Halo
Fast fashion lied. Here's the alternative.
The problem
I care about the planet and I'm also lazy. I want to see something cool, add to cart, checkout, and get on with my day. Fast fashion wins because it's frictionless. One click and it's on the way.
Sustainable shopping usually means multiple tabs, a couple of blog posts, and a minor identity crisis. So people who genuinely care still end up defaulting to Zara. That's not a values problem. That's a product problem.
65% of Gen Z say they prefer sustainable brands. 54% still choose price or convenience at checkout. The gap between what people want to do and what they actually do is not about motivation. It's about friction. Nobody has removed the friction yet.
What we built
Halo is a three-sided platform that makes circular fashion the default, not the deliberate choice.
The browser extension meets you while you are already shopping on Zara, H&M, or ASOS. It surfaces circular alternatives within 10% of the price in real time. No new tab. One click.
The marketplace app connects consumers directly with circular brands, with AI matching that learns from every click, save, and purchase.
The Halo Score is what ties it together. Brands are scored across three dimensions: Production Model, Materials, and Labor and Environment. There are two pathways to a score: automated certification verification which cross-references existing certifications like B Corp, GOTS, and Fair Trade against public registries, and full third-party audits coordinated through partners like Bureau Veritas and SGS. The auditor findings are independent. Halo applies the rubric. That separation is what makes the score credible.
The extension feeds the marketplace. The marketplace surfaces the score. The score drives referrals. That is the flywheel.
My role
I led product strategy and owned the Halo Score verification system. The score was the hardest part to get right because sustainability without verification is just marketing. Anyone can slap a green leaf on a product page.
The decision to build two separate pathways, one automated and one fully audited, came from trying to solve for both sides of the trust problem. Brands needed a way in that was not a six-month audit process. Consumers needed to know the score meant something. The two-tier system was how we answered both without compromising either.
We built and pitched the whole thing in one day.
Try the prototype
What I learned
I signed up for this competition as a test to see if I even liked building and pitching under pressure. The answer was yes, more than I expected.
The thing that surprised me was how fast the problem became real. I started the day thinking about a product concept and ended it genuinely frustrated that this thing does not exist yet. That shift from here is an interesting problem to I actually want this to exist happened somewhere in the middle of building it, and I think that is when the pitch got good.
We walked out with 1st place. I have been saying yes to things that scare me ever since.
