DTC Benchmarks

📈 Bainbridge DTC Index

Weekly DTC benchmarks data from a group of publicly traded companies curated by Bainbridge.

Index Valuation Multiples

Individual Company Data

📚 DTC Benchmark Resources

A list of the DTC benchmark resources we trust most and visit regularly.

• 2PM DTC Power List | Web Smith at 2PM maintains a rigorous database of emerging DTC companies ranked by “general likelihood of achieving an exit.” With data including employment, growth, funding and more, it’s a mainstay resource for the DTC community. 

• eMarketer D2C Brand Reports | Andrew Lipsman at eMarketer has been covering the DTC landscape for several years and has built a data set through surveys of DTC founders and other mechanisms. The full reports are available for purchase or via subscription, but many insights are publicly available.

• IAB 250 Direct Brands to Watch | The IAB maintains the IAB 250, a list of “direct brands to watch.” In addition, they’ve published a number of must-read reports on the space, including this 2019 report on building a “21st Century Brand” and their latest report, published in March 2020, with insights and examples from hundreds of DTC brands.

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What is this data?

The public company data above is the first component of a broader set of benchmarks we’re building to help DTC founders, investors, analysts, and press get a better handle on the market and competition.

The index is made up of a group of public companies intended to serve as a representative sample of the (more mature) business models commonly associated with DTC commerce. While many of them also have a wholesale business, we’ve filtered for businesses that we believe are fundamentally “DTC-first.” As of January 2020, the median percentage of direct-to-consumer revenue for companies in the Bainbridge Index was 73%.

At Bainbridge, our focus is helping eCommerce founders plan, source and close the right mix of capital to grow their business, so the metrics we’ve included are those commonly used as shorthand for determining valuation and creditworthiness. We welcome your feedback on which metrics to include – see the links below for ways to join the conversation.

Data for the above tables is sourced from a combination of Finviz, Koyfin, and individual company filings. We plan to add additional data from more sources soon.

Why does this exist?

Since many investment decisions are made on a relative basis, it’s mission-critical for founders and investors to have access to shared data sets that can help strengthen alignment and improve outcomes.

While the conversation about DTC valuations has benefitted recently from prominent voices in the community (see here, here and here), we saw the need for a more comprehensive, evergreen resource.

There are good reasons why this hasn’t previously existed. Creating a single set of useful benchmarks is difficult in a space primarily occupied by private companies. Data is scarce, numbers are difficult to trust, and it’s unlikely that any single data set can be applied universally across companies with varying categories, price points, and business models. But it’s important to start somewhere, and with your support and feedback, we hope this resource can continue to grow in valuable for all those involved in the DTC community.

What are you planning to add?

Great question. Here’s what we’ve got in in the works:

1. 👩‍💻 DTC Community Benchmarks

Community benchmarks are crowdsourced by you: the founders, operating partners, investors and others that make up the DTC commerce community. Periodically, we send out a request for benchmarks and facilitate discussion on a single metric (gross margin, for example). All members that contribute at least one data point then receive access to the full (anonymized) data set. Once we’ve reached data sufficiency, we’ll publish an abridged version of the data here for public use.

2. 📘 DTC Benchmark Research Studies

We’re working on a number of additional benchmark studies in partnership with other organizations in the DTC community to further augment the data set. Interested in partnering with us on additional research? Please let us know.

3. 📖 Secondary Research Curation

As we continue to find additional relevant benchmark data from other sources, we’ll curate links here to help make it easy to find what you’re looking for. If you have a link to share, please give us a shout and we’ll link it here.

4. 🧮 More Granularity, More Metrics

We know that benchmarks that blend data across brands and categories have significant limitations. As our dataset grows, we’ll add additional layers of granularity, starting with showing our chosen metrics broken out by category and company life stage.

We also plan to include additional metrics with an emphasis on unit economics, and various measures of CAC and LTV. Other suggestions? Send us an email.

Thanks for stopping by!

With your help, we hope to make this page an invaluable resource for founders, investors and operators in the DTC and eCommerce community. Please follow us on Twitter for more benchmarks content and other resources.

Best,

Ben and the Bainbridge Team