Client
EcoAlf, B-Corp certified sustainable fashion brand, €58M revenue
My role
Strategy Lead, problem diagnosis, ecosystem design & pilot plan
Team
Group of 6, IE MiM
Presented to
Founder & CEO, CMO, CDO of EcoAlf
The problem
A brand with a powerful mission, and invisible customers
EcoAlf is not a fashion company. It is a sustainability mission built into clothing, B-Corp certified, 100% recycled materials, running the Upcycling the Oceans initiative across 6 countries with 4,000+ fishermen removing over 1,700 tonnes of marine waste from the sea. The mission is extraordinary. The customer experience after purchase was not.
The brief asked us to design a loyalty program. But when we dug into the data from our discovery meeting with the CMO and CDO, we found that the surface brief was sitting on top of four deeper structural problems that no loyalty mechanic could solve on its own.
EcoAlf already has the product, the mission, and the loyal base. What's missing is the system that connects all three, and turns one-time buyers into lifetime believers.
What we were told
- Build a loyalty program
- Make community events work
- Retain customers without discounts
- Be authentic and disruptive
What we found underneath
- 70–80% of in-store customers leave anonymously, no data foundation exists
- Events already exist. They get 1–2 attendees. The mechanic is broken, not the concept
- 80–90% of purchases are jackets, category expansion is the hidden retention engine
- The Foundation's story is absent from the customer experience, EcoAlf's greatest asset goes unseen
The solution
Earth Collective, a wallet-native impact ecosystem
A digital loyalty program that lives in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, no app, no download, activated in five seconds at checkout. Every action earns Wave Points: purchases, sustainable actions, event attendance, garment returns. These unlock access and experiences, never discounts.
TidePrint™, the personal impact tracker
The heart of the program. The wallet card tracks each member's real environmental contribution: ocean plastic rescued, water saved, fishing nets recovered, CO₂ avoided, and garments closed through take-back. Every metric uses EcoAlf's published lifecycle assessment data. It answers the question every customer secretly wants answered: what has my relationship with this brand actually done for the planet?
Three-tier community: Shoreline → Current → Deep
Members advance based on engagement, not just spend. A customer who buys one jacket and volunteers at an ocean cleanup ranks higher than someone who buys five jackets and does nothing. Each tier unlocks progressively more meaningful access, from early product drops to Foundation events to Javier personally acknowledging each Deep member.
Impact Story, Strava-inspired UGC engine
At every TidePrint™ milestone, the wallet card generates a shareable branded graphic: 'My EcoAlf jacket removed 5kg of plastic from the Mediterranean.' One tap, an image ready for Instagram, carrying EcoAlf's mission into the feeds of people who've never heard of the brand. Every share is organic promotion at zero ad spend.
Second Wave, circular take-back program
The highest-value single action in the program: return any EcoAlf garment and earn 1,000 Wave Points. The garment is triaged for resale, donation, or material recovery. It drives in-store footfall, generates supply chain data, and positions EcoAlf ahead of incoming EU mandatory textile waste regulation.
EcoAlf Foundation, the mission made personal
Every new Shoreline member receives a message introducing them to a specific fisherman from the nearest Upcycling the Oceans port, a face, a name, a story. Deep members are invited to join actual Foundation cleanup days. The Foundation's story is no longer a label on a product. It becomes the reason a customer identifies with the brand for life.
Tier architecture
Shoreline · Current · Deep
Shoreline
Entry, any purchase
TidePrint™ live. Early product access. Behind-the-scenes content. Auto-invite to community events at Day 14. The moment of joining is the moment of revelation.
Current
500 Wave Points earned
Priority event access. ACTNOW sustainability talks. Co-creation surveys. Exclusive digital community space. Advancement is never purely spend-based.
Deep
Nominated by EcoAlf
Personal message from Javier. Named in annual impact report. In-person ocean cleanup invitations. Product co-design. Rare by design, coveted and genuinely earned.
Prototype
Figma prototype, presented to the CEO, CMO, and CDO
The prototype demonstrated the full Earth Collective experience: the wallet card across three tier states, the TidePrint™ impact dashboard, the Impact Story sharing flow, the in-store QR enrollment journey, and the event invitation mechanic.
Screen tour
Nine screens, one impact passport.
01 / 09
Impact Passport
The wallet-native entry point — add to Apple Wallet in five seconds.
02 / 09
The card is your key
Live impact stats on the pass. Tap to flip, unlock the world beyond.
03 / 09
Your live dashboard
Ocean plastic removed, water saved, CO₂ avoided — every metric earned.
04 / 09
Five acts. No discounts.
Actions that raise your tier and unlock experiences money can't buy.
05 / 09
Make it public
Broadcast your impact — a Strava-style story engine for the mission.
06 / 09
The Collective, live
See what members worldwide are removing, joining, and closing.
07 / 09
Earned, never bought
Three tiers of access. Citizen → Activist → Pioneer.
08 / 09
Show up
Live cleanups, factory tours, Foundation events — never a discount.
09 / 09
Close the loop
Second Wave take-back — the highest-value single act in the program.
