Businesses are often told that owning distribution is one of the strongest competitive advantages they can build.
That is true.
Owning the customer relationship, the storefront, the audience and the data gives a company more control over margins, experience and long-term growth. But there is another question companies should ask much earlier:
Do we need to own distribution before we have proven that we deserve to build it?
Alo Yoga's recent entry into China provides an interesting example. Instead of beginning by recreating its entire Western retail and e-commerce infrastructure in a new market, Alo entered through Tmall, one of China's most established commerce platforms.
The results were immediate. According to Alibaba, Alo's official Tmall flagship generated more than RMB 10 million in sales within one minute of pre-sale checkout opening on August 12, 2026. The launch also gave Alo access to Tmall's consumer ecosystem, including more than 62 million members of Alibaba's high-spending 88VIP program.
Alo didn't build that distribution.
It borrowed it.
And there is a broader lesson here for companies entering new markets, launching new products or trying to find their first meaningful group of customers.
Sometimes the fastest way to build distribution is not to build it at all.
Owning Distribution and Accessing Distribution Are Different Things
Owning distribution is incredibly valuable.
Nike has its stores and digital ecosystem. Apple has perhaps one of the most powerful combinations of owned retail, devices and digital customer relationships in the world. Successful DTC brands have spent years building websites, email lists, communities and physical stores that give them direct access to customers.
But ownership comes with a cost.
Building meaningful distribution requires time, capital, operational expertise and usually a considerable amount of trial and error. A company entering a new geography might need warehouses, logistics relationships, local marketing, customer support, payments infrastructure, retail locations and an entirely new acquisition engine.
And after building all of that, it can still discover that demand isn't strong enough.
Accessing distribution changes the sequence.
Instead of building the road before knowing whether enough people want to travel on it, a company starts by using roads that already exist.
Marketplaces, retailers, distributors, creators, channel partners and established commerce ecosystems already aggregate demand. They already have customer relationships, infrastructure and trust.
A new entrant can tap into those assets before deciding which parts are worth owning itself.
Alo Yoga Didn't Need to Rebuild China
Alo's China launch makes this distinction particularly clear.
China is not simply another geography where a Western brand can translate its website, run some advertising and expect the same consumer journey to work.
Its digital commerce environment has developed around major ecosystems, including Alibaba's Tmall. Consumer discovery, payments, loyalty, customer service and commerce behavior can differ substantially from Western markets.
Alo could have attempted to build its Chinese DTC operation independently.
Instead, it made Tmall its exclusive e-commerce platform for its China debut. Its flagship gives Chinese consumers access to Alo's apparel, footwear, accessories and wellness products while incorporating localized customer services.
More importantly, Alo entered an environment where high-value Chinese consumers were already shopping.
The distinction matters.
Alo still owns its brand.
It still owns the product.
It still determines how the company is positioned.
But for this stage of market entry, it does not need to independently own every part of distribution.
Tmall provides access to demand while Alo learns what that demand actually looks like.
This is a much more capital-efficient way to answer one of the most expensive questions in international expansion:
Will this market care enough?
India Is Showing the Same Pattern Offline
A similar model is playing out in India, particularly as international consumer brands look for exposure to one of the world's largest emerging consumer markets.
Entering India independently can be difficult. The market is geographically enormous, consumer behavior varies substantially between cities and regions, premium retail space remains constrained, and local logistics and regulation create additional complexity.
This is one reason global brands frequently work with large Indian retail groups rather than attempting to recreate their entire distribution infrastructure from scratch.
Reliance Brands says it has brought 85 international brands into India across luxury, premium and high-street categories. Its portfolio includes names such as Armani, Burberry, Bottega Veneta, Coach, Jimmy Choo and others.
The attraction isn't difficult to understand.
A company like Reliance already has retail infrastructure, local consumer knowledge, property relationships, operations and access to customers. For an international brand, partnering can dramatically shorten the distance between deciding to enter India and actually reaching Indian consumers.
Sephora provides a useful example. In 2023, Sephora partnered with Reliance Beauty & Personal Care, giving Reliance exclusive rights to develop and expand Sephora's India presence across channels. Reliance took over Sephora's existing 26 stores across 13 cities as part of the agreement.
Sephora did not need to become an expert in every layer of Indian retail infrastructure itself.
It could combine its brand, assortment and beauty expertise with a partner that already understood local distribution.
Again, the brand is not outsourcing its reason for existing.
It is borrowing infrastructure around it.
Shop-in-Shop Is More Strategic Than It Looks
The same logic applies at a smaller level through shop-in-shop models.
At first glance, a branded section inside someone else's store can look inferior to having a beautiful standalone flagship.
But from a distribution perspective, the model can be extremely efficient.
A standalone store requires the brand to create traffic.
A shop-in-shop places the brand where traffic already exists.
That difference is enormous.
Imagine an international beauty or fashion brand considering India. Instead of immediately opening twenty standalone locations, it can enter selected multi-brand environments, observe which cities generate demand, understand which products move fastest and learn how Indian consumers respond to the brand.
The retailer provides traffic and infrastructure.
The brand provides differentiation.
Over time, the resulting data can help determine where standalone stores make sense.
Borrowed distribution therefore doesn't have to be the final model.
It can be the intelligence layer that informs the final model.
Marketplaces Solve a Similar Problem for Digital Brands
The same debate appears constantly in e-commerce.
Should a brand sell through Amazon, Tmall, Myntra or another marketplace, or should it focus entirely on its own website?
The instinct of many brand builders is to choose DTC because direct commerce offers better customer ownership, stronger brand control and potentially better economics.
Those advantages are real.
