The common narrative for consumer-goods manufacturers is that DTC is the growth story. The actual growth for most apparel and soft-goods manufacturers over the past five years has been B2B digital commerce, with DTC serving more as a brand channel than a revenue channel.
Both framings can be true. Which one is actually true for a given manufacturer determines the entire technology stack decision, and most manufacturers get that decision wrong because it is made by the people who are most excited about DTC rather than by the people who are running the margin math honestly.
I led the digital commerce build at an apparel manufacturer that went from minimal digital presence to $1M+ in DTC revenue and $20M+ in incremental B2B and marketplace revenue. I stood up the Salesforce Commerce Cloud instance hands-on, not as an advisor watching an integrator do it. That is unusual in this advisory category. Most tech advisors working with manufacturers have never actually configured the commerce platform they are recommending.
Where manufacturing technology programs actually fail
ERP, PLM, and PIM as three disconnected systems of record. The same product entity gets modeled three different ways, with three different ownership models, in three different tools. Every integration between them is a data reconciliation problem dressed up as an integration problem. The cost of this rarely shows up until the business tries to launch a new channel, re-merchandise a season, or run margin reporting across wholesale and DTC. Then the gap becomes expensive very quickly.
Channel proliferation without platform strategy. DTC, wholesale, marketplace, and B2B each get their own stack because each was launched under a different leader, in a different year, under a different strategic narrative. The total cost of ownership across four disconnected commerce surfaces eats margin for the next decade, and the consolidation project that eventually rationalizes them always costs more than the original platform strategy would have.
Data architecture debt that hides until the business tries to do something new. Until then the reports look fine. The day product wants to segment customers by purchase behavior across channels, or finance wants margin-by-SKU reporting that reconciles against wholesale returns, the gaps become visible. Those gaps were always there. They were invisible because nobody had asked the question yet.
DTC revenue treated as proof the channel works. DTC revenue without an honest accounting of customer acquisition cost, return rate, and fulfillment margin is not proof of anything. The $20M B2B number I mentioned earlier is a harder number than the $1M DTC number, because B2B revenue tends to carry better margin, lower acquisition cost, and cleaner operational fit with how the business already runs. Both numbers are real. One of them is load-bearing.
How I work with manufacturers
I have stood up SFCC at Western Glove Works (Silver Jeans Co.) hands-on. I have worked alongside Salsify for PIM and Centric for PLM in that same apparel operation. I have evaluated InRiver with Ntara as implementation partner during a recent PIM selection, and produced financial modeling with confirmed pricing that went to the CIO.
That operational exposure shapes how I advise. I am not reading from a playbook. The recommendation I give on whether your data model should put product information in PIM or ERP is informed by actually having configured both, and by having watched the consequences of getting that decision wrong. The engagements I take in manufacturing today are typically advisory, with occasional delivery oversight for specific programs where the integrator needs an independent counterparty on the buy side.
Manufacturing-specific capabilities
Commerce platform strategy across DTC, wholesale, and marketplace. The strategy decision is not which platform to buy. It is whether to run a unified commerce surface across channels or let each channel keep its own stack. Most manufacturers default to the latter because it preserves operational autonomy, and then discover in year three that the data architecture debt makes any cross-channel analytics impossible. The conversation that needs to happen is about the tradeoff, not about the vendor.
PLM, PIM, and ERP integration architecture. The three tools model the same product entity with different ownership assumptions. PLM owns the product during development. PIM owns the product for downstream syndication. ERP owns the product for finance and operations. The integration architecture decides who owns which attribute at which stage, and the decision has to be made explicitly or it gets made accidentally by whichever system was implemented first.
B2B digital commerce. Often the higher-impact build. B2B wholesale buyers want catalog access, re-order workflows, credit terms, shipment visibility, and margin transparency. DTC shoppers want product discovery, fast checkout, and returns. The two builds share infrastructure but are fundamentally different products. Teams that try to ship both on the same roadmap with the same priorities usually ship neither well.
Data architecture for multi-channel analytics. The hard work is upstream of the dashboard. Master data governance, customer identity resolution across channels, margin attribution across wholesale returns and DTC acquisition cost, and the reconciliation between ERP financial close and channel-level operational reporting. This work is unglamorous and rarely funded, which is exactly why the manufacturers who do fund it pull ahead of the ones who do not.
Vendor selection for commerce, PIM, and PLM. Independent of vendor incentives, informed by actual implementation experience, and grounded in the operating model fit rather than the feature checklist. See the PIM selection guide for the detailed framework.
M&A and carve-out technology integration. When a manufacturer acquires a brand or carves out a division, the technology integration is rarely the first conversation and always ends up being the deciding one. Scoping the integration work against the deal thesis, and separating what must happen in year one from what can wait to year three, is the core advisory work.
Engagement patterns
Three shapes cover almost every manufacturing engagement I run.
Assessment. 4 to 6 weeks. Scoped against a specific question: commerce platform selection, PIM or PLM evaluation, B2B channel readiness, or post-acquisition technology integration. Delivered as a document leadership can actually use.
Advisory retainer. Ongoing, monthly rhythm with one or two programs as the core focus. Used by CIOs and VPs of Technology who want an independent read on vendor and integrator recommendations without standing up a new function internally.
Program oversight. Project-based, 3 to 6 months, tied to a specific build. Commerce platform implementation, PIM migration, or B2B channel launch. The program has an internal owner; I sit on the buy side, holding the integrator and vendor accountable against the scope the business actually agreed to.
Frequently asked questions
Are you focused on apparel, or does this extend to other manufacturers?
Apparel is the deepest proof point: SFCC hands-on implementation, PLM and PIM integration, and the digital commerce build that produced $1M+ DTC and $20M+ in incremental B2B and marketplace revenue. The principles travel to other consumer-goods and soft-goods manufacturers whose commerce operates across DTC, wholesale, and marketplace. Heavy industrial manufacturing is outside the scope of my direct experience.
Do you prefer DTC-first or B2B-first strategies?
Neither. The right answer depends on where the margin actually is, and that is rarely the channel leadership is most excited about. For most apparel manufacturers in my experience, the B2B build produces higher incremental revenue at lower acquisition cost than the DTC equivalent. That does not make DTC the wrong answer; it means DTC has to be scoped against its actual margin contribution, not against brand aspiration.
Can you help with PIM or PLM selection?
Yes. I recently completed a full PIM vendor evaluation that selected InRiver with Ntara as implementation partner, and I have worked with Salsify and Centric PLM in apparel operations. PIM and PLM selections fail for the same reason commerce selections fail: the organization has not decided how product information governance will actually work before the platform choice is made. The selection work I do focuses on that upstream decision first.
The question is not whether DTC or B2B is the right growth channel for your business. It is whether the technology stack, the data architecture, and the operating model are scoped against the channel that actually produces margin rather than the channel that produces the cleanest board deck.