In the hyper-saturated world of social media shops hawking bags and apparel on platforms like Instagram, a number of success stories have cropped up, garnering modest sales and niche followings online. But precious few have managed the longevity and mainstream adoption that powerhouse lifestyle brand Halohalo has accomplished over their near-decade of operations.
Founded in 2013 by siblings Cara Sumabat-Limjap and Rocco Sumabat, Halohalo rapidly evolved from a bag collection for the “titas of Manila” to a holy grail lifestyle brand among fashion followers. As the name suggests, their products are an unlikely combination of materials, like leather and banig (traditional Filipino woven mats), tastefully combined to create functional and stylish pieces. What began as a bazaar and pop-up store operation, popular among the middle-aged women of Metro Manila, soon catapulted into an omni-channel success. Buoyed by word-of-mouth from their initial audience, Halohalo garnered a cult following around their unique products.
Their creative, playful designs garnered them attention from both local and international circles. In 2017, Halohalo won “Product of the Year” at the ArteFino Fair, a pillar event for locally-crafted Filipino products. Two years later, the brand was one of thirteen Filipino entrants sent to Paris for Maison et Objet International Trade Fair, one of the world’s largest lifestyle conventions.
Today, Halohalo’s product mix includes bags (Halohalobags), home accessories (Halohalohome), and apparel (Good Times). All together these product lines come together to form what the founders call the Halohaloworld, a different type of multi-dimensional lifestyle brand where customers are invited to “live” in their sunny, colorful world. Beyond products, Halohalo’s website houses visuals and music playlists—curated content meant to immerse the brand’s loyal community.
“We’ve had customers tell us that whenever they’re sad or stressed, they just go through our website and look at the photos. They don’t even shop,” says Cara. It’s an evolution in brand experiences that the founders began experimenting with as physical pop-up stores became impossible to stage through the pandemic.
With restrictions easing and physical events picking back up, Halohalo’s founders are going back to their roots staging in-person brand experiences. In the past month, both Cara and Rocco have been traveling across the country for events in Davao and Cebu. In the time they spent building out their digital world, both Cara and Rocco believe they’ve distilled the Halohalo brand experience, and are now excited to begin bringing that into new dimensions.
Inspired by the in-store experiences of global streetwear brand Supreme, Halohalo’s founders curate their pop-up stores to make consumers feel as if they are entering a completely different world. In this case, it’s the Halohaloworld. Just as with their website, music and visuals play a vital role in transporting customers. What they take away from that new world—the bags, the clothes, the accessories—act like souvenirs, reminding them of their time in the Halohaloworld. Selling a lifestyle isn’t a strategy unique to either Halohalo or Supreme. But few brands, regardless of scale, pull off the type of loyal customers these brands have amassed.
Supreme is an international case study in subversive marketing techniques. Through limited product releases and social media driven word-of-mouth, the brand has grown from a relatively unknown underground label, into a billion-dollar phenomenon—all with no paid marketing whatsoever. As a global operation, Supreme is on an entirely different level. But some of its story elements may sound familiar.
Many fans of the Halohalo brand (this writer included) have been known to wait months, in some cases up to a year, to score one of their unique bags. While Cara and Rocco attribute this to their limited operations and the difficulty involved with working with their materials—the scarcity inadvertently accomplishes what Supreme does on purpose: drive up demand.
As a practice, Supreme does not restock their products to meet market demand. They organize product releases into limited “drops” that almost always sell out instantly. In the US, this Dresden handmade ceramic statuette of Cupid, for example, sold out in 30 seconds for over $4,000.
Over the years, Supreme has sold everything from clothing to crowbars to branded bricks, commercial successes that stand testament to the effectiveness of their organic marketing strategy. Halohalo takes a vastly different approach to their branding, focusing on more coherent product lines—items that would feel right at home lounging by the beach, for example. But that fearless approach to branding that makes Supreme a pioneer resonates with Halohalo’s founders. “Supreme just does their own thing, especially when we live in a world where brands are expected to just do the same thing over and over and to please their current market,” Cara said.
Beyond the fashion world, Supreme’s marketing tactic of generating massive demand through limited drops has become standard operating procedure for projects launching on the metaverse, the latest frontier in collectibles. It’s commonplace to see limited runs of digital items like NFTs sell out in seconds. More than just meme coins and pictures of monkeys, the metaverse is now also quickly becoming home to traditional companies looking for new ways to engage with their communities, allowing their customers to own more aspects of a brand’s experience. In a sort of full-circle moment, Nike announced last year that they acquired digital design studio RTFKT to help them produce virtual items in-house. RTFKT’s founding team was overjoyed, citing Nike as the inspiration for their project in the first place.
Rocco says that Halohalo is actively exploring the metaverse as well. Though the founders are secretive about the details of this project, NFT collectibles are a logical evolution of the digital worldbuilding they first started doing in the early days of the pandemic. With their community already invested in living in their digital world, it only makes sense that a number of them would be interested in owning parts of it as well. According to Rocco, more details around their metaverse plans will be shared in the next couple of months.
Before migrating to the metaverse, however, Cara and Rocco are looking forward to expanding its borders in the physical world—more specifically beyond the Philippines. Halohalo is striking partnerships to offer their products, initially their “smaller items” such as accessories and apparel, to the United States, Europe, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
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