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My contribution
I led the problem diagnosis and drove the core solution design
Within the team, I was responsible for identifying the structural gaps beneath the brief, designing the overall loyalty ecosystem, originating the UGC sharing mechanic, and building the pilot plan and business case.
Problem diagnosis
Reframed the brief from 'build a loyalty program' to 'fix four broken mechanics.' Identified that without solving customer invisibility (70–80% anonymous), event mechanics, and category expansion first, any loyalty tool would fail on a weak foundation.
Ecosystem architecture
Designed the Earth Collective framework, a wallet-native loyalty system with three community tiers, a personal impact tracker (TidePrint™), a circular take-back program (Second Wave), and the EcoAlf Foundation woven throughout as the emotional engine.
Impact Story feature
Originated the UGC mechanic: inspired by how Strava turns fitness data into shareable social content, I designed a feature where customers generate a personalised impact graphic, CO₂ saved, ocean plastic removed, and share it to social media. Organic reach at zero ad spend.
Pilot plan & business case
Developed the 6-month pilot plan across 2–3 flagship stores, defined the KPI framework, built the €160K–€250K budget model, and projected 10–20% customer retention uplift. Presented to EcoAlf's founder, CMO, and CDO.
Key product decisions
Choices that shaped the design
No discounts, ever
Wave Points unlock access and experiences, events, Foundation content, ocean cleanups, never price reductions. This protects premium positioning absolutely and forces the program to compete on meaning rather than economics. A brand with a real mission shouldn't need to bribe customers to stay.
Wallet-native delivery, no app download
The #1 reason loyalty programs fail is friction at enrollment. By living in Apple and Google Wallet, enrollment drops to a single QR scan and one tap. The card updates in real time, delivers geo-triggered notifications, and is always visible, 3–4x more effective than app-based loyalty at the same cost.
Engagement-based tier advancement, not spend
This design principle makes Earth Collective impossible for a conventional brand to copy, because its most valuable tier requires commitment to the mission, not a credit card. It also builds exactly the kind of community that amplifies the brand organically.
Reframe the enrollment ask
Changing 'Can I take your email?' to 'Want to see how much ocean plastic your jacket removed?' was the highest-ROI recommendation in the entire proposal, no tech investment, just a script change. We projected this alone would lift in-store enrollment from ~25% to 55–65% within 90 days.
What made it different
Why this wasn't just a loyalty card
The Foundation as the engagement engine
Most brands treat their foundation as PR. We designed EcoAlf's Foundation as the core content and experience engine, fisherman stories, cleanup invitations, material journey videos. When a customer knows the fisherman whose net became their jacket, they are a co-author of the mission.
Impact as identity, not metrics
The TidePrint™ was designed to be shareable because it shows who you are, not just what you've spent. Customers don't share loyalty points, they share values. The wallet card gives them the content; the milestone gives them the trigger.
Circular economy built into the mechanics
Second Wave made returning a garment the highest-value single action in the program, directly feeding back into EcoAlf's material supply chain and positioning the brand ahead of EU textile waste regulation before competitors have to scramble.
Enrollment reframe, the gift, not the ask
The highest-ROI recommendation in the entire proposal required no technology, just reframing the in-store ask from data collection to a gift. Same action, entirely different emotional outcome.
The insight that shaped everything: EcoAlf's customers pay a premium because they believe in what Javier built. Most of them have never heard of the EcoAlf Foundation. They have no idea how much plastic their wardrobe has removed. The Earth Collective exists to close that gap, to make the mission visible, personal, and shared.
Outcomes
What the strategy was built to deliver
Projected 10–20% customer retention uplift, driven by the community tier system, the Second Wave take-back mechanic, and the Foundation event experience pipeline.
Target of 30,000+ identified community members, converting the current 70–80% anonymous customer base into a named, segmented, actionable CRM asset.
In-store wallet capture rate projected to rise from 20–30% to 55–65% within 90 days, based solely on the enrollment script reframe, no technology investment required.
Impact Story feature designed to generate organic UGC reach at zero ad spend, every milestone share carries EcoAlf's visual identity and mission to audiences outside the existing customer base.
Pilot budget of €160K–€250K across 2–3 flagship stores + online channel, with a structured 6-month phased rollout and clear go/no-go decision points.
Full proposal presented to Javier Goyeneche (Founder & CEO), Carolina Alvarez-Ossorio (CMO), and Ximena Pan de Soraluce (CDO) as part of IE Business School's Purpose in Business Challenge.
What I learned
Four things this project sharpened
Diagnose before you design
The most important work happened before a single solution was proposed. Reframing 'build a loyalty program' into four structural problems changed everything about what we built. A loyalty mechanic on top of broken foundations would have failed quickly.
Constraints unlock creativity
No discounts, no app download, no generic rewards. Every constraint we accepted forced a more interesting solution, the wallet delivery, the engagement-based tiers, and the Foundation-as-content strategy all came from working within EcoAlf's non-negotiables.
Mission is a product feature
EcoAlf's Foundation story was sitting unused inside the brand. The biggest design decision was treating the mission not as a marketing message but as the core product of the loyalty experience itself.
Behavior design over UI design
The highest-impact recommendation was a 10-word script change at the checkout counter. No tech, no budget, just a reframe of the ask. Sometimes the most powerful product decision is not a feature at all.