She Launched Her Brand With $300 and a Sewing Machine. Then She Bootstrapped It to a 7-Determine Acquisition.

She created a product that crammed a spot in an trade — and scaled it to a seven-figure enterprise. 

That’s the trajectory Jessica Liao Mayers took over the course of 11 years. Mayers grew up exterior Dallas in a household of medical professionals. Fashion was not an apparent profession selection. Still, a highschool vogue class, one she initially took as a result of she thought it could be simple, modified her path. 

“I ended up really, really loving it,” Mayers says. She competed in state and nationwide vogue design and building competitions, then moved to Los Angeles to attend the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, the place she studied product improvement.

After graduating in 2014, Mayers shortly discovered work as a designer and product developer at life-style model BCBG. She discovered vogue design on the firm, then switched gears, leaping to attire firm Tobi as a purchaser and studying the wholesale retail aspect of the trade.

At Tobi, Mayers encountered an issue that was good to have: She was shortly finishing work. 

“I was very quick,” she says in a brand new interview with Entrepreneur. “My boss would give me the week’s worth of work on a Monday, and I would finish it in a few hours. I’d be so bored. So I was like, What do I do? I started my own business.”

Identifying a spot out there

Mayers began Slate Swim in her house in November 2015. She spent $300 on cloth, then made merchandise to order utilizing a stitching machine she already owned.

Mayers would work on Slate on the aspect throughout lunches, working across the Fashion District to buy cloth. Then she would sew when she bought house. She was simply 21 years outdated.

“I needed to start the brand because I needed something for myself,” Mayers says. “I got the idea because when I would go to buy swimsuits, I never really found something that was super comfortable.”

Mayers recognized a spot within the swimwear market. Mass-produced, thick nylon swimsuits on one finish, and high-end, fashionable manufacturers on the opposite. She discovered nothing minimalist. 

“There wasn’t anything more cool and reserved, and that’s very much my style,” Mayers says. “I like to wear very clean silhouettes, neutrals. I didn’t want to put on a swimsuit and not feel like myself.”

She differentiated her model from the beginning. Slate provides swimsuits with minimal seaming, so every part lays flat and easy on the physique. The firm makes use of a skinny, smooth cloth that seems like a second pores and skin. The first materials she experimented with have been truly lining materials, which was uncommon on the time.

Mayers says that within the 11 years she has led Slate, she has seen the trade change tremendously. 

“I think I came in at a really good time when social media really wasn’t being used for brands,” she says. “I think that’s part of why we grew so quickly as well.”

A serious leap

Before Mayers had stock or a producer, Agenda Trade Show found Slate’s early Instagram account, which Mayers used to share inspiration and teasers. The surf- and skate-focused present needed to usher in swim manufacturers and invited her to exhibit. 

Mayers accepted. She signed up for the present though she was truly imagined to go to that very same present as a purchaser for her firm, Tobi. She needed to inform her employer with every week’s discover that she needed to give up as a result of she was going to be displaying there as a model.

“They had no idea,” Mayers stated. “It was really insane.”

However, the timing of the present created an issue.

Mayers had no manufacturing operation in place. To put together, she made 30 samples herself in her residence, slicing and stitching each one. At the commerce present, Slate landed in 22 retailers, together with Diane’s Beachwear.

The orders have been a serious validation, however in addition they launched an instantaneous operational problem. Mayers didn’t have a producer but. At the present, she met somebody who related her with a small Los Angeles manufacturing store. That association helped Slate fulfill its early wholesale orders.

Eventually, Mayers moved manufacturing abroad and partnered with a small, family-owned producer run by a contact she already knew by way of Tobi. The relationship grew to become central to Slate’s progress. Unlike the primary native manufacturing facility, which may very well be inconsistent, the abroad accomplice supplied extra reliable high quality and manufacturing capability.

The enterprise expanded step by step. Mayers reinvested income into higher manufacturing, branding, pictures and ecommerce slightly than attempting to construct each functionality without delay.

That deliberate tempo was a function. “Everything kind of grew at a slower pace, but very, very manageable,” she says.

Why she selected focus over growth

For 11 years, Slate stayed in its lane. Mayers resisted ideas to develop into menswear, resortwear or different adjoining classes. She believed the model can be stronger by specializing.

