Is the future of DTC a bootstrapped swimwear company run by a 26-year-old Tiktoker who calls herself Strawberry Milk Mob? Quite possibly.

One of the cliches about DTC ecommerce is that it allows a company to “cut out the middleman.” Because the company is selling directly to consumers without having to pay retail store markups, it can pass on the savings to you, the consumer. This pitch is part of the reason I started Hubble Contacts.

But it turns out to not be true. DTC does cut out certain middlemen like retailers. But it introduces others. The most important, of course, are the marketing platforms like Facebook and Google.

Nearly all DTC companies end up paying at least some amount of “Facebook tax”–that is, the cost of buying Facebook ads to drive traffic to an ecom site. And the Facebook tax ends up being as high, if not higher, than the markup by traditional retailers. Out with one middleman, in with another.

But there are rare DTC brands who, utilizing new platforms, truly have cut out the middleman.

One of my favorites is the swimsuit company called Strawberry Milk Mob. SMM was founded in 2018 by Georgia Costello.

I don’t know much about the quality of SMM’s bathing suits; their reviews seem great. But a lot of swimwear companies have great products.

What sets SMM apart is Georgia.

Georgia, who herself goes by “Strawberry Milk Mob” online, has almost 2 million followers on Tiktok. I myself am unfortunately addicted to Tiktok and started following her about a year ago.

What’s brilliant about Georgia’s Tiktok videos is that they’re mostly not about her business or products. I’d estimate 90% of the videos comprise her amusing comments about life or little comedy bits. Especially notable is her “reasons I love men” video series which, I will say, is not always about how men are lovable…

The other 10% of her videos touch on the business in some way. Sometimes Georgia presents a couple of swimsuit styles in a video to solicit feedback on what to launch. Sometimes she makes “day in the life” videos about what running a business is like. But I didn’t even really know that she had a DTC business for several months after following her.

This restraint makes Georgia’s Tiktok feel authentic. It truly feels like she’s making videos for fun and then just happens to have a DTC business on the side.

Whatever the intention, Georgia’s Tiktok is definitely working at driving sales. SMM has the same search interest on Google as Summersalt, a swimwear business which has raised almost $27mm. SMM has almost 9K reviews on Trustpilot. And it’s achieved this by running exactly 0 Meta ads according to the Meta Ads Library.

What can we learn from this? Well, I’m not sure how generally applicable it is for DTC brands - very few people have the charisma necessary to attract 2 million followers.

But people like Georgia who can generate demand without paying the social media gatekeepers have truly fulfilled the original middleman-free promise of DTC.