Of course, they still make healthy profits, but they don’t incur the cost of having a huge sales operation. That’s not to say that Coca Cola Corporation doesn’t spend millions on sales and marketing activities, but they don’t actually sell directly to their customers.
Some companies such as Apple now primarily sells its own products via its website and retail stores, although they have allowed some other companies such as PC World to stock their computers as they’ve become more popular.
Of course, in order to increase the number of items sold worldwide, with products like the Apple iPod, they have allowed resellers to sell their products too, in order to massively expand where the iPod can be bought. This is known as Channel Sales.