Amazon to DTC Case Studies: 6 Stories of Going Direct
Nike quit Amazon and came back. Anker never left. Three of our own Amazon products went from $3.83 to $48.27 profit per sale. Here's what the winners actually did with their own site.
Nike walked out on Amazon in 2019. In 2025 it walked back in.
That one fact should change how you read every Amazon to DTC case study on the internet. The brands that went direct and won didn't burn the Amazon bridge. They kept Amazon for reach and used their own store for the stuff Amazon can't do: bundles, bigger orders, repeat buyers and a customer list they actually own.
Below are 6 Amazon to DTC case studies. Three are public brands (Nike, Anker, InnoNature), sourced from the reporting I read for this post. Three are products we rebuilt on Shopify ourselves, with every line of the fee math shown.
The winners didn't leave Amazon. They stopped letting Amazon decide the size of the order.
What do these Amazon to DTC case studies have in common?
Here's the short version before the stories.
| Case | Where it started | What went direct | The number that matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nike | Sold direct to Amazon in a 2017 pilot | Left in 2019, returned in 2025 | Direct e-commerce hit 30% of sales by 2020 |
| Anker | Amazon-native brand, 2011 | Retail, other marketplaces, owned sites | Amazon share fell from 80% to 54% |
| InnoNature | Started on Amazon | Own Shopify Plus store | 95% of sales now from its own site |
| Animal repellent (our client) | $17.95 on Amazon | Shopify store, bigger orders | $3.83 to $48.27 net profit per sale |
| Rodent repellent (our client) | $29.95 on Amazon | Shopify store, bigger orders | $7.73 to $78.87 net profit per sale |
| New animal product (our client) | $49.95 on Amazon | Shopify store, bigger orders | $0 to $50K a month in 6 months |
Notice what's missing from that table. Nobody won by copying their Amazon listing onto a Shopify theme and waiting.
Case 1: Why did Nike leave Amazon and then come back?
Nike ran a pilot selling direct to Amazon starting in 2017. It ended that deal in November 2019 to push its own direct business.
And for a while, the direct push looked like a clean win. Marketplace Pulse reported in October 2020 that direct e-commerce had reached 30% of Nike's sales, a level the company hadn't expected until 2023, and that online sales rose 83% in one quarter. Meanwhile Nike shoes kept showing up on Amazon anyway, through third-party sellers Nike didn't control.
Then in May 2025, CNBC reported that Nike would resume selling directly on Amazon in the US for the first time since 2019.
Here's the thing. Nike had the biggest brand in sportswear, a top-10 shopping app and a website averaging 100 million visits by that same report, and it still decided Amazon's shoppers were worth having back.
If Nike can't afford to ignore Amazon's buyers, your supplement brand can't either.
The lesson for you is the one Nike learned the expensive way. Going direct is a second engine. It's a bad replacement for the first one.
Case 2: How did Anker shrink its Amazon dependence without leaving?
Anker started in 2011 as an Amazon-native brand selling replacement laptop batteries. It never left.
What it did instead was build around Amazon. According to Marketplace Pulse, Amazon was 80% of Anker's revenue in 2016 and 54% in 2021. The 2021 split looked like this: $1.03 billion on Amazon, $685 million in brick-and-mortar stores, and $168 million through other marketplaces and owned websites.
Be honest with yourself about that last number. The owned-website slice was the smallest piece of Anker's pie in 2021. Most of the diversification came from retail partners like Best Buy, Walmart and Apple.
So Anker is the case study for the risk, not the margin. A brand with $1.89 billion in sales still kept Amazon as its biggest channel and just made sure one platform couldn't hold the whole company hostage.
Case 3: What happened when InnoNature moved off Amazon?
InnoNature is a German natural health brand that started out selling on Amazon. According to Shopify's case study on the brand, it had little control over how buyers experienced the brand on Amazon, so it moved to its own Shopify Plus store.
The reported results: 95% of sales now come from its own website, revenue grew 6x in the first year on Shopify Plus, and the team grew 10x. It also expanded into France and Switzerland, selling in multiple currencies.
That's the most aggressive version of going direct in this list. It worked for a brand that wanted to own the customer relationship outright. I'd still tell most Amazon sellers to keep the listing live while they prove the store can carry its own ad bill.
What did our own Amazon to Shopify products actually earn?
Now the three I can show you line by line.
These are three products on our results page, each sold on Amazon FBA and then on a Shopify page we built. Real client numbers, not typical results, and not a promise of what your store will do.
Here's the math on all three, after paying for ads and inventory:
| Product | Amazon order | Shopify order | Amazon net profit per sale | Shopify net profit per sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Animal repellent | $17.95 | $101.38 | $3.83 | $48.27 |
| Rodent repellent | $29.95 | $177.75 | $7.73 | $78.87 |
| New animal product | $49.95 | $210.86 | $17.58 | $134.28 |
After paying for ads and inventory. Real client numbers from /results, not typical results.
