Higg’s first two years

Note: This article predates our launch as Worldly.

As more companies take responsibility to lessen their impact on the planet, it can be hard to know where to start. At the same time, businesses can’t just improve one part of their business – they need to understand and improve their entire value chain. We’re reflecting on Higg’s 2nd anniversary.

Higg launched two years ago to provide powerful end-to-end sustainability data for businesses looking to become leaders in ESG.  In that time, we’ve helped our 45,000 platform users – including hundreds of global brands and thousands of manufacturers – make real progress. Our tools support businesses in measuring and improving facility performance, tracking product life cycles, and sharing sustainability results publicly.

“Our platform helps brands improve in both measurement and transparency. This progress is scalable, and we’re excited to watch more brands race to the top as sustainability leaders,” explains Jason Kibbey, Higg CEO.

When Higg spun out of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) in 2019, we started with just two tools. Since then, we’ve worked with the SAC to build the suite of tools that is the Higg Index, which has quickly become the apparel industry go-to for sustainability measurement.

In addition to the suite of measurement tools, we’ve continued to evolve other parts of our platform, with comprehensive analytics, additional data integrations, and ongoing improvements to the user experience.

Today, over 500 brands use Higg to take a complete view of their supply chain data and work towards their sustainability goals. And our customers are doing more with the platform – demonstrating 20% improvement in their scores, completing their assessments more quickly and efficiently, and sharing their performance with more partners across their value chain. And our network is expanding too – Higg’s platform supports over 45,000 users, growing the magnitude of data available for brands to explore and compare against.

It’s not just the apparel industry we’re serving. In the last few years, cosmetics, toys, beauty and personal care, car and automotive accessories, and lighting brands have adopted our technology. As more industries use our platform as the trusted source for sustainability data, we are excited to help more businesses accelerate progress towards their sustainability goals.

Along with scaling our platform, our team at Higg has also grown. Our remote-first workforce brings together designers, developers, scientists, and customer success staff across each time zone, serving both our brand and manufacturing customers. Higgsters collaborate under a common mission of empowering decision makers with actionable data so that we can stop climate change. Higg’s 2nd anniversary is just the beginning of building a thriving company.

In order to accomplish large-scale change the planet needs, businesses need the right data to guide their actions. Kibbey explains, “At Higg, we believe that all paths to improvement begin with measurement, but they don’t end there. Once businesses accurately measure their impact, they can set goals and begin to improve. But this does not equate to impact reduction.” Impact reduction occurs in the steps after business leaders have our data in their hands.

In the next two years, we’ll work to reach new industries and serve even more businesses with the performance data they need. The moment is now for businesses to unify sustainability impact measurement and make real progress towards solving climate change.