HercLéon is a research and development company that happens to sell clothing. When a product is made right, you keep it longer, use it more, and rarely think about replacing it. That means less pollution, less wasted time, and less of the consumerism nobody actually chose. A future like that doesn't get built in a lab alone. It gets built with the people who'll live in it.
Most of what we work on doesn't make it out of the building. Ideas get tested, worn, washed, argued about, and sent back to the start. That part we can handle on our own.
What we can't do alone is the last stretch. A product can look right on a test bench and still be a little annoying on day nine of a trip, or on a body shaped differently than ours, or in a climate we've never had to live in. Small things decide whether you keep reaching for something for years: where a seam sits, how it feels at hour fourteen, whether it dries by morning in a hotel room.
Those things tend to show up when a product lives with real people. So before we release anything, we invite a small group to live with it and help us finish it.
Apply below, or get nominated by a current Co-creator. Every application gets read by a person, not a filter.
Members request the products they want to live with. If it's a match, you'll get one short friendly agreement and a $20 deposit that comes back when your round wraps.
About 30 days of your normal life, with a few random check ins and open discussions with your fellow Co-creators along the way.
One final check in and a structured report, the same questions for everyone, so every note can be compared and acted on. Photos and videos welcome.
Your feedback shapes the next version, and that version often comes back to you.
↺ Repeat 03 to 05 until it's right
If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
African proverb
We're not looking for cheerleaders. We're looking for collaborators. Help us make the best possible product with feedback that's honest, real, and critical, so what we release is the best version of itself. That's innovation through community, history, biology and physics.
A compliment feels wonderful and changes nothing. A specific, honest note changes a fit, a formula, sometimes a whole release date. The products that earn ten years in your rotation get there because someone cared enough to say the true thing early. We'd like that someone to be you.
Every project runs under a code name until launch, because the real name usually gives away the idea. Each has cleared our internal rounds, and members can request the ones they want to live with.
The thing you swipe on every morning to stay fresh, rebuilt from zero. Yes, that thing.
What we want from you. How it holds up across a long day, a workout, and a day you forget to reapply. Also whether it feels natural to use after a week.
Something for your feet, made for people who end up walking more than they planned.
What we want from you. Long days on your feet, back to back wears, and honesty about the exact moment something starts to bother you.
A scent you wear, designed to evolve with you through the day.
What we want from you. Wear it into your real life and tell us what happens. How long it lasts, how it evolves, and what the people around you noticed, if anything.
A base layer under everything else. You'd forget it's there, which is the point.
Get in line early. Join the program and mark this one, and you'll hear from us the day the round opens.
Gear for your sweatiest sessions, built to be soaked, wrung out, and worn again.
Get in line early. This round will favor people who sweat for a living, or at least sweat like they do.
The first class of co-creators in HercLéon history.
No alumni yet. No testimonials, no wall of smiling faces. The first class is small on purpose, and once it's full, it's full. The products this class shapes will carry their fingerprints, and a year from now this page will list what changed because of them. You could be on it.
This is the real reward. Your notes decide what changes, what launches, and what gets made next. The future of fashion, with your fingerprints on it.
Early versions of unreleased products land at your door before the final exists anywhere.
Special prices on the finals you helped shape, and on every other HercLéon product you buy.
Get credited at launch, on the product page and even the packaging if you'd like. Or stay anonymous, your call.
Some perks are better as surprises. Ask a Co-creator in a year.
Thank you for being here, reading this, and considering 30 days of your honesty. Before you fill anything out, I want you to know why this program exists.
I hate making something twice. It genuinely pains me to know that something I made isn't perfect, that I could've done better. It's why some of our products have been in the works for over ten years. I respect the planet too much to waste its resources, the raw materials, the metals, the fibers, on something that isn't the best thing I could make. I respect your resources, your money, your attention, your mental space, too much to sell you something that isn't the best thing I could make. And I respect my own resources, my time, my energy, my mental space, my life force, and every hour at the factory that could've been spent with the people I love, too much to release anything less.
I am not a business man. I am a man that does business, and that means my commitment is to the planet and the people before profits. Being honest, we need profits. They're what keep the company alive to innovate and create solutions to daily challenges. But I don't believe profits are the goal, so they come third, behind the people and behind the planet.
I believe, both personally and professionally, that when we live for money, we're already dead. It's why we almost went bankrupt in 2024 buying out all of our investors, so HercLéon could continue as a for people company instead of becoming what almost every company with investors inevitably becomes, a for profit company. Life is too short to live for money.
I am excited to launch HercLéon Co-create because every product we've released got better the moment it left our hands and started living someone else's life. A seam we swore was perfect. A fit we'd already approved. Someone out there found the flaw we couldn't see, told us plainly, and the product that eventually launched was better because of it.
Co-create makes that process official. Rather than selling thousands of a product and waiting for the feedback, we gather the honest feedback up front, before it ever reaches the general public, so we catch the problems and fix them before release. I believe, if we do this right, you end up with things you keep for years, the world ends up with less stuff in landfills, and we end up with products we're genuinely proud of. That seems worth a deposit and 30 days of your honesty.
Membership is by application or nomination. We read every application, and welcomes go out as spots open.
It's $20 per project, and it isn't a fee, it's a handshake. Complete your round and it goes straight back to your original payment method, and the sample stays with you. If life gets in the way, just tell us and we'll figure it out together. Go quiet on us, though, and the deposit simply becomes payment for your sample, no hard feelings, and the spot goes to someone else next round.
Each round has lead Co-creators and support Co-creators. Leads get their shipping covered inside the US. Support Co-creators cover their own shipping, which also keeps the door open for members outside the US. Same sample, same voice, same refund either way.
Anyone can apply, and Co-creators can put forward people they'd vouch for, with the welcome coming from us. Once you're in the program, you request the specific projects you want to live with, and each round goes to the mix of people that product needs: climates, routines, body types, sweat levels, travel habits. Not being matched to one round says nothing about the next.
One short, friendly agreement before your box ships. In plain language: keep code named projects quiet until launch, let us use the notes and photos you share to make the product and its launch better, and understand that ideas folded into a product become part of it. No traps, no fine print designed to be skipped.
Not really. That part happens before your box ships. By the time a project appears here it has been through our lab, our team, and our field rounds, and we believe it should hold up. What you receive is an early version, not the final one, and how it fits inside your life is exactly what decides what the final one becomes.
About 30 days of normal use, a few short structured check ins along the way, and a wrap up at the end. Most of it is just living your life while paying slightly closer attention than usual.
Because the real name tends to give away the idea, and ideas travel fast. Members find out what's behind each code name when their box arrives, which we're told is half the fun. Every so often a code name refuses to leave and becomes the real name.
We iterate, and then we come back to you. If your round surfaces something real, the revised version often goes to the same group that found the problem, so you get to confirm the fix yourself. The loop repeats until the product is right, and then it launches with your fingerprints on it.
No. The rounds that teach us the most usually include someone with a completely ordinary week, because ordinary weeks are where most products actually live.
Then your round just became the most valuable one. Tell us exactly where it lost you. Releases have been delayed and redesigned on that kind of note, and we'd much rather hear it from you now than read it in a review later.