But they don't automatically mean DTC should be the first distribution channel.
A brand's own website begins with almost no traffic.
A marketplace begins with customers.
That difference can be more valuable than margin optimization during the earliest stages of a business.
A new brand can use marketplaces to discover which products customers actually want, which price points convert, which reviews repeatedly appear and which regions produce unexpected demand.
Once that demand becomes visible, the company can start building direct relationships around it.
The sequence might therefore look less like:
DTC first, marketplaces later.
And more like:
Access demand, understand demand, then decide which demand is worth owning.
Marketplace-to-DTC Is Not a Retreat From Marketplaces
There is sometimes an assumption that successful brands eventually need to "graduate" from marketplaces.
That is too simplistic.
The more interesting strategy is to give different channels different jobs.
A marketplace can remain a powerful discovery and acquisition channel while the company's own ecosystem becomes the place where the deepest customer relationship develops.
Someone might discover a product on Amazon, purchase it because Prime makes the transaction effortless and later join the brand's direct ecosystem for additional products, memberships, content, services or community.
Physical retail can work similarly.
A consumer might encounter a brand for the first time inside a multi-brand retailer before eventually visiting a flagship store or purchasing directly online.
The channels aren't necessarily competing.
They can form a distribution ladder.
Borrowed channels create reach.
Owned channels create depth.
The strongest businesses can eventually have both.
Borrowing Distribution Can Be a Form of Market Research
This is where the idea becomes more interesting than simply "sell on marketplaces."
Distribution generates information.
Every transaction tells the company something about demand.
Which products sell?
Which customer segments respond?
Which cities overperform?
Which price points create resistance?
Which categories lead to repeat purchasing?
Which products bring customers into the brand?
Companies sometimes spend enormous amounts of money conducting research before entering a market while overlooking the fact that distribution itself can become a research mechanism.
Alo's Tmall launch will generate far more than revenue.
It can provide signals about which products resonate with Chinese consumers, how customers respond to pricing, which collections create interest and where the brand might eventually justify deeper investment.
If Alo later opens stores, expands local operations or develops China-specific strategies, those decisions can be informed by actual market behavior rather than assumptions made from Los Angeles.
Borrowing distribution first can therefore reduce the cost of learning.
But Borrowed Distribution Creates Dependency
There is, of course, a reason companies eventually want distribution of their own.
Borrowing comes with trade-offs.
Marketplaces charge fees. Retail partners influence merchandising. Algorithms determine visibility. Customer data can be limited. Platforms can change their rules. The company may have less control over the experience than it would through an owned channel.
A business that depends entirely on someone else's distribution can become vulnerable.
We have seen this repeatedly in digital businesses.
Companies built around Facebook reach suffered when algorithms changed. E-commerce brands dependent on paid social have struggled when acquisition costs increased. Marketplace sellers can see economics change when fees, rankings or platform policies shift.
Borrowed distribution is powerful precisely because someone else has already aggregated the demand.
That also means someone else controls access to it.
The mistake, therefore, isn't borrowing distribution.
The mistake is confusing borrowed distribution with owned advantage.
The Right Question Is What to Own, and When
Companies don't need to choose between owning everything and owning nothing.
Distribution can evolve with the business.
An emerging brand might initially borrow almost everything. It sells through marketplaces, works with retailers, collaborates with creators and uses distributors to reach new geographies.
As the company learns where demand is strongest, it can selectively begin owning the parts that matter most.
Perhaps it builds a strong DTC website because repeat purchasing is important.
Perhaps it opens stores in cities where marketplace demand has already proven unusually strong.
Perhaps it develops a membership program because customer lifetime value matters more than the first transaction.
Perhaps it continues using retail partners in markets where building independent infrastructure would never make economic sense.
Ownership should follow strategic value, not ideology.
This Applies Beyond Consumer Brands
The principle isn't limited to retail.
A software startup can borrow distribution through Salesforce's ecosystem rather than building an enterprise audience from scratch.
A fintech can distribute through banks.
An AI company can build inside existing workplace platforms.
A healthcare technology company can reach patients through providers.
A B2B startup can grow through consultants, implementation partners or industry associations that already have trusted customer relationships.
In each case, another organization has spent years building access to a market.
The startup brings something valuable into that network.
This is one of the most underappreciated forms of leverage in business.
Instead of asking only, "How do we build distribution?"
Companies should also ask, "Who already has the distribution we need?"
The BeyondB Perspective: Distribution Doesn't Need to Be Owned on Day One
At BeyondB, we believe distribution should be designed around the stage of the company rather than treated as a fixed philosophy.
Owning distribution can become one of the most valuable assets a company builds. But trying to own every channel too early can consume enormous amounts of capital and time before the company has enough evidence about where demand actually exists.
For an emerging brand, the priority may be accessing customers quickly enough to learn. For a growing company, it may be converting that initial access into repeatable channels. For an established company, the objective may shift toward owning more of the customer relationship, data and economics.
This is why we look at go-to-market, positioning, technology and distribution together.
A marketplace strategy without strong positioning can turn a brand into another listing. A DTC strategy without distribution can produce a beautiful website nobody visits. A retail expansion strategy without evidence can create expensive stores in the wrong places.
The objective isn't to own every route to the customer.
It is to understand which routes give the company the greatest leverage at each stage.
Alo entering China through Tmall is a useful reminder of this. International brands entering India through established retail partners demonstrate the same principle in a different market.
You don't always need to spend years building an audience, network or retail footprint before you can access one.
Sometimes someone else has already built exactly the distribution you need.
Borrow it.
Learn from it.
And when the economics, customer relationship and market evidence justify it, start building the parts worth owning.
