Celebrity incubator A-Frame lands $11.2 million in seed funding to support the launch of three new brands.
WHO: Founded in 2019 by retail veteran and investor Ari Bloom, A-Frame is building a portfolio of talent-led brands designed to meet the everyday needs of underserved communities by creating solutions for unaddressed problems that disproportionately impact millions of people. Their portfolio includes Kinlò, Naomi Osaka's suncare line for melanin-rich skin, Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade’s baby line Proudly, and a skincare brand from John Legend in the works.
WHY: The new capital will be used to build a team, and inventory and marketing for the three new brands set to launch this year.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS: "Thinking about packaging, ingredients and all of the things that you would want in any modern brand, ultimately, a large swath of our country just doesn't have access to those brands," Eurie Kim, Managing Partner at Forerunner Ventures and a board member at A-Frame, told BoF. "When those brands come out, they're usually targeting, a white, coastal, urban Millennial. This [approach] allows for an ability to bring much more diversity to light."
"We are building brands to be sold," Bloom said to BoF. "We've self-identified as a team that's really good at building new brands, and we're probably best in the zero to $100 million sales range. After that, that's probably time when a bigger company comes along and does buy a brand that makes sense for their portfolio."
"The brands are constructed in a way that they should be a pretty ideal fit to be purchased by a strategic because they have the resources and people that they're looking to add, and they don't have full-time resources that are those that they don't need, like supply chain, HR, and legal."
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