Skincare brand Topicals has been in the news a lot lately. But unlike other retail brands, the headlines haven’t been about store closures, missed quarterly projections, or DTC sell-offs.

Instead, they’ve focused on the brand’s immense sales growth, its mental-health focus, and a Series A funding round back in November which made co-founder Olamide Olowe the youngest Black woman to raise $10 million.

Ahead of the curve is, in many ways, how Topicals seems to operate. Launched during the pandemic, it has eschewed the images of blemish-free skin typical of the beauty industry, and in late 2022, revamped its influencer marketing program in partnership with Outdoor Voices founder Ty Haney’s Web3 community-building platform Try Your Best.

Today, 95% of Topicals’s active ambassadors are using the new platform to track their work for the brand, and the number of ambassadors has more than doubled, making community growth the brand’s most active channel.

Skincare NFTs for all

With Try Your Best—a community management solution built on the Avalanche blockchain that enables brands to track engagement and provide rewards to members—Topicals is able to engage with and reward its ambassador community, which includes a wide range of people, from micro influencers “who love making content” to members who are looking to connect with people who have similar skin issues, explained Natalie Browne, Topicals’s community impact manager.

Keep reading here.—MA

The secret to running a successful biz? You gotta transform one-off customers into loyal repeat buyers who always return to your shop for more. The name of the retail game is retention. But how do you create exciting, high-level retention strategies?

Easy: Register for Yotpo’s product innovation virtual event, Retain Forward. Hosted on May 10, this crowd-pleaser will show you how to get more from your data, create more impactful experiences, and build amazing customer relationships—the ones that last.

Yotpo is really bringing out the big stuff for this one. They’ll unveil their latest product innovations, host talks from leading brands driving retention success, and give you a sneak peek at their future road map.

Join Yotpo in paving the future of retention.

Summer’s almost here, and consumers contemplating doing a little shopping will likely look at some resale platforms. After all, there are so many. But are consumers heading online to shop or are they paying their local thrift store a visit?

When we previously spoke to analysts about whether resale platforms were still a good idea for fashion retailers as the category gets bigger, their answer was (spoiler alert) an overall yes. But now the question is: Once a brand has launched their own resale initiative, should they be doing it online or offline—or perhaps both?

We asked the experts.

Brian Ehrig, partner in the consumer practice of Kearney, believes that digitizing resale is generally a good idea since it allows brands to automate the process and list items online more easily. But for luxury brands like Gucci, he said the situation may be different.

Keep reading here.—JS

It has been said of April that it’s the cruelest month, but with apologies to T.S. Eliot, we think this April was pretty kind, especially if you’re a Retail Brew reader interested in fashion, luxury, resale, AI, and…air fryers, apparently?

We know it’s not a popularity contest—we firmly believe all of our reporting is well worth reading—but here’s a look at the Retail Brew stories from April that got the most mileage:

• Amazon and Panera think conversational AI is the future of easy ordering
• How Stitch Fix uses AI to take personalization to the next level
• Mid-range office wear is on its way out, and brands that want to stay relevant will need to pivot
• Snap wants to change the way we shop…and it might just beat big tech to the punch
• Hoka looks to grow wholesale partnerships after fortifying DTC business
• Why luxury conglomerates like LVMH are ramping up their investment in Napa
• Thrift shops and Goodwill thrive even amid the resale explosion
• How air fryers got so hot
• How Walmart builds artificial intelligence tools
• It’s not just secondhand clothes Gen Z and other consumers want

We’ll be back when modest May is a memory to check in with Emerson see what resonated with readers.

Today’s top retail reads.

Recliner dining: The TV dinner gets a bad rap, and Kraft Heinz wants to change that. Earlier this week, the company released a new line of frozen meals with the intention of zagging toward comfort food, while competitors in the space continue to zig toward healthier options. (CNN)

Can I help you? It was almost inevitable, but retailers are now using ChatGPT to recommend and find products that are in stock. Many retailers and marketplaces are directly partnering with OpenAI to integrate these tools into their operations. (Modern Retail)

California nightmare: Homelessness has been on the rise in California dating back to 2020, and a not insignificant number of those newly homeless are current and recent fast food workers. Low wages and inconsistent scheduling make it difficult for some of them to make rent payments. (the Los Angeles Times)

The numbers you need to know.

In following larger trends in retail—layoffs, inflation, AI, etc.—it’s mostly the bigger players that get the most attention, but small businesses deal with all of these and often face larger obstacles.

For small businesses, major changes often mean “adapt or die,” as a new report from employee management software firm Homebase puts it. A majority (60%) of small business owners say inflation, interest rates, and a potential recession is “what keeps them up at night,” a 4% YoY increase.

• Plus, retaining employees is a major concern for 34% of owners, followed by bringing in new workers (33%) and supplier disruptions (32%).
• Just over 12% of small businesses are limiting inventory services or hours of operation to save cash.

“On top of all this, competition from big business has never been more fierce,” the report read. “But small businesses are mighty and rise to the challenge. With grit and determination, Main Street is constantly modernizing; there’s no other option.”

Millennial small-business owners are gravitating toward AI. One in seven millennial owners use AI in some way, as opposed to 28% of Gen X owners.

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

• How air-fryer influencers helped the appliance heat up
• TravisMathew outfits women on and off the golf course
• Inside the “phased refresh” of Ulta Beauty’s digital store