Marketplace vs Direct to Consumer: How Claire Organics Balances Reach and Relationship

A shopper picks up a bottle of Claire Organics lavender essential oil at Watsons. She pays, collects her Watsons points and heads home. The sale counts. But Claire Organics may never learn her name, why she chose that bottle, or whether she comes back for another.

That gap sits at the centre of the marketplace vs direct to consumer question every growing retail brand eventually faces. Retailers and marketplaces bring reach. Your own stores and website bring the relationship. Few brands talk openly about what it costs to rely on someone else's channel.

Louise Chu has lived this firsthand. Claire Organics, the natural skincare brand she founded in Malaysia in 2012, sells through its own stores and online channels, through retail partners like Watsons, and on marketplaces like Shopee. For this feature, we asked her how she thinks about the customers she sells to but rarely meets.

Marketplaces and retailers give you reach and convenience. Your own channels give you visibility and a relationship. According to Louise, the mistake is expecting either one to do both jobs.

Retail partners put Claire Organics in front of audiences and shopping habits its own channels can't easily reach. In exchange, the brand loses sight of who those customers are, what motivated their purchase, and whether they return.

Louise doesn't see the answer as pulling back from third-party channels. She sees it as consistency. As she puts it, "a sale through a retail partner is still an opportunity to earn a customer's trust, even if we don't immediately know who they are."

You give them a reason to remember you first, then a reason to stay connected. Pushing them to switch channels rarely works.

Louise is candid that third-party customers don't migrate on their own. "We cannot assume every customer who buys through a third party will automatically move to our own channels," she says. "Convenience, pricing, and shopping habits all influence where people choose to buy."

A shopper who grabs a product during a weekly Watsons run is choosing convenience. Asking them to switch means asking them to break a habit. So Louise starts somewhere else: "I think the first step is to give customers a reason to remember Claire Organics beyond the product itself."

For Claire Organics, that means sharing its Kind Beauty philosophy and introducing the wider range through its own stores and online platforms. In Louise's words, "a lasting relationship develops when they understand what the brand stands for and find value in returning to us."

She's honest that this is unfinished work. Converting third-party customers takes better visibility and follow-up, and Claire Organics is still testing what works. Sound familiar? Most brands selling through partners are in the same place.

Your own channels tell you why customers buy. Marketplace data mostly tells you what sold.

Through its stores and online channels, Claire Organics can see what customers ask about, which products interest them, what feedback they share and whether they return. From retailers and marketplaces, the brand usually sees sales trends and product performance, depending on what each partner shares.

"Strong sales tell us that a product is moving, but they do not always explain why," Louise says.

Picture a product that suddenly doubles its marketplace sales. Is it a new audience, a competitor out of stock, or a platform promotion? The sales report can't tell you. A conversation with a customer at the counter often can.

Louise's approach is to combine every source available: platform data, feedback from her own channels, input from retail partners and signals from the market. "The goal is to make decisions based on the clearest evidence we have, while recognising what we still don't know."

To meet the customers it would otherwise never know. Claire Organics opened its flagship store at 1 Utama in July 2026, and for Louise, the store does far more than sell.

"When customers walk into our store, we have the chance to speak with them directly, understand what they are looking for, answer their questions, and hear their feedback in real time," she says.

Those conversations surface the things a sales report never will. In Louise's words, they "can reveal things that sales figures alone may not tell us, such as what customers are curious about, what concerns they have, and what helps them make a purchasing decision."

The store also gives shoppers a place to experience the Kind Beauty philosophy in person, through conversation and product discovery. Louise stays realistic about what one visit can do: "A single conversation does not automatically create a lasting relationship. But each interaction gives us an opportunity to learn."

For a brand that sells heavily through partners, every in-store conversation is research the retail channel will never hand over.

Yes. Where someone first meets your brand shapes what they expect and how much of your story they know.

An in-store shopper can try products, ask questions and get a personal recommendation. A marketplace shopper usually starts by comparing product information, reviews, prices and convenience. "Neither journey is necessarily better than the other," Louise says. "They simply offer different starting points."

The difference shows up in what customers know about you. "A customer who discovers us through a retailer may initially know only one product," Louise explains, while someone who finds Claire Organics through its own channels sees the wider range and the brand's philosophy.

Her answer is clear product information on every channel, plus easy ways to learn more about the brand for anyone who wants to.

Insight into behaviour, not personal data. Louise is careful to draw that line.

"I am not suggesting that brands should automatically have access to customers' personal information," she says. She recognises that customer data sits within privacy rules, platform policies and commercial considerations. What she'd value is a clearer picture of what drives purchases, which categories attract interest, what questions customers ask and what brings them back.

"Even aggregated or anonymised insights could help brands make better decisions without compromising individual privacy."

Each side holds half the picture. "Retailers and marketplaces have valuable data from the transactions they facilitate, while brands bring product knowledge and a deeper understanding of how their products are developed and used," she says. Shared more systematically, those insights could improve product education, customer experience and long-term satisfaction.

We've distilled Louise's answers into a simple loop any brand selling across marketplaces, retailers and its own channels can use.