When it comes to channel strategy, celeb brand incubator A-Frame is giving mass-market retail its A-game. The move could give it—and other brands—a leg up, its CEO and founder, Ari Bloom, told Retail Brew, especially as a recession looms.

“I don’t think DTC is dead,” he said. “I think DTC alone is dead.”

Bloom is a retail biz vet, with his previous titles including CEO at retail tech brand Avametric and head of merchandising at both West Elm and Gap. Now, at A-Frame, he’s holding company with brands like tennis star Naomi Osaka’s sun-care brand Kinlò, which debuted last year, and Gabrielle Union and Dwayne Wade’s baby care brand Proudly, introduced in April.

• Kinlò hit 2,500 Walmart doors, its first in-store distribution, in April.

In the process of building these brands and working with retail buyers and investors, Bloom noted that attitudes around retail are changing—whether you’ve got celeb backing or not—and some may need to prepare. Brands may have a tough six to 12 months ahead, he predicted.

Foot in the door: Bloom said A-Frame only introduces a brand if there’s national distribution in the works. “We don’t try to leave brands in the DTC channel for years on end, and then try to pick up 100 stores here, 100 stores there,” he said.

When A-Frame raised its $11.2 million in March, Bloom said VCs told him “straight up” that its omnichannel strategy was a selling point.

“If you talk to the VCs these days, there are very few that are even investing in direct-to-consumer brands at this point, because they’ve seen how hard it is to build the customer base,” he said, “Even if you can acquire the customers and to keep them in a profitable relationship—very difficult.”

Keep reading here.—EC

Cleanical beauty promises to marry clean ingredients with those that have clinical effectiveness. Brands like Drunk Elephant and Biossance, which use plant-based ingredients alongside synthetic ones to create products, are prime examples of what the promise of “cleanical” can secure (in revenue).

Will consumers respond to this latest trend with undying loyalty?

“As the pandemic took over, people were having to really take into account [their] immunity and the ethics of the effectiveness of the products that they were using,” Pravani Pillay, manager in consulting firm Kearney’s beauty practice, told Retail Brew.

• Revenue from cleanical brands rose 55% between September 2020 and September 2021, per the NPD Group—a testament to the category’s steady growth.
• A number of the skin-care brands that fit that category were founded by dermatologists and plastic surgeons who “lead from a position of education,” Pillay said. “That ability to inform and educate the already intelligent consumer about what is in your product—but also what is not in your product—is where the cleanical concept is really successful.”

Does cleanical have lasting appeal? Keep reading.—JS

Amazon is expanding the scope of self-learning features for its voice assistant, reports Hayden Field for Emerging Tech Brew:

Self-supervised learning is one reason why natural language processing—a subset of AI that underpins tools from Google Search to auto-complete—has advanced so much in recent years. Meta has used it for image training; Google has used it for medical-image classification; and Amazon has used it for automated speech recognition.

“Instead of a bunch of scientists taking data and trying to update the models and then roll them out, self-learning is something that works out in the field—there’s no human intervention, no human involvement,” Prem Natarajan, Alexa AI’s VP of natural understanding, told us. “It’s directly learning through its interactions with customers, whether it’s implicit customer behavior or otherwise.”

Here’s how Amazon wants the AI system to figure some things out on its own.

Today’s top retail reads.

Ice cold: Despite Ben & Jerry’s taking its parent company, Unilever, to court last month over the sale of its products in Israel, the famed ice-cream chain is now turning up the heat, claiming Unilever’s actions could, more broadly, undermine the brand’s mission and image. (the Wall Street Journal)

All natural: The beauty industry has a dark underbelly when it comes to ingredients used in some products, but Korres has outlined what’s best to use and what to stay away from for health-conscious consumers. (Forbes)

Fallen from grace: High startup valuations make major headlines, but that doesn’t mean newer companies always have it figured out. Here are nine retail startups who’ve hit some bumps in the road despite raising oodles of cash. (Retail Dive)

Shoppers are everywhere: Which is why commerce is everywhere. Many marketers are leaning into user-generated content in today’s omnichannel world. Wanna learn how you can leverage this superpower to succeed? RSVP to Bazaarvoice’s insightful webinar.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

A reminder about Retail Brew’s newest debut: The Sku: A Retail Brew Summit. FOMO is real, friends.

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

• Meeting demand and maximizing profit
• Managing your organization across channels
• Creating omnichannel engagement with customer journeys
• Sustainability: who is doing what and how?
• Using technology to drive sales

Advanced pricing ends soon! Register now to save your seat (and some $$). Only $549 for a limited time!

• Walmart laid off hundreds of corporate employees, sources told the WSJ.
• Yum Brands—the parent company of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC—will introduce new products and deals to curb demand slowdown.
• Under Armour cut its earnings outlook after reporting significant inventory and inflationary pressures.
• CVS Health’s earnings beat Wall Street expectations due to increased foot traffic and prices.
• American Eagle’s largest shareholder sold more than half of their stock holdings.

Snap Poll: Have you bought luxury goods using a buy now, pay later (BNPL) option in the past year? Say it with an emoji, and we’ll include your answers in our reader poll summary next week!

Yes, I buy the best with a BNPL

No, I prefer to buy luxury all at once

The numbers you need to know.

The digital revolution has done wonders for the grocery industry, but as inventory issues have cropped up, online sales have taken the biggest hit.

Digital grocery sales fell 13% YoY in Q2, even though overall sales increased during the same period, according to a report from Incisiv in partnership with Wynshop using analysis of more than 1 million shopper orders and survey results from 12,000 shoppers and 1,200 US grocery executives.

In the first six months of the year, grocers lost $11 billion because of “unavailable” or “unsubstituted” digital items.

• On average, the price of an item in a digital basket increased 15% YoY in Q2, and baskets had three fewer items in them.
• Grocery executives are not bullish on the future, either: 83% expect pricing pressures to continue into next year.

“These grocery executives are now increasingly being forced to think about, ‘Okay, how do I have a complete picture of the customer as they shop online and in the store, so that I can understand the total value?’” Charlie Kaplan, Wynshop’s chief revenue officer, told Retail Brew.

Those same executives believe they’ll have to directly compete with third-party platforms, and for good reason. Third-party platforms accounted for 28.4% of all digital grocery sales in the first half of the year, with January being the strongest month at 31.3%. Purchases made directly through grocers’ websites accounted for just under two-thirds (64.5%) of sales.

• To compete, grocers are pushing for wider-spread adoption of their sales channels and in-store pickup, which accounted for 53.3% of all digital grocery orders in Q2.

“Different grocers are at different levels of maturity in terms of being able to take on the responsibility to run a sophisticated online operation,” Kaplan said. “It’s a lot more than just putting up a website. You need a completely integrated set of operations to do it efficiently.”

Catch up on the Retail Brew stories you may have missed.

• New Balance’s new Massachusetts factory underscores vision for Made in America production
• Seller’s market: an Amazon antitrust roundup
• An ice-cream influencer has a new flavor for retail