By Bill Adler
Bill Adler is Co-Founder & CEO of True Fit, helping direct-to-consumer fashion brands leverage AI to improve conversion, reduce returns and build loyalty
Ones to Watch spotlights future front-runners in fashion, beauty & consumer who are breaking away from the pack and showing great promise and the foundations to impact the industry.
Halara is an exciting, fast-growing global athleisure brand that has reimagined retail by crowd-sourcing and crowd-testing its designs. The brand has elevated customer centricity to a whole new level. Founded in 2020 by a former Microsoft engineer, Halara is powered by an innovative production model that holds no inventory, radically minimizes waste, and delivers fabric science, functional innovation, and activewear craftsmanship to women at an affordable price.
The company teamed up with former DVF CEO Gabby Hirata to drive Halara’s brand-building and global growth. Hirata is the ideal entrepreneurial executive to bring industry expertise and a unique blend of magic and math to Halara’s strong infrastructure and customer base.
Hirata emphasizes Halara’s core competence—leveraging community insights to apply high-quality activewear fabrics to everyday athleisure wear. Halara offers plus-size ranges, extended lengths, additional bust support, built-in shorts with pockets, and various waistband solutions. Halara’s viral bestsellers like the Halara Softlyzero Active Dress and HalaraMagic denim are crowd-designed and tested. This approach has made the brand beloved by millions of customers and driven its rapid success.
Inspired by the 80’s Gordon Gekko look and lifestyle, and seeing an opening in traditional menswear brand building, Brandon Snower quit his Wall Street job and became Founder & CEO of the rising brand – Le Alfré.
Brandon noticed his current generation didn’t have a visceral connection to the legendary heritage brands. So he created a new one infusing it with the style, attitude and charisma of traditional apparel. Over the next three years, Le Alfré became a community around a fictional character’s modernized aesthetic, integrating a new culture and personality with classic, timeless aesthetic.
Le Alfré modernized the classic 80s dress shirt, reintroducing a more casual oxford, which led to winning expansion to rugby shirts, knits, caps, belts & accessories. The brand is enjoying incredible growth and loyalty due to a resonating brand affinity, quality craftsmanship and strong unit economics that bring discipline to building LTV at an accessible price point.
Snower is shaping the next generation of menswear, which is on display at their new Flatiron store. A great blend of product and vintage menswear ad prints, marinates the customer in Alfre’s brand essence.
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