Morning everyone. Thank you for participating in our video conference for the results for the first quarter of 2022. We have here with me our CFO, Rafael Sachete, our Investor Relations Manager, Victoria Machado. A bit of our agenda. I'll have some opening remarks. We're going to point out our results with our omni revenue, our brands and channels, our international businesses. Rafael Sachete will talk about the financial highlights, and then we'll quickly open a very important moment that is great, our Q&A session. If there's time, we have several annexes with marketing strategies and the moment that each of the brand is going through. The first quarter of 2022 is consolidating a big transformation for Arezzo&Co. The organic growth in the first quarter of 2021, we already had the same brands, the same businesses.
It was a 64% growth that was organic. More interestingly to point out is the growth in pieces sold. We grew 56% in that number. This shows a huge gain in market share. We have to compare with the previous year, and I'd like to point out that today, in the first quarter 2022, we're going through a new era at Arezzo&Co. Those who follow us for longer know that we presented in this five decades, the transformation our company went through. I said in our investor's day in December last year, I mentioned that we were there witnessing that transformation. These results that are consistent and sound for our first quarter give color to what the new Arezzo&Co is now. Comparing with 2019, we grew 125%.
I learned from my father that percentages, they are important, but sometimes they are irrelevant if the base is small. Translating into absolute figures, the company that you knew before the pandemic, Arezzo & Co., that already was a very solid company. In the first quarter of 2019, it was BRL 163,000. In this new consolidation era, we had BRL 1 billion in revenue, with a growth in EBITDA and gross margin, so with operational leverage. We are not going through a time of promises for turnaround and transformation. We are already delivering these results, and this gives us a lot of confidence. A very frequent question is how was for Arezzo & Co. to go through the pandemic? Of course, it was a difficult moment for all humanity, a moment of loss.
However, we were able to leverage the pandemic to catalyze this transformation that is translated in these exceptional results. I placed the three pillars that were crucial for Arezzo&Co to have this new moment as a new company. First of all, our culture. The culture that was established by our founder, my father, a culture of resilience, passion and focus on the business. Our life is dedicated to the business, not only ours, but of all of those that work here, because everyone has as their first indicator of engagement, their passion. We also proved that our business model is replicable. Our strategy of multiple collections, multi-channel with focus in R&D and brand management was proven in 2021, but even stronger now in the first quarter of 2022 to replicate this to other types of business.
Besides that, digital transformation that started in January 2018, when I and Mauricio Bastos Turquenitch, our executive director for omni and digital transformation, we made this immersion in Singularity University, and we came back having our digital day with the board in February 2018. We started to create this vision of customer-centric data management. With that, when the pandemic hit, we were prepared to transform the sales 100% at that digital moment and not wait for the customers to come to the store and being able to bring the store to the client through the saleswoman's app. Last, it's more than proven when we were questioned for a while about our actual ability to associate how Arezzo & Co.
Having such a strong culture was going to manage to bring other companies, other founders, other brilliant minds to enjoy this business model and this infrastructure that I mentioned. For hard skills such as technology, logistics, sourcing, capital, and at the same time maintain the positional and individual culture. This is more than proven our ability to aggregate and to maintain very big diligence in generating results and strategic planning. I take the opportunity to mention that yesterday we had our quarterly meeting that we do with all executive directors at the headquarters of AR&Co in Rio, and it makes us proud. The results that you see there for AR&Co are very sound and the result of a lot of work. They are not a result of market circumstances, or people do not travel abroad and now they are buying more in Brazil.
Yes, we have to admit that this helps, but it's irrelevant. Behind AR&Co and Ronnie's leadership and all the partners, there is a very sound strategy, and the business model, management model that we generated is bringing results. I'd like to end my opening remarks pointing out that a company that starts the year of 2022, which is going to be a challenging year, and starts the year extremely prepared and delivering very solid results, not only for top line and EBITDA or net revenue, but also operational cash generation. A company that has a working capital over net revenue of 17%. A company that's broadcasts its ROIC, which is a very crucial indicator, especially right now when we have the opportunity to invest in fixed income with a return of 12%-13% a year.
