Direct to consumer describes selling to the end buyer without a wholesaler, distributor or retailer in between, usually through the seller’s own channel. It is business vocabulary rather than a defined term, and it is applied to arrangements that differ considerably — a manufacturer shipping from its own warehouse, a brand selling through a marketplace it does not control, a company that outsources fulfilment entirely. The questions the label hides are who holds the customer relationship and the data, who carries inventory and returns risk, and who is the seller of record for tax, consumer-protection and product-liability purposes. Those answers can differ within one business, so in an agreement or a channel-conflict clause the phrase needs defining by reference to specific channels.
Why this entry carries no source list. This lexicon cites an official primary source wherever one exists and says so plainly where none does. This term is market convention: it was coined by commercial practice, it is used by everyone in the trade, and no body defines it. Pointing at a carrier’s tariff, a bank’s product page or a trade association’s explainer would dress one participant’s usage as a general rule. The practical upshot runs through the paragraph above — where the word carries no fixed meaning, the contract has to supply one.