Lawrence Ingrassia opens by identifying the core strategic move behind the direct-to-consumer brand wave: bypassing traditional retail intermediaries to sell directly to customers online.

Why this structural shift mattered so much:

• Removing retail markups allowed these brands to offer better prices or margins, or both
• Direct customer relationships provided rich data unavailable to brands selling only through traditional retail
• This structural advantage, more than any single product innovation, explains much of these brands' rapid early growth

This opening frames the book's central thesis: the disruption was primarily structural and distributional, not necessarily about superior products in most cases.