We deliver a ROIC of 25%-27% a year. Also together with the cash robustness. Our company stands out in the market today. For the right moment we did prepare the company to maintain the soundness of these organic results, which is our focus. With that, we bring some measures that have been implemented. Our follow-on had a clear destination for the resources, and it already appears in this first quarter, especially in an aspect that today frightens the whole supply chain in the world, which is supply. We've taken measures. The figures show that we went from 10% for own production to 13%. It doesn't look much, but it comes in a crescent. We're going to reach 20%.
Some small but strategic acquisitions that were made in this first quarter, they come to maintain because we need to deliver and not only sell. The retail company cannot justify an oscillation of their results due to sourcing problems because the company was in charge of being proactive and taking measures to change and be flexible and agile to ensure sourcing. This is the duty of the company. Arezzo&Co has been showing this. Going into our figures, as mentioned, we had a revenue of BRL 1,042 million, an expansion of 300 basis points compared to 2021. We would like to maintain here compared to 2019 to show how today we are going through a new era at Arezzo&Co. 770 basis points of growth margin.
We went from the selling to sell out model. It's a company that is closer to the consumer. The growth in EBITDA. Let's look at the adjusted, making it clear. Rafael is going deeper into this. This adjusted here is the conservative. Unlike other companies where the Adjusted EBITDA is to increase the results, ours is to reduce it. This delta of BRL 60 million, that seems, it is one-off, but it is going to generate cash in two years for our companies. We can say that the accounting EBITDA is fair for the company of BRL 195 million, 200% versus 2021 and 255% versus 2019 with leverage of margin. A company that grows in top line, grows in gross margin and also in EBITDA margin. A growth of 290 basis points.
Net profit that has some explanations that Rafael is going to give is bigger than that, but the adjusted of BRL 57 million, but the accounted because it's going to become cash of BRL 98 million. About our growth in units. Our core category, but that is not absolutely representative of our brand, which is shoes, 4.7 million pairs sold, representing 68% of our mix. Two years ago, it was 90% of our mix. Growth compared to 2021 in pairs sold. This is important to point out this gaining market share. It's a big differential for this quarter. It's a growth in units. Second largest category of our company is already apparel. With 1.5 million pieces sold, a growth of 116% compared to 2021.
The category that we know the potential that we have to leverage even more in the category of bags. With 730,000 bags sold, a growth of 83% compared to 2021. Very good performance based on the growth of volume. As I said, we started investing in our digital strategy and omnichannel strategy four years ago. It is obvious that the pandemic served to accelerate and show that we have the ability to maintain digital even after opening the stores. Talking specifically about web commerce. When you look at 2021, we were still going through the pandemic. We had a base of closed stores. We grew 41% compared to 2021. This is very relevant data for us. E-commerce corresponds to 24% of our revenue, compared to 10% in 2019. It's a very digital company.
To the left of the page, revenue of BRL 223 million. The most important, the traffic in our websites of 70 million visits. I point out a growth of 238% of app downloads in the quarter. We work with Class A, B. We didn't invest as massively with app downloads. It is an organic consequence of the wish to be part of the community for our brands. It's a feeling of belonging. Our app downloads is almost organic, so it was 2.1 million downloads which generated a revenue coming from the app because it has a very low marketing cost. It is there already. The client is within our website.
We do not have the cost to bring the customer to the site, so it generates a very high LTV, very low cost of customer acquisition. Twenty-eight percent of our sales were done in the app. This is not in the slide, but makes that the EBITDA margin of our e-commerce is of 30%. Actually a very accretive business for Arezzo & Co. Our digital business, designed to be bringing a very strong top line, is a very high margin business because the cost of marketing over revenue is low because the clients come to us. Talking about omni channel, the total revenue of our digital tools that include pickup and delivery to store, which includes the infinite shelf, generated in the past twelve months BRL 810 million.
We had, adding with web and digital, BRL 1.8 billion.
