D2C: From Ding Dong to Tik Tok

2025 is a milestone year for UK D2C retail body the UK Direct Selling Association, with the organisation celebrating its 60th year, and marking six decades in which all areas of retail – not least D2C – have borne witness to significant consumer change.

Established in 1965 to ‘represent the interests of businesses engaged in the direct sales of consumer goods’, the Association’s founding members included Avon and Tupperware. The development of the Association’s Consumer Code of Practice and Code of Business Conduct followed, and in 2025, more than 40 UK direct-to-consumer (D2C) member companies have signed up to the body’s enhanced standards of business practice.
Today, the Association is the voice for D2C retail in the UK, a role which also includes campaigning on key issues relevant to the sector. Our member brands work with approximately 320,000 independent sellers UK-wide and are responsible for sales of around £908m each year through the channel.

Perhaps surprisingly in a country that is well known for its robust consumer rights and protections, membership of the Association remains voluntary. This is just one example of an issue that we are keen to review with government in light of the rapid growth of the D2C sector, and the reputational risk that rogue players pose to.

Looking forward to the next 60 years, the opportunity for D2C retailers in the UK has arguably never been greater. Trends such as tailored and personalised shopping and experiential retail continue to be baseline expectations for today’s consumer, and these are also fundamental premises of the D2C model.

Furthermore, with a new (and according to many reports, disenfranchised) generation of young people entering a workforce being ever-more disrupted by issues ranging from AI to geopolitics, the core D2C concepts of influencer marketing, entrepreneurialism and flexible earning have strong potential to make direct selling both popular and appealing for this new generation going forwards.

One key role for the Association in this respect will be to continue to drive change when it comes to modernising perceptions of the industry – updating the ‘Ding Dong’ tagline of the 1970s for the TikTok generation. Uniting the industry’s key players and updating the industry’s reputation offers the best chance of positioning D2C as both an exciting and credible option for this new generation to earn on their terms in an ever-more crowded consumer marketplace.

In a world increasingly dominated by technology and AI, the human touch is becoming a rare commodity. This offers huge potential for an industry that is synonymous with personal recommendation: From the days of Avon calling and the Tupperware party right through to the present day.

By Susannah Schofield OBE, Director General of the Direct Selling Association