Beauty Independent reported on 16 September that A-Frame Brands, the incubator behind celebrity beauty and personal care brands from John Legend, Naomi Osaka, Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade, is shifting its focus from building brands with famous faces to building private label for retailers. Source: https://www.beautyindependent.com/a-frame-brands-turns-celebrity-brand-building-machine-private-label/.
The move started when the president of a multibillion-dollar retailer approached co-founder and CEO Ari Bloom about developing brands on its behalf. A-Frame has since built two limited-edition lines for Bath & Body Works, the skin care brand Daily Essentials and the pet brand Purrfect Paws. It has a gen alpha-focused brand in development with a major beauty retailer, and Bloom says it is working with three retailers he describes as among the largest in the United States.
The backdrop is a number worth noting. According to Circana data from the Private Label Manufacturers Association, US private label sales rose 3.3% to a record $282.8bn in 2025. National brands grew 1.2%.
Why the pivot happened
Bloom was candid about the economics of the old model. A-Frame launched Loved01 into CVS and Walmart, Kinlò into Walmart and Proudly into Target between 2022 and 2023. "We were essentially on the hook for every possible cost of doing business in a retailer," he told Beauty Independent.
That sentence will be familiar to anyone who has taken a brand into a large retailer. Slotting, promotional funding, marketing support, fixtures, returns and the working capital to fund stock ahead of sell-through all sit with the brand. The retailer gets a margin on every unit. The brand carries the risk.
Private label flips that. The retailer owns the brand, carries the inventory and keeps the margin. A-Frame provides the development, sourcing and brand building as a service. "Now if they want to get into the business, they don't have to hire a team," Bloom said. "We can be their team."
It is not a new idea. Beauty Independent notes that Maesa, Klar & Co. and AX Beauty Brands already have long track records in retailer private label. What is new is that a team whose whole reason for existing was building famous-name brands has decided the retailer's own name is the better bet.
The celebrity point is the headline. The category list is the story.
A lot of the coverage will focus on what this says about celebrity beauty, and Bloom is direct about it. The flood of actors, musicians, athletes and influencers into the category has made a famous name less of a differentiator on its own. "In the case of private label, that brand is already the star," he said.
For most founders reading this, though, the more important detail is further down. Bloom estimates roughly 80% of A-Frame's conversations involve retailers moving into product categories they have not developed themselves. The categories that come up most are fragrance, particularly body sprays, mists, hair mists and solid formats, along with lip care, deodorant, dry shampoo, wipes, whole-body deodorant, hand wash and hand lotion.
Look at that list again. Those are exactly the categories small brands often use as their way in. They are affordable to develop, easy to explain, giftable, and quick to sell through. A body mist or a lip oil is a very common first retail listing.
Those are now the categories retailers want to own themselves.
What a retailer's own brand has that you do not
A private label line built by a professional team has some structural advantages over an independent brand on the same shelf.
It has better margin for the retailer, because there is no brand margin in the middle. Bloom put it simply: "They want high margins."
It does not need marketing support in the way a brand does, because the retailer's own reach is its marketing. It gets the fixture position the retailer chooses to give it. And the teams building these lines are getting faster at winning the work: according to the reporting, citing Inc., A-Frame's internal system has cut the time it takes to turn a prospective retail client into a paying one from about a year to one month.
None of that is unfair. It is simply the competition. And in a range review, a buyer comparing an indie body mist with the retailer's own body mist is comparing a product that makes them a margin with a product that makes them a better margin.
What private label cannot easily copy
The retailer's own brand is good at being a solid, well-priced, on-trend version of a known category. It is not good at the things that only exist because a specific brand exists.
A genuine point of view that a specific customer recognises and seeks out by name. Evidence behind a claim that the retailer's line would not want to make. A community that comes into the store for you rather than for the category. A founder who can stand in front of the buyer and explain why this product exists. A product that creates a reason to visit the aisle rather than filling a gap in it.
Those are the things that keep an independent brand on a shelf when a cheaper, higher-margin version of its category is one brief away. They are also the things that tend to get deprioritised when a small team is busy launching SKUs into whatever category looks easiest to get listed in.
How to use this in your own range
Go through your retail range product by product and ask one uncomfortable question: could a retailer brief a capable developer to make a credible version of this in a few months?
For the SKUs where the answer is no, protect and invest in them. They are why you are on the shelf.
For the SKUs where the answer is yes, write down in one sentence what you bring that their version would not. If you can, make sure the buyer hears that sentence, and make sure your sell-through data backs it up. If you cannot, treat that SKU as exposed. It may still be worth selling, but it should not be the centre of your retail story, and it should not be the product you pitch first.
It is also worth watching which categories your retailers are quietly entering with their own lines. Buyers rarely announce it. The first sign is often a new own-brand fixture next to yours.
The plain version
A team that built celebrity brands for retail has concluded that the retailer's own name is the stronger bet, and it is now building ranges in body mists, lip care, deodorant, dry shampoo and hand care for some of the largest retailers in the US.
If your retail range lives in those categories, your competition is no longer only other brands. It is the retailer itself. The answer is not to leave the category. It is to be very clear about the part of your product that a brief could not reproduce, and to build the range around that.