It's truly a very highly digital company. It's worth highlighting that despite of the total increase of the flows into stores, the sales team still maintain the capacity to use the salesperson app and go to the influenced sale. In other words, they start the sale through a digital contact and then close it out at the point of sales in store. We deliver the product to the client's home. This influenced sale referred to 42% of all sales, combining the other pickup from store sales, et cetera. The pickup at store has been a boom, so we are having higher accuracy from our online stocks. 91% was the growth for the pickup in store sale.
We are going through a transformation process to supply our stores for Arezzo&Co, AR&Co, and we believe that this number can still grow. Then going to what I was just mentioning, we were able to maintain the digital culture even with going back to the in-store flow. When we look at our sell out revenue, this is very much reflected on that. Increase of flow and in-store traffic, but maintaining the digital sales rates. We have a sales staff in this Q1 with all data that can be even audited if necessary. There were 6 million contacts in a 90-day period. If we divide 6 million by 90, we're talking about 60,000 contacts per day done through our staff, our sales staff with combining all our own stores and franchise stores.
That's 60,000 contacts per day and this is truly the huge highlight from the Arezzo&Co results in addition to all the branding work we've talked before and, you can see in our attachments. Now going into more specific results for each of the brands and each of the channels. It's worth remembering that since our IPO in 2011, we mentioned we would be a multi-brand and multi-channel company. This is increasingly true. Now we have four brands, and due to compliance issues, we're not disclosing specific results, but there are five brands that corresponds to a very high percentage of our sales. Arezzo is our mother brand, still with the lowest web presence, but as mentioned, means 20% of our physical store sales and grew 37.4%.
This is our biggest brand. The omni sales, as I mentioned, still with a very high percentage on our gross revenue to maintain the culture, the digital culture. The Schutz brand is a global brand with about 38% of our revenues coming from international markets. We can say that this is truly a global brand, reaching BRL 264 million in revenue and a very, very significant growth, 55% on a growth rate that you can remember that Schutz, during the pandemic, was the brand that actually most grew its revenue. Now only talking about Schutz Brazil, BRL 178 million in revenue and a very, very digital brand with a web sellout of 43% and omni sales at 13%. ARENA corresponding to the operations of Reserva.
Worth highlighting also the growth from the other sublabels, Reserva sublabels, Oficina, the children's line Mini, and About that is now part of ARENA with BRL 197 million revenue with a more than three-digit growth. Let's remember that 2021, there was a great growth from ARENA compared to 2019. Now this is basically 300%. This is maintaining a very high digital percentage above our 24% average. The omnichannel culture or the culture of having these sales staff becoming a legion, an army for digital context correspond to 50% of their web sales. This is truly a very digital brand, and this is our internal benchmark.
Anacapri, which is our combat brand, although this is a brand working basically with class B, sales grew 26% compared to Q1 2021. This is also a very digital brand. 20% of its revenue comes from the web sellout, and in total, 15.7% on the omni channels. The share per brand in our revenues, you can see here in our gross revenue. We also have the Vans brand, but it's very, very leveled. When we look at the revenue per channel, it's basically one quarter. This is very four-piece pizza graph here. This is 28% from franchises, 24% from web commerce and 27% multi-brand. We have our DTC corresponding to 73% of our DTC revenue.
This is extremely relevant, and the growth of the multi-brand, as you saw in the earnings call, was very expressive, showing our ability to work well through all the channels. Now talking about sellout. The ramp up we saw in the first quarter, you can see this, highlight for April with a very solid result. Remember that April 2021 saw the stores reopening. Basically, until March, all stores were closed. In April, we started opening stores. This is a more comparable basis and still a 94% growth for ARENA with a huge highlight to Reserva at 154%. Remember that in 2021, Reserva had already shown good growth. With Arezzo, our biggest brand in April grew 76% and Schutz 65%.
