Using machine learning and community feedback, Halara is taking a fresh approach to marketing content and product design.
Founded in October 2020 by Joyce Zhang, a technologist who formerly spearheaded algorithmic projects at Microsoft and Hulu, athleisure brand Halara has made a habit of leveraging its social media community and advanced predictive analytics to tailor its marketing strategies and product offerings based on demand.
“When we analyze current trends, we don’t just consider last year’s sales data,” said Gabby Hirata, global brand president of Halara. “We heavily focus on Google search trends, which give us real-time insights into what customers are actively searching for. That could be anything from specific products like our leggings to broader queries like what to pack for a summer vacation.”
The brand creates marketing content accordingly. “Each piece of content addresses a specific consumer need,” said Hirata. “This strategic content helps spike and sustain consumer interest and intention to purchase. We monitor these engagements and combine them with [new] Google trends data to make well-informed decisions about our inventory, like predicting the sale of 10,000 dresses by a certain date with high confidence.”
Hirata said that, for Halara, leveraging customer feedback has replaced the traditional design processes. “We average 10,000 comments per day on our social platforms,” she said. Halara has 600,000 TikTok followers and 2 million followers on Instagram.
The brand uses machine learning to define commonalities across the thousands of comments it receives on its product pages and Instagram. Those trends inform product sizing, fit, material choices, new product ideas and inventory quantities. It manufactures only what is predicted to sell within the specific timeframe of 35 days, which has worked to reduce waste and enhance efficiency. Styles are created by a product development rather than traditional designers.
Earlier this year, Halara launched its first brand campaign, dubbed “Confidently Halara,” to boost awareness and spotlight its values. The two-week invited shoppers to share their interpretations of body confidence on social media. The participant’s post with the highest engagement rate won $5,000.
The strategy is getting results. For example, 500,000 units of Halara’s Work Pants sold in the three months ending January 2024, driven by social promotion through UGC content. Commenst in UGC and social posts about prior products’ fit and material drove the development of the style. And users posting videos showing the versatility of the pants drove their popularity.
Halara, which declined to share current revenue, is expanding its reach from the U.S. to over 70 countries over the next year through e-commerce and a UGC-focused social strategy. The brand saw 100% year-over-year sales growth from 2020 to 2023 and expects to grow at the same rate from 2023 to 2024.
Other fashion brands like Popflex and House of CB have also successfully leveraged TikTok to create customer feedback loops using polls, comments and other tools.
Seeking to harness deeper insights into consumer preferences and industry comparisons, Halara has also recently become active on Reddit. “Reddit offers a wealth of discussions about products and the athleisure industry, providing a goldmine of feedback for us,” Hirata said.