“I would much rather be successful at one thing than mediocre at many things,” she says.

That focus additionally protected the model’s id. Slate was based round a selected aesthetic: minimalist silhouettes, impartial tones and flattering matches. Mayers discovered firsthand that chasing developments might dilute that standpoint. She remembers experimenting with trend-forward colours, together with neon yellow, in a single assortment. The merchandise carried out poorly.

“After that, I was like, Okay, never again. I’m just going to do my thing,” she says.

Her advertising method adopted the identical precept. In Slate’s earliest days, photographers reached out to tug fits for seaside shoots and check shoots. Mayers acquired high-quality imagery in alternate for credit score and tags, permitting her to ascertain an elevated visible id earlier than she might afford main campaigns.

One influencer posted a photograph sporting Slate, which generated 30 orders in a single day, an infinite second for a tiny, early-stage firm. Mayers additionally started gifting merchandise to individuals who match the model, constructing relationships one after the other slightly than chasing a single viral breakthrough.

“It didn’t really go so viral in a sense of one thing that happened or blew it up,” she says. “I think it was just consistently investing in those small relationships.”

The compounding impact of that technique helped lay the groundwork for later progress.

Where she waited too lengthy

Mayers now says she waited too lengthy to embrace paid promoting.

Until 2021, Slate had not invested in advertisements. When Mayers lastly employed an promoting workforce, the enterprise accelerated. She says within the first yr utilizing paid advertising, Slate grew about 76%. The advertisements used polished marketing campaign imagery to promote the sensation and world of the model.

Her first exterior rent was an advert workforce with an engineering background, an unconventional selection that appealed to Mayers due to their means to know Meta’s programs and information.

In retrospect, she says, “doing ads way sooner” is the one factor she would change about her business trip.

The progress from paid advertising created a sequence response. More orders required a warehouse or third-party logistics supplier. More achievement capability made it simpler to deal with bigger wholesale orders. Delegating allowed Mayers to construct past the bounds of a one-person operation.

Bootstrapping a sellable enterprise

Slate’s monetary mannequin remained easy: promoting swimwear on to shoppers and thru wholesale companions. Mayers says 92% of the enterprise got here from direct-to-consumer gross sales and eight% from wholesale.

More notably, she by no means raised exterior capital. Instead, she reinvested what the corporate earned. This meant shifting rigorously with stock and avoiding untimely growth into too many stock-keeping models. It additionally gave Mayers extra possession and suppleness when it got here time to promote.

Over Slate’s closing three years below her possession, the corporate grew 36% yr over yr, she says. In July 2026, Mayers accomplished a seven-figure acquisition after itemizing the model with a web based brokerage shortly after Slate’s 10-year anniversary.

The choice to promote was not simply monetary. Mayers had lengthy considered Slate as her “baby,” however she additionally felt able to pursue her authentic ardour: modern womenswear. She needed a purchaser who would perceive the enterprise, worth its id and keep the relationships she had constructed.

She discovered that in a purchaser with a swim background, vogue data and powerful instincts for advertising and media. Mayers says the match introduced a way of calm.

“It was like an inner peace,” she says.

Because Slate was organized, worthwhile and supported by contractors slightly than full-time salaried staff, the acquisition moved shortly. Her lawyer, she says, described it because the quickest acquisition he had seen.

Plans to launch a brand new model

Mayers is staying concerned with Slate to assist the transition, however she’s turning her consideration to Knitte, a up to date minimalist womenswear model she plans to launch in spring 2027.

“Womenswear and clothing is where I think my creativity shines the most, because I’m able to create without bounds,” she says. “With swim, it’s been so incredible, but there’s only so much fit-wise you can do with swimwear because it all has to be tight and formed to your figure.”

Mayers goes to be enjoying with silhouettes and totally different supplies and materials that she wasn’t in a position to do for therefore a few years. “I’m extremely excited about that,” she says. 

Her recommendation for founders displays the best way she constructed Slate: Start with a real standpoint, be resourceful and keep dedicated for the lengthy haul.

“You have to have that passion that’s going to wake you up every morning,” Mayers says. “If you don’t have that, you’re just not going to get far.”