connection to Northern communities and Indigenous cultures — signaling authenticity and technical credibility.
The brand’s recently launched clienteling program — which is being rolled out across the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) region before launching in North America — also allows it to build stronger relationships by equipping store associates with the tools to communicate directly with customers via WhatsApp, text, or email.
DTC has given brands more control than ever, but it has also exposed the limits of that control. Discovery is increasingly shaped elsewhere, execution remains inconsistent, and customer expectations continue to rise. The brands that succeed will be those that consolidate these elements: using technology to guide discovery and remove friction, while physical retail works to build trust and long-term relationships.
“We see DTC continuing to lead how we grow and engage, with wholesale playing a focused and complementary role. It’s a deliberate ecosystem,” says Baker. “Staying close to our clients is what sharpens that balance of emotion and discipline. It’s how we stay connected at every touchpoint. In luxury, DTC is the engine that drives it.”
The new rules of DTC
What’s over: Treating DTC as just another channel within a broader distribution mix. Expanding reach without regard for control. Building e-commerce experiences that prioritize features over function.
What’s changing: DTC is becoming the core operating model for luxury, not a complement to wholesale. Stores are evolving into relationship-driven environments, designed to deepen engagement. The customer journey is becoming more fragmented, shaped by multiple touchpoints including social, resale, and AI-led discovery.
What wins now: Reducing complexity, not adding to it — simplifying the journey from discovery to purchase, rather than layering new tools onto broken systems. Connecting discovery, transaction, and fulfillment into a single, coherent experience. Using DTC to build lasting relationships, combining operational precision with personalized service in-store and online.
Spotlight: Carrie Baker, brand and commercial president, Canada Goose
How has the role of DTC changed within your overall distribution strategy, and what has driven that shift?
Direct-to-consumer has always mattered to us, however what’s fundamentally changed is how intentionally we’re using it to connect with people, beyond selling to them. Today, DTC represents more than 70% of our business, but we don’t think of it as a channel. We think of it as the space where our brand comes to life most fully. It’s where someone can step into our world. Whether that’s walking into one of our stores, discovering us online, or experiencing us via storytelling.
DTC has additionally become our way to listen, learn, and speak directly to our audience. It allows us to move with intention, test new ideas, and ultimately be closer to the people we are building this brand for, the customer.
How are you seeing customer behavior change across your own channels?
We’re seeing a real shift in how people engage with Canada Goose. They are coming back more often, returning more frequently, and building an ongoing relationship with us year-round, rather than seasonally. We’re seeing a broader change in people’s behavior. They are shopping as families or as groups and spending time in-store exploring. With this, there is a higher expectation on service, storytelling, and for something that’s memorable.
At the same time, people are discovering Canada Goose in new ways. We’re seeing strong traction beyond our heritage parkas, particularly in lightweight styles and apparel — now our fastest-growing category. That feeling they get with us matters more than ever. And as we’ve elevated the storytelling, creative, and environments, we’ve seen conversion and brand loyalty strengthen, even in more pressured traffic environments.
Looking ahead, how do you see the balance between DTC and wholesale evolving?
We see DTC continuing to lead how we grow and engage, with wholesale playing a focused and complementary role. It’s a deliberate ecosystem. Next year marks our 70th anniversary, and this history is central to our overarching strategy — serving not only as the foundation of our authority in performance, but as a platform that continues to shape us, the storytelling, and the future of our brand.
Staying close to our clients is what sharpens that balance of emotion and discipline. It’s how we stay connected at every touchpoint. In luxury, DTC is the engine that drives it.
