Marketplace or your own store?

The argument is usually about margin. It is really about who owns the customer, and what that ownership is worth to you in three years.

A marketplace gives you demand you did not create. Your own store gives you a relationship you can use again. Most brands need both, and the mistake is not choosing one, it is drifting into dependence on whichever one grew fastest first.

What each channel actually costs

On a marketplace, add commission, fulfilment, storage, returns, advertising inside the platform, and the discounts the platform expects during sale events. The all-in figure routinely lands far above the headline commission, and most of it is not negotiable.

On your own store, the fees are lower and the demand is not free. You pay for traffic, and you pay for the technology and the people who run it. The honest comparison is contribution per order after acquisition cost, not margin before it.

The ownership question

This is where the two channels really differ. On a marketplace you get an order; the platform gets a customer. You cannot email them, you usually cannot see who they are, and you are competing on a page that also shows four alternatives and a cheaper private label version of your product.

On your own store you get both. That is only worth something if you then do something with it, which most brands do not. If your lifecycle programme consists of two discount emails a quarter, the ownership advantage is theoretical. The mechanics are in email and lifecycle marketing.

Where each one wins

• Marketplaces win on discovery for products people search by category rather than by brand, on heavy or low-value items where fulfilment matters, and in cities where your own delivery promise is weak.
• Your own store wins on margin, on bundles and subscriptions, on anything requiring explanation, and on every repeat purchase you can earn directly.

Running both without being eaten

Keep pricing consistent enough that the marketplace does not train your customers to wait for a sale event. Hold back something for your own store, whether that is a bundle, a size, a colour or a subscription, so there is a reason to buy direct. Treat marketplace advertising as a cost of being in that channel rather than as your growth engine. And watch the ratio: once a single platform passes about half your revenue, your pricing and your roadmap are being set by somebody else.

Quick commerce changes the question

For impulse and replenishment categories, ten minute delivery platforms have become a third channel with their own economics: high velocity, thin margin, brutal listing competition, and almost no customer data. They are worth entering for the velocity and the visibility. They are a poor foundation for a brand, for the same reason the other marketplaces are, only faster.

The decision

Start where the demand already exists, because early revenue buys you time. Build the direct channel in parallel rather than later, because later is always after the dependence is set. And measure the two on contribution after acquisition cost, not on gross margin, which is the number that makes marketplaces look worse and your own store look better than either deserves. The wider economics are in D2C growth after the first crore.