Beaba
Elevating Homemade Baby Food Experience
- UX/UI Design
- Paid Media
- CRO
- Retention
- 410%
- Return on investment over 12 months
- 88%
- First 3-month increase in revenue
- 23%
- Increase in Target® store sales
The retail question: how to avoid channel conflict
How to sell direct without upsetting your retailers.
The fear is that a direct channel creates channel conflict with the partners who got you here. Done right, it doesn’t cannibalize retail — it feeds it.
The fear
Why the site stays a brochure
You spent years earning shelf space. The worry is reasonable: stand up a storefront, discount to move units, and your buyer starts asking why your direct price undercuts their shelf. So the site stays a brochure — and the demand your retail presence creates online gets captured by Amazon, marketplaces, and competitors instead of you.
What actually happens
Run direct for data, not discounts, and it lifts the shelf
A direct channel built for first-party data and retention — not price-cutting — makes the whole portfolio smarter and sells more, everywhere.
When Béaba rebuilt its direct storefront as a first-party data engine and ran paid into specific co-marketing windows with Target, direct didn’t take from the shelf — Target in-store sales rose 23%. That’s the retail–direct halo: direct captures the online demand retail creates, and the data it collects makes every channel convert better.
- Return on investment over 12 months
- 410%
- First 3-month increase in revenue
- 88%
- Increase in Target® store sales
- 23%
Béaba. Every figure is scoped to this brand and the timeframe named with it.
How to do it
Four rules that keep retail on your side
01
Hold the line on price
Match your retail shelf price. Compete on experience and data, not discounts — undercutting your partners is the one thing that actually costs you retail revenue.
02
Use direct for what retail can’t give you
First-party data, retention, and a direct line to your customer. That’s the asset retail will never hand you — and the reason to own the channel.
03
Put paid spend behind retail, not against it
Run direct spend into co-marketing windows that help your retailers sell through, instead of bidding against them.
04
Model the halo
Measure how direct traffic moves in-store and marketplace sales, so you can prove direct is additive — not a threat.
Proof
A brand that grew direct and kept retail happy
Every number stays scoped to its own brand and timeframe.
Model your halo before you launch.
The free self-audit shows where your direct channel captures demand — and how it moves your retail and marketplace numbers, not just your own.
Selling direct, without the retail conflict
Everything you need to know about working with Good Monster.
Channel conflict is when a brand’s own direct-to-consumer website competes against — instead of supporting — the retail partners that stock the brand, usually by undercutting their shelf price. Done right, a direct channel doesn’t have to create that conflict: it can capture demand retail already creates and feed it back to the shelf instead of competing with it.
No, as long as you sell at full price. Your own website does not compete with your retail partners on price, so there is nothing to undercut. It usually helps the shelf. When we rebuilt the website for Béaba, a baby brand sold at Target, their in-store sales at Target rose 23% over the same period. What actually costs you retail revenue is a reseller selling your product below the agreed minimum price. Selling on your own site at full price protects against exactly that.
Hold your direct price to the retail shelf, and point direct spend at co-marketing windows that help the shelf rather than compete with it. Once retailers see your direct channel lifting their sell-through, it stops being a threat and becomes a reason to give you more shelf.
It’s the lift in retail, in-store or marketplace, that a well-run direct channel creates, because direct captures the online demand your retail presence generates and feeds first-party data back into every channel. We model it so you can prove direct is additive, not a threat.