It shows you the strength of Arezzo, but Schutz also with very expressive and significant growth at 65%. Still in Q1, our sellout grew 66%. Total revenue, seven hundred and seventy-one million reais compared to 2019 when there was no pandemic, grew 51%. In April, although in May, today is still the 6th of May, the first five days of May were very strong. I can tell you, I think it's a bit early, but I can tell you that it was higher than April. We have four very strong indicators for Q2 to maintain this very strong growth rate for the company. To close off my piece here, then we'll hear from Rafael Sachete. During the pandemic, we also made very difficult decisions for our US operations. You all know that.
During the Q4 2020 results of these radical changes already were seen. Through 2021 we had consistent growth. However, when we look at these results per quarters in 2022, you can also check the delivery box for the US operations, because we have results consistency with 153% growth in US dollars versus Q1 2021, which was our highest growth quarter. This growth is based on omni channels and multi-channels with 85% of our traffic on our website with a very high conversion rate. 80% of our sales on our websites are full price with a 75% gross margin rate. We grew 122% in terms of numbers of orders and 115% in the numbers of pairs sold. We still have a very small basis.
There are 41,400 customers who bought in this quarter, so it's 67% of new customers. When you apply this growth rate of new customers on the revenue base, this very high revenue base, we're talking about an operation going over 120 million BRL in the quarter with 110 million BRL in the quarter. This is very, very high scalability that we see. For 2022, we are very confident that we are truly planting very solid seeds for evergreen sales. We grew 83%, increasing the number of doors we've been knocking on in the main department stores and also growing digital sales with partners. These are the highlights for our strategies. Now I'd like to turn over to Rafael Sachete to talk about the financial highlights.
Thank you, Alexandre.
Good morning, everyone, investors, analysts on this call. Thank you for being here with us. Now, let me give you some more details about our revenue. As Alexandre mentioned, the US operation had excellent results, 100% growth with a huge highlight in terms of recovery. When we talk about channels, in addition to the brands Alexandre mentioned, it's really important to talk about our franchise channel, which grew 42% in the quarter. This performance is not only sell in, but sell out as well with the franchisees with excellent performance. This talks about our value prop for channel and financial health and doing business with our franchisees. It's a win-win game where Arezzo&Co has been consistently delivering track records for franchise management at the national level.
The other highlighted channel here are the multi-brands with growth in all brands with 61% growth compared to 2021. Lastly, the web commerce channels with very strong bases before the pandemic, 2021 during the pandemic, and now we see a 40% growth compared to Q1 last year. This is a result from the full digitalization of our retail operations, omni-channel delivery and our physical brick-and-mortar stores and online environments are extremely connected offering the best products to clients in the best way they can access our products. BRL 42 billion is a huge growth in the quarter and very good performance in April, almost 44% sell out growth and May has given signs of excellent performance in the future as well.
Going into our gross profit, it's really important to highlight this. We've seen a lot of retail companies influenced mainly through the price conversions. This is basically results from volume in a very well managed value chain by Arezzo&Co to maintain our production costs, very assertive, very well controlled. With these small price adjustments, adjusted the calculation here to see a growing gross margin through the quarter from the cost center management and a greater mix of channels. With our own stores and web commerce sales and the franchise channels also with a good gross margin performance. We had some discounts last year due to the pandemic period. We should see from now on gross margin evolving in terms of comparisons to last year.
Maybe not in the same proportions as Q1, but we will see an evolution for 2022, and that's what we should expect. Going to the right side of the screen, we talk about the EBITDA margin for the company also with growth, with the best gross margin. This mix of channels produces higher logistics and commercial expenses because with the higher number of brick-and-mortar stores and online channels or with higher investments in digital marketing and freight expenses increase our expenses with sales. It's worth highlighting that general and admin expenses growth were 27% in the period versus 64% of revenue growth. This leverage tends to bring really good results in the first quarters, in the next quarters. This is a very strong revenue for the next quarters with an excellent scenario for the future.
