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"Studio Visit: Onia\nFor Nathan Romano and Carl Cunow, the founders of Onia, launching with swimwear\u2014which many other brands treat as an afterthought or forgo altogether\u2014was a no-brainer. \"They're extensions of our own lifestyles,\" Romano says. \"We love going to beaches like the Hamptons and hotels like Miami's Soho Beach House.\"\n\nBut what makes Onia's garments stand out is the duo's exhaustive attention to development, testing, and innovation\u2014the kind of care most designers dedicate to shorts, staples in everyone's closet. And that's exactly the point. \"What we offer is essentially a really great walk short,\" Romano says. \"But you can also wear it throughout the day, to go shopping, lounging, or to the pool.\"\nFor Nathan Romano and Carl Cunow, the founders of Onia, launching with swimwear\u2014which many other brands treat as an afterthought or forgo altogether\u2014was a no-brainer. \"They're extensions of our own lifestyles,\" Romano says. \"We love going to beaches like the Hamptons and hotels like Miami's Soho Beach House.\"\n\nBut what makes Onia's garments stand out is the duo's exhaustive attention to development, testing, and innovation\u2014the kind of care most designers dedicate to shorts, staples in everyone's closet. And that's exactly the point. \"What we offer is essentially a really great walk short,\" Romano says. \"But you can also wear it throughout the day, to go shopping, lounging, or to the pool.\"\nHow did you get started?\n\n Romano: Right out of high school, I moved to China to learn product development and production. Then I started working at my family's company, running the sales division of New Balance. That's how I got my feet wet in sales.\n\nCunow: I had worked at Steven Alan doing product development and production on the men's side of the business for about four years. Then I left to start Onia with Nathan. We got into a bunch of stores, and the business just grew from there.\nWhy did you start with swimwear?\n\n Cunow: We saw a void in the market, in terms of contemporary sportswear. There was stuff in the designer parts of department stores, but there wasn't something in the middle, in terms of aesthetic, quality, and price. That's why we started in this category.\n\nRomano: It was about the idea of creating travel gear, something functional. It just happened to start with a swimsuit. If you look deep into our garments, they revolve around a certain aesthetic. They look like walk shorts but happen to be swimsuits, too.\nHow do you get inspired?\n\n Cunow: There's a lot of traveling. Just looking at fabrics is what inspires our collections. I go to a lot of fabric shows, so it all starts there. Then we create the styles. We work with mills from all over the world that are showing innovative yarn, weaving, and printing processes. With swimwear, it's typically solids and prints, but we want to show our guys what's new and different.\nWhat have been the biggest surprises and obstacles in launching your label?\n\n Cunow: There's heavy back-end operational stuff that goes into all of this that you have to deal with regularly. You can make a beautiful sample, but you need to mass produce it and have quality control. And then there's shipping and barcodes . . .\n\nRomano: And then there's HR, logistics, and e-commerce.\n\nCunow: Yes, one of the biggest surprises was e-commerce. All of our business, so far, has been organic, with no paid online advertising. For people to know the brand and purchase at all hours of the night is really inspiring.\nDescribe the Onia guy.\n\n Cunow: He can be of any age. He's someone who wants something simple and minimal but of quality.\n\nRomano: He's not logo-driven, either. He appreciates that our garments are built around fit and fabric first. He likes things to be easy, with no bells and whistles. Nothing fussy.\nHow do you guys unwind?\n\n Cunow: I go to the beach. I was actually in the Rockaways on Sunday. That's why I'm so burnt.\n\nRomano: I go to Miami a lot and stay at the Soho House. We also work with them, as their exclusive men's swim suppliers. It's nice to be able to travel now and play and work at the same time.\nWhere do you see the line in five years?\n\n Cunow: We see retail stores, but we see them in the right beachy settings, where our customers are actually spending the weekend. We went to a store on Crosby Street, and we went to a store on Madison Avenue, but it didn't work for us. Our customer is in the Hamptons or Miami Beach.\n\nRomano: We always say we want to eventually open remote destination shops. Instead of capturing the guy from New York going to Aruba, we'd open a store in Aruba and get him there. Especially since the majority of our guys forget to pack a swimsuit."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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