The HALO Belt accelerated into the bike marketplace with more force than inventor and owner Vince Ng ever expected. Honing his passion for music and biking, Ng set out to develop a product that would solve some of the safety issues that many bike commuters face, from being seen while biking at night to having bike lights stolen. Having long had an affinity for LED lights and design, Ng began working on a wearable light that couldn’t be stolen, and the HALO Belt was born.
“It took a long time to make a prototype,” Ng admits. “I played around with putting wires on backpacks, but in the past few months the belt concept started to develop, and by then it was a matter of figuring out the best types of materials and light sources.” The concept is simple. Eight months of development resulted in a belt with a tiny LED fiber optic ribbon, built to be flexible and comfortable to wear without sacrificing strength or style. The belt comes in a variety of colors and can be worn around the waist or over one shoulder, to make the wearer look as though they just raced off the set of a science fiction flick.
After receiving overwhelming feedback from the street bike scene in San Francisco, where the belt launched, Ng pushed the design to new levels by putting it on Kickstarter.com, a site dedicated to nurturing and funding creative innovation. Operating entirely online, the HALO Belt team beat its funding goal by more than 200 percent in a matter of days. “We get tons of emails about the product on a daily basis from people who want to know how they can purchase it,” Ng says. “Kickstarter is an amazing community for anyone with an idea or inspiration who wants to get a product rolling.” The HALO Belt has been selling at an impressive pace, without showing any signs of slowing down.
“I’m going to keep playing with more designs of this type in the future,” says Ng. “HALO is a safety product, but it’s not just any safety product. It has a ‘cool factor’ that draws people to it, and appeals to anyone; it’s creative and it’s fashion.” The company is in full production for the next couple of months, selling wholesale orders of 30 belts minimum for $49 each, with suggested retail of $75 to $85. Between the roaring buzz around the belt and the popularity of biking for primary transportation, HALO is keeping buyers on the edges of their seats.
For more information:
HALO Belt
Email: contact@halobelt.com
Website: www.halobelt.com