We have consolidated BRL 106 million. When we discount after tax, this is what Alexandre said. After some twenty-four to eight months, this will be reverted to cash for the company to generate value for our shareholders. Lastly, a very important indicator. This is the shared target, shared with the whole team and monitored daily together with EBITDA, which is our ROIC. We have asset life, and although there are some changes, small changes to the model with higher number of own stores and more verticalizations, this KPI doesn't change, and the targets don't change. We need to now have more EBITDA to maintain these high levels of ROIC for the company, and this has been delivered in Q1. We delivered 25.6% and 30.7% adjusted ROIC.
It's important to mention ROIC, the SG&A, the adjusted SG&A, but artificially, and these effects of transitions and taxes, higher rates, which are direct assets producing 30.7% for the company, in our view, within the parameters that we would like to maintain for the next quarters at Arezzo&Co. This is my part, Alexandre. Thank you to the whole team and congratulations to our brand, 6,000 employees. Congratulations for all of these results, let's go for an excellent Q2. Now let's go into our Q&A.
Good morning, everyone. We're going to start with Helena's question from Itaú. Helena is asking, "We still see a strong growth of all the organic growth of Arezzo&Co., but Schutz is still the highlight.
Some in some quarters, you mentioned that Schutz was being benefited by the reopening, but this has been going on for a few quarters and the top-line dynamics continue strong. What do you attribute this performance to?
Helena, thank you for your question. Good morning. The Schutz brand today became a brand with very high loyalty and a capacity to attract very loyal customers. For example, with the Schutz Science program, we're launching the second wave now with a very high number of subscriptions. This is a program that you might know very well. So today it has what we call a high number of heavy users and with a very high customer sales capacity. So it's a brand that consolidated this premium segment. All the investments from Q1 is now the basis for a new era for Schutz.
We started a new store yesterday in Rio de Janeiro with excellent results. It's not only increasing the capacity for new markets for the brand Schutz, but it's also generating more brand equity with the apparel line. All of the investments for Q1 also helped to leverage the sales for shoes and bags, which is the core category for the brand. For us, this is just the beginning. The brand, as I said, is going through a new era, and we hope to maintain the same leverage rate with new categories and also through the international growth we're starting in the second semester of 2022 to start sowing the seeds for the US market. Sorry for the European market.
We say that this is a consolidated brand in the U.S. market. With the global growth for Schutz, it will still see a lot of benefits for Arezzo&Co. These are the main highlights that I could mention about the very strong growth for Schutz. It's our first e-commerce brand. This has its weight. We started in web commerce in 2011, and it was the first web fashion app in Brazil. This is a huge highlight. The brand with the highest percentage sales in the app. 48% of the sales for Schutz comes from the app, and this is a very good experience for our customers. I think these are the main factors that lead Schutz to be still a very strong highlight.
Thank you for your question, and it shows this over 70% growth for Schutz. This is what we should see with all of our brands going through excellent results. This is a result from the team to increase our brand equity. This is what we did by increasing marketing investment so that the brands, even with the international trips and international sales, this would still be the number one preference for our customers. This is what we see in the in Q1, and May is going to be the same. Thank you.
Helena has a second question about Reserva. She says that Reserva grows on strong basis. What should they expect throughout the year? Are there any other detail about the growth in Reserva client profile category, sales channel?
Just like I pointed out, highlighted Schutz, I talk about Reserva. Reserva is the Schutz for a different segment. The migration that Schutz is doing from being a brand of shoes and bags to be a lifestyle brand is a migration that Reserva also did to men from being apparel brand to a lifestyle brand with shoes and accessories. Yesterday, I mentioned in our quarterly meeting at AR&Co. Thank you, Ronnie, Jamie, Nadel for the great reception for our team. It was a great day. The main sales product for Reserva in revenue today is a shoe. The fourth is a backpack.
For Reserva, this result, you're going to see, deliver in April and the forecast for the second quarter, it maintains the same rhythm with growth. It is a result of this new calendar of launches that Reserva absorbed from AR&Co and implemented very well in their planning of launches throughout the year. In our sense, from commercial marketing and supply area, it is a big challenge for apparel. Impressive growth in the shoes category and also accessories, and it is just the beginning. In June, we are starting still as a test, just like Schutz, but knowing that the result is going to be positive from the latest line for Reserva. The main line of basics for Reserva is going to be almost a standalone business.
