Leading European paint and coatings brand: D2C strategy built and board-approved. From channel hesitation to a confident investment roadmap.

The Challenge

The client’s challenge was strategic, not operational. The market was shifting: consumers increasingly expected to engage directly with the brands behind the products they purchased, and the growth of owned D2C channels across adjacent categories made the question impossible to avoid. But for a company whose success was built on strong wholesale and retail partnerships, moving into direct-to-consumer commerce raised a set of genuine tensions that could not be resolved by enthusiasm alone. The first tension was channel conflict. Any direct online presence risked being perceived by long-standing retail partners the very distributors who had carried the brand for decades as competitive encroachment. The concern was not paranoia: it was a legitimate strategic risk with real consequences for wholesale revenue. The second tension was organizational. The client’s internal teams were built for B2B efficiency: logistics, key account management, trade marketing. D2C demands a different operating model consumer-centric logistics, direct support infrastructure, e-commerce content production, performance marketing. That capability did not exist internally, and it was not obvious whether it should be built or acquired. The third tension was financial. Building an owned online channel requires platform investment, systems integration, logistics retooling, and staffing before the first order is taken. For a business measuring success in wholesale sell-in volumes, the ROI calculus for D2C was genuinely unclear. Leadership needed more than a recommendation; they needed a decision framework that could withstand board scrutiny.

The Approach

Gradion engaged not as a traditional consultant presenting a slide deck, but as a strategic co-creation partner embedded in the client’s own decision-making process. The engagement was designed to produce a board-ready investment decision not a strategic aspiration. The work began with facilitated workshops that brought together decision-makers from across the organization: e-commerce, marketing, and senior management. These sessions served two purposes simultaneously. Practically, they surfaced the organizational knowledge and concerns that would need to be addressed in any credible D2C strategy. Structurally, they built the internal alignment without which no board decision would hold. Gradion then conducted strategic benchmarking: researching how modern challenger brands and digital-native players had approached D2C entry in adjacent home improvement and consumer goods categories. The goal was not to replicate what others had done but to make the possibilities concrete and defensable with data. A central deliverable was the build-vs-buy analysis: a structured evaluation of whether the client should develop a D2C capability in-house or partner with external specialists for key functions. Each path was mapped across cost, implementation complexity, timeline, and strategic fit with the existing distribution model. Critically, the financial case was built to include brand value and customer relationship capital not just direct channel revenue. This reframing made the business case compelling in a way that a narrow e-commerce P&L could not have achieved. The output was a board-level investment decision framework: clear scenarios, explicit rationale, investment requirements, risk mapping, and recommended next steps. Leadership had what they needed to decide with confidence.