Watch what happens to the order. $101.38 divided by $17.95 is about 5.6x. $177.75 divided by $29.95 is about 5.9x. $210.86 divided by $49.95 is about 4.2x.
The fee savings were real too. Amazon's own pricing page lists a 15% referral fee on every item sold in categories like Home and Kitchen and Lawn and Garden, and on the animal repellent that was $2.69 a sale against $0.75 on Shopify. But $1.94 a sale doesn't turn $3.83 into $48.27.
The order size did that. Full breakdowns live in the animal repellent teardown and the rodent repellent case study.
Why did ad costs go up and profit still grow?
This is the part most Amazon to DTC stories skip.
Ad cost per sale on the animal repellent went from $2.69 on Amazon to $26.36 on Shopify. On the rodent repellent it went from $5.99 to $63.40. On Amazon, the buyer is already standing in the store. On your own site, you pay to bring every single one of them in.
I sold on Amazon for years, so I'll say it plainly. A $17.95 single-unit order on Shopify is an Amazon sale with a bigger ad bill. A $101 order is a business.
A small order on your own store is a tax. A big order is a business.
And here's the math on what that means per day. At $1,000 a day in profit, the animal repellent needed 262 sales on Amazon at $3.83 each and 21 sales on Shopify at $48.27 each. The rodent repellent needed 130 against 13. The new product needed 57 against 8.
That's the actual reason to go direct. Fewer boxes, more money per box.
Why did Supply, Beardbrand and Ranch Road Boots quit Amazon entirely?
Not every brand kept Amazon. Modern Retail reported in 2020 on three DTC brands that walked away:
- Supply (razors) phased Amazon out between summer 2017 and mid-2018, when Amazon was 20% of its revenue. The founder cited counterfeits and paying twice for the same customers through Facebook ads and Amazon sponsored search.
- Beardbrand joined Amazon in 2016 and left in 2018, citing counterfeit beard oils and the strain of fulfillment on a small team.
- Ranch Road Boots said Amazon took an 18% cut, had grown to half its sales by 2018, and came with high return rates.
The common thread across those brands was control. Counterfeits, fees, and paying twice for the same customer. Those are fair reasons. They're also brand-protection reasons, and most $10K-a-month Amazon sellers aren't fighting knockoffs yet. They're fighting a $3.83 sale.
How is AI changing the move from Amazon to DTC?
The old blocker to going direct was the page. Amazon gives you a template. Your own store gives you a blank screen, and most sellers paste their Amazon bullets into it and wonder why the conversion rate is flat.
That's the job AI now does well. On revenueflows.ai, you drop in any product URL and the AI writes the copy, designs the images and builds the page in less than 15 minutes. Your Amazon reviews and questions become the objection handling, and the bundle that makes a $101 order possible is built into the page from day one. If you want the copy side of that, here's how to write a Shopify product page for Amazon shoppers.
Even Nike framed its 2025 marketplace push alongside an AI-powered conversational search tool, according to the same CNBC report. The tooling caught up. The strategy question is still yours.
What to do next
Pick your best Amazon product tonight. Write down its net profit per sale after ads and inventory, then write down what an order would need to look like on your own store to carry 10x the ad cost and still beat it. If you want the three-product version of that exercise, read the Amazon vs Shopify profit per sale breakdown, and for every case we've published, the ecommerce case studies library.
Book Your Profit Audit
Bring your Amazon numbers and we'll show you what each sale really keeps, and how big your own-store order needs to be for going direct to pay. Then we'll show you how to rebuild a high-converting product sales page in less than 15 minutes.
Or go here to check it out → revenueflows.ai
P.S. Nike left Amazon and came back. The winners don't pick a side. They let Amazon sell the box and make their own store sell the bundle.
Frequently asked questions
Do brands that go DTC have to leave Amazon?
No. Most of the brands that went direct and stayed healthy kept Amazon as a channel. Nike pulled out in 2019 and announced its return in May 2025. Anker cut Amazon from 80% to 54% of revenue between 2016 and 2021 without leaving. Use your own store for the orders Amazon can't sell.
What should an Amazon brand sell on its own website?
Sell the bigger order. Bundles, multi-packs and repeat purchases are where your own store wins. In our Amazon-to-Shopify cases, the average order went from $17.95 to $101.38, $29.95 to $177.75 and $49.95 to $210.86.
Is DTC more profitable than Amazon?
It can be, but only when the order gets bigger. In one of our cases ad cost per sale rose from $2.69 on Amazon to $26.36 on Shopify, and net profit per sale still went from $3.83 to $48.27 because the average order grew to $101.38.
Why did brands like Supply and Beardbrand leave Amazon?
According to Modern Retail's 2020 reporting, they cited counterfeit products, ad costs, customer service problems and no access to their own customers' data. Ranch Road Boots said Amazon took an 18% cut and had grown to half its sales.
How fast can an Amazon product grow on its own store?
One of our clients took a brand-new product to $50K a month in 6 months on Shopify, with a $211 average order value. That's a real client result, not a typical one, and it came from selling a bigger order, not from cheaper traffic.