We are preparing the first store for the simplest brand for the first six months of the year. It's going to be successful. This, the basics line is 25% of sales, so it can become a standalone brand. It's worth pointing out the growth of this strategy that Reserva has. We were in March visiting a large company in the U.S. when we showed the make your own from Reserva, which corresponds to 50% of the sales in Reserva, which is make your own that we see the growth as technology and investment that we mentioned in our follow on to create the dark stores that we want to bring this technology to have some distribution centers with regional printing to increase the speed of delivery for the client.
Allowing the growth of Reserva INK, which is our platform that we authorize anyone to create their brand and sell their products. There is a lot to get from Reserva. I'm very confident that Reserva continue with this high level of growth.
The next question from Dani from XP, she asked about the several initiatives for growth we have with Bambini, Schutz apparel, feminine for male for Reserva, Schutz US, Carol Bassi. If you had to list two main initiatives, which is the one that has more potential for unlocking value and focus? And in these lines, thinking about EBITDA profitability, what do we expect in terms of investment in these initiatives?
Thank you, Dani. I'm going to start with the second part of your question.
We invested, this varies from quarter to quarter, but we can say around 300 basis points in new growth avenues. It's worth pointing out that we never launch a pre-investment, pre-operation such as Schutz apparel, that the team has been hired for more than a year as one-off expenses. All expenses for now, new growth avenues, they are within our EBITDA. This figure I'm telling you can maintain it. We're not going to be over that. It's 300 basis points. We're going to, we'll be excluding new investments around 19% in this first quarter, excluding all the events. This is talking about our priorities. Then I should say that both questions by Helena, they bring our great focus. Our two great pillars for organic growth is the continuity of growth for Reserva.
Reserva is where we're going to open the biggest number of stores in 2022, and we're just starting the number of retrofits in stores. I know most people here are from São Paulo. I invite you at the end of May to know the new Reserva store at Iguatemi Shopping Mall. You will see it's a whole new brand experience. This has been showing results. The retrofitted stores, we have a cross sale that is over 60%. This is a very strong data. We have still 20% of the base form. We still have an expressive number of stores being retrofitted. The most of franchises will be in this new base.
Reserva, the Reserva ecosystem that we presented, the slide from our follow-on, which is several pillars within AR&Co as the biggest umbrella, is our priority. Continuity of investment in ladies apparel, beyond Reserva with the growth of Schutz and mainly with Carol Bassi. We have signed 3 openings for 2022 for Carol Bassi. Although it is small on the total of our recent costs, revenue, it comes from a base zero and with a very strong EBITDA margin. Carol Bassi had a revenue in the first quarter of BRL 13 million. To be honest, we want to continue investing in EBITDA. It's not what we wanted to because we lacked time to open stores and hiring teams, which is happening very quickly now for this first semester and for the rest of the year.
When you put it together with Schutz and Carol Bassi, these are the biggest areas of growth. Talking about the future to 2023, the continuity of our international growth is our big priority. From the new avenues of growth, I'm going to list, not to go away from your question, these are the priorities.
Thanks. The next question from Robert Ford. He congratulates you for the results and asks a bit about the Schutz apparel line. What has been the learnings, the first results, the idea for the rollout? What can we tell the market?
Thank you, Robert, for your question. Thank you, being with us since our IPO for more than 11 years. Remember our meetings in New York. We'll be there next week again. The results were excellent. The main highlights are, first, the quality of the product.
It is exceptional. The product is very well made. I talk about quality and also fit. The fit is very well adjusted, and the clients are coming back. They buy, and they come back for more. The figures are well above our expectations. It's been around BRL 1 million in 19 days, so very strong figure, although it is a minimum percentage of our revenue, but it is beyond our expectations. As I said, the biggest decision we have to make is about the rollout model of physical stores, brick-and-mortar stores. We opened the second lifestyle store at Shopping Leblon yesterday. Together with Oscar Freire, we have the maintenance of Schutz shoes and bags and opening the second lifestyle store. Our biggest decision is going to open the third, which is the full look store, a big flagship store.
