If you just got notified that you’ve been selected for inclusion in The No Middleman Project Directory of the world’s best direct to consumer brands… congratulations!

Below are the common questions from brands about their profile pages. Click any question to be taken to the answer, or scroll down to read through them all in order.

Q. Why were we selected to be in The No Middleman Project directory?
Q. What does it cost to be in The No Middleman Project directory?
Q. My company is not in the directory, but we want to be!
Q. How do I update my brand’s profile information?
Q. How did you choose our product categories?
Q. How did you choose our brand video?
Q. How do we get one of those awesome brand stories, like Tesla has?
Q: Where did you get the photos from? How do I change them?

Selection Criteria & Costs of Listing

Q. Why were we selected to be in The No Middleman Project directory?
A. Since 2017, we’ve been researching and evaluating hundreds of brands, looking for truly direct to consumer brands with less middleman (or no middlemen at all) who we feel are delivering exceptional value to consumers, in one or all of these areas: premium product quality, low prices, and/or exceptional customer service.

Based on one or all of those measures, we determined your brand to be one of the best direct to consumer brands in your product category. Congrats!

And on behalf of The No Middleman Project and consumers everywhere, thanks for pushing the needle to deliver remarkable value into the world. We believe brands like yours are making a positive impact to both the economy and our society.

Here are more details about Our Mission, Selection Criteria, and Business Model.

Q. What does it cost to be in The No Middleman Project directory?
A. Zero. We’re simply building a searchable directory of the best direct to consumer brands, and you’re one of them! For the direct to consumer brands who meet our selection criteria, it will always be 100% free to have a full brand profile in our directory. There is no catch.

This directory will be supported by the qualifying brands who choose to sponsor their product category. There will only be one exclusive sponsor in each category, the cost of those sponsorships will be low and capped, and (most importantly) these sponsorships will be completely independent of the brand profiles and our editorial reviews of brands.

All brand profiles will have the same amount and type of content, regardless of whether they’re a sponsoring brand. The brand profiles will be free of charge, forever.

While there is no cost to brands to have a full brand profile in the directory, we do have a selection criteria that must be met first. That’s detailed on this page, along with more details about our Business Model.

Q. My company is not in the directory, but we want to be!
A. Awesome! You might want to check out our brand selection criteria first, but if you’re in a hurry, just go ahead and head over to the Suggest a Brand page. We’ll take a look and let you know if the brand qualifies for our directory.

Profile Information and How To Update

Q. How do I update my brand’s profile information?
A. Happy to help, and thanks for keeping us updated! Please email us at yourfriends@nomiddleman.com with any changes you’d like to make. We’ll soon have a self-service option for brands, will update this the minute we do!

Q. How did you decide which product categories to link to our brand?
A. We chose these based on the products and services we found on your website. There are two levels of categorization on your brand profile page:

• “What They Specialize In” – This is listed first, so consumers can see the 1-6 product categories that you specialize in. If we chose the wrong one(s) and you’d like to change these, no problem, let us know!
• “Full List of Products/Services” – This is every category of product or service that you offer. If we missed any categories you have products in, or if there are categories you don’t want to be shown in, let us know!

Email us anytime with preferred changes at yourfriends@nomiddleman.com.

Q. How did you choose our brand video?
A. Most brands have YouTube or Vimeo pages, so we simply use a video from there (we embed it using the handy code that YouTube and Vimeo makes publicly available). Normally we choose the featured video on your brand’s Youtube or Vimeo page. In some cases there’s no brand channel, or we find another public video that we feel does a great job of explaining the value your brand delivers to consumers. But if you’d like us to embed a different video from YouTube or Vimeo, let us know at yourfriends@nomiddleman.com.

Q. How do we get one of those awesome brand stories, like Tesla has?
A. Create a product that can go from 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds, and doesn’t require gas.

Or just ask us 🙂 We’re planning to write these stories for all the brands we feature (for free!), but it takes a good bit of time on our end. We spend 2-3 hours on each brand profile, evaluating the brand from multiple angles and sources, adding links to all the social channels, and adding all the relevant product categories (IKEA, for instance, has nearly 400 categories! Seriously. And that’s not even counting those hot dogs and swedish meatballs they sell on the way out).

And all of those things happen before we write the full brand profile, which takes the most time of all. So yeah, it takes us a long time to create these.

Understandably, we’ve started with a few of the brands we’re personally fascinated with, like Tesla. Or Everlane. Or Framebridge. We could go on. But drop us a line if you’d like us to write your full brand profile sooner rather than later—we’ll be glad to prioritize the brands in our directory who reach out to us early!

Image Sources / How To Update

Q: Where did you get the photos from? How do I change them?
A. With a new brand, we’ll normally just grab a quality picture from your social media page, put it up so you can see the full look of your profile, and then run it all by you (if you haven’t heard from us yet, you will soon!).

If you’re not cool with us using the picture(s) we’ve used for your profile, we will immediately take it down. In fact, we don’t even need to include a picture on your profile, if that’s what you want! But we think it makes your brand profile look great, and we’re trying to impress consumers and send them your way—for free! This really is just about driving shoppers to our favorite direct to consumer brands (like yours!) and highlighting the best brands delivering the most value.

If this is the first time you’ve seen your profile or heard from us, please send us a quick email (yourfriends@nomiddleman.com) and let us know what you’d prefer regarding your images:

1. Our brand profile and images look great! Thanks for including us.
2. Thanks, but we’d prefer a different cover photo / brand gallery photos!
3. We’d prefer you not use any photos on our profile at all!

Again, if you prefer #3, to not have any brand images on your profile, email us and we’ll get those images removed in a jiffy!

If you’re choosing #2, to get different pics on your profile, we’d love if you’d email us the images (or links to the images). These dimensions are ideal:

• Cover photo (top of profile) – 970 pixels wide, any reasonable height that is landscape in nature (i.e. wide, and not so tall)
• Logo – a 200×200 pixel square works well
• Brand Gallery images – Currently, the Brand Gallery simply shows your public Instagram pictures and conveniently updates when you post new Instagram photos. But if you don’t have IG or would rather reduce your gallery to a few different pics, send us 4 or 5 and we’ll get them uploaded for you! Ideal sizes of those: 840 pixels wide, and any height.

Other Questions?

We’d love to hear from you with any feedback or questions! Our email: yourfriends@nomiddleman.com.