Is finding good D2C brand collaboration partners supposed to be this hard?

I’m in the early stages of validating an idea around making brand collaborations (like giveaways or email swaps) easier for DTC brands.

From my own experience and a few early chats, the biggest pains seem to be:

• Time spent finding non-competing but value aligned brands
• Lots of outreach but few responses & frequent ghosting
• The time spend coordinating campaign details

For anyone who’s done brand collabs - does that line up with your experience, or am I missing something?

Just collecting feedback at this stage - not selling anything! Appreciate any insights.