It will be we know if the brick-and-mortar rollout is going to be through creation of a new concept and bigger stores. It depends on the availability and our ability to negotiate, and it's a decision to be made. It's going to help throughout the year, but we're going to have new openings for lifestyle locations and the go-to-market of what we call multi-brands in the shoe segment. We're going to call it wholesale. This is what we're launching for the summer collection for 2022. We have the first type of clients are going to be those that are already Schutz customers. They are apparel stores but that sell Schutz shoes.
It's going to be our focus in 2022, planning the base for to penetrate in stores that are only apparel for 2023. The results are excellent. The team that we hired is an extraordinary level of excellence. The main KPI, because the revenue is a low figure, it was the survey work that we carried out with those who bought. We have monitoring. We have an index of 92% of satisfaction and positive results for those that have purchased and will come back to purchase again. It's just a matter of time so that the percentage of Schutz lifestyle becomes relevant within the total of the brand.
Thank you, Alexandre. The next question by Irma from Goldman Sachs. She wanted to understand the balance between the growth and the margin in the American operation because the operation grew well above what we expected. Still about the US, is there space for other brands in the country?
Hi, Irma. Glad to hear from you from New York, a good partner of ours for many years. When you talk about margin, I understand that people wanna know about the EBITDA margin, but I'd like to take a step back and talk about gross margin. Even with this exchange fluctuation we had, we have a very high growth in gross margin. When you talk about the EBITDA margin, today, it is totally discretionary decision. There is only one investment that affects our EBITDA margin, which is marketing. Today the SG&A expenses are very low.
The brick-and-mortar stores, they're just five, but the Aventura store and Alexandre Birman stores, they are profitable, so we do not have any channels today that generate negative EBITDA. The wholesale and e-commerce channels are highly profitable. Our great KPI here, it's actually two. The first is marketing. Today we want to maintain a solid growth in top line. It's our deliberate decision. We prefer to increase the investment on marketing on the revenue to maintain this accelerated growth. The EBITDA that you saw, although low, it is bigger than that when we include what is the plus marketing for this growth. Maybe in a year we will normalize and see the same percentages as Arezzo&Co in Brazil.
The second type of investment is the preparation, and it is what you mentioned, to get new brands within the same platform that we created. The second step is to get into the European market, especially with Alexandre Birman shoe brand. These investments obviously come out of our gross margin and will have an impact in the bottom line. When they start becoming relevant, we're going to open it up for you, but the operation there has a buffer that is enough that even with investment in marketing and new types of brands in the US and markets for a shoe brand and Alexandre Birman, are maintained in the positive level.
The next question from Ruben Couto has two questions. The first one is about the full price sales that were positive in this quarter. What is the dynamic of the inflation in prices? Is there a brand that is suffering, going through more difficulties? We see a fragility of this in the competition as well.
Ruben, thank you for your question. Thank you for being with us in our journey. Arezzo&Co comes from a garage factory, and for 20 years we had to become specialists in manufacturing, even being away from the cluster. What does this have to do with your question? It is the following. We learned to focus our product development in products that have a high ability to be manufactured, and we focus in having a good line of products.
In 1995 we migrated to the south and maintained the manufacture of our prototype, of our sample, and owning the software and outsourcing raw material and of course, having supply partners, we created a process engineering that allows us to have a lot of flexibility so that when we develop products using raw materials with less inflation, so it's more than 60 raw materials for one type of shoe. Of course, leather, where has a lot of weight in this process, is 50%, but there are different types of leather. We've shown the migration that we do from different types to different types of leather because there was less inflation. This, our capability of engineering for products is very big.
There is a brand, the biggest of global fast fashion brand, you know what it is, that has a small but relevant presence in Brazil, especially in the largest commercial centers. We always had this benchmark as if it were a Big Mac. Today, Arezzo is much less expensive than this brand. I think that compared to the competition, we had the smaller price increase. Our strategy with our suppliers, and this come from the chain of the raw material, was to have a very low inflation rate in the items and the continuing models. That's where the clients have a price reference. When we put all of this together with a big competitive edge for Arezzo compared to the competition. It is the same methodology for AR&Co.
Our ability, which was a benchmarking that we only did back in 2015 in Arezzo&Co, when it came to Reserva 2020, we just boosted it and gave more emphasis to this verticalization of sourcing and the core development. I was happy to see yesterday in Rio de Janeiro that our prototyping center for our collections, and this work of going from the cotton, but in an outsourced manner, allowed us to maintain the ability to increase prices less than the competition, generating even more brand value. It is a team that we give emphasis to.
We have deep knowledge of the supply chain, and with the acquisition of our biggest supplier of bags, which is HG, bringing the same owner of the company, João Fernando de Souza, which was our productive agent, and analyzing this, we're going to have even more capacity of flexibility with our suppliers. We're going to use what Sunset has of their international knowledge to also dominate the sourcing to other regions in the world. I'm very confident that we're going to maintain this tireless focus in cost benefit and maintain the best price for our customers.
We have another question from JPMorgan, very similar here. They're talking about inorganic movements. M&A or licensing. What can we say about that? Are there any specific category, female or women's or men's apparel, shoes, anything specific? It's João Anjo asking. Well, thank you.
Thank you for your questions. You saw that during our presentation; our focus was organic growth and the great internal growth avenues that we call the inorganic growth within the organic growth. So, both through M&A, and this is what we've been showing in our follow-on, and that's our main focus for 2022. Now you can see the Vans results here and the capacity the Arezzo & Co. had to grow. About a month ago, we had the global president for Vans here in Brazil, and he was very impressed.
Vans Brazil doubled its market share within global Vans from 2%-4% of the global revenue for Vans. This was a great differential worldwide for us here. This shows that we at Arezzo&Co can add other brands to the team. We're going to talk to have a few good brands with a very specific curatorship. The contract is just as important as many other issues that these contracts have to be thoroughly reviewed. We today have a team that is a dedicated team. If we have a lifestyle team for Arezzo&Co, we have the licensee's department for this as well. Then for M&A, we have a dedicated area with a pipeline that is very comprehensive.
We've been very careful to reach this point and bring in new categories, but with focus on female apparel. This is a market that we still have with Carol Bassi, with a very minimum participation in the market. This is a market that is basically double the size of men's apparel, where we already have a good market share. That's why our main focus is female apparel.
Thank you. Thank you for your answers, Alexandre. I think we still have Vicky, how long do we have? It's 12:02. Okay, we're going to close out our call. As we mentioned, this is widely available presentation, and this is the brand per brand with details of the campaigns, the major investments, results. You'll be able to see this material. It'll be available for all of you.
The Reserva work we've been doing with the NFTs, Vans. This is a very adherent brand for its public. The brand is going to go over BRL 200 million in 2022. Carol Bassi also coming into new markets, as I mentioned. My Shoes with strong growth in a B-class. Our investments to become a company that is always one step forward, making sure we're caring for our environment and with high governance. These are actions that make us very comfortable with our social and environmental commitments. Lastly, I'd like to highlight what we can expect for this year. Q2 has started with a strong month of May, and we will maintain this very relevant growth for 2022 more broadly.
I recommend, if you still haven't read it, the Jim Collins book. It was the last book published in 2019 called Turning the Flywheel, where he shows that Arezzo is exactly where Arezzo & Co. has become today. We are at a point of accelerated growth, and it's much easier for us to grow quickly than if we were still going through adaptation, turnaround, et cetera. This flywheel, which is the accelerated growth, and the more we accelerate, the more we grow. This is what we see, and this is what we are experiencing today for us to consolidate the market for the for national fashion here in Brazil. Thank you. A huge thank you to all of the team for your efforts and dedication, for our committee, to our management team.
Let's continue to be healthy with great focus and reach A 2154. Let's do it.