Heloa: a new name for Malo
We renamed Malo to Heloa.
The reason is simple: “malo” means “bad” in Spanish. Not ideal when you’re trying to expand beyond France.
We liked the name. It worked in French. But building for international markets means thinking about how your brand sounds to 500 million Spanish speakers. First impressions matter. A name that triggers a negative association before you’ve said a word about your product is a liability.
Heloa is neutral, pronounceable across languages, and doesn’t mean anything unfortunate anywhere we checked.
Sometimes the right move is letting go of something that worked locally